3 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website in 2024.
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Improving your website can feel like a daunting task. Often it is overwhelming and hard to know where to start. In this article, we provide 3 simple steps that you can take to begin optimising your website to drive success.
1. KNOW YOUR ANALYTICS
Firstly, understanding how users are interacting with your website’s pages, content and Call-To-Actions is the key to identifying problem areas and conversions.
This data is easily accessible via Google Analytics. If you don’t have an account, click create and follow the steps, this will require domain verification via your domain’s DNS records. Need help doing this? Contact us today!
Once you have access to your Google Analytics, and have allowed it time to generate data, you can start to explore how users are engaging with your website.
The key website metrics to track are:
- Traffic Sources
- Page Views
- Average Session Duration
- Bounce Rate
- Conversion Rate
Let’s explore these in more detail!
Traffic Sources provide detail on how your visitors have arrived on your site. Often organic sources are via direct search, Google search and different social media platforms.
Identifying top traffic sources will help to focus marketing efforts on the most effective channel. We recently implemented a fresh content strategy, under the fantastic strategic marketing advice of Cogent2 for our lovely clients over at Redeployable (check out their Skills Profiles pages!) which led to a tenfold increase in Google Search Impressions, as well as a 42% increase in Clicks, over a 3 month period.
Page views are counted every time a user loads a webpage on your website. This provides insight as to what pages users are mainly viewing, allowing you to optimise these for conversions and encourage continued user flow throughout the rest of your site.
Exploring your website’s user behaviour flow can help you visualise the route users take through your website and identify what pages are successful or unsuccessful in encouraging users to explore your site further.
Average Session Duration explains the length of time users spend on your website. The longer the average session duration, the more effective your website is at keeping visitors engaged.
A benchmark of around 2 minutes and above is desirable, with B2C websites on average having longer sessions than B2B. If you wish to learn more about improving your website's average session time, reach out to us and we can explore some strategies suitable for your site.
Bounce Rate measures non-engaged site visitors, whereby a viewer has been on your site for less than 10 seconds, does not engage in a key event (any form of conversion) or views less than 2 pages. High bounce rates demonstrate a lack of meaningful interaction with content.
Bounce rate benchmarks alter depending on the industry, but on the whole a rate lower than 40% is considered very good.
Conversion Rate will let you know if your website is achieving the predefined goals you have set out, such as buying a product, subscribing to your newsletter or downloading a PDF. It is important to set your conversion goals in Google Analytics so you can accurately measure your website’s success.
Once you begin to understand your website’s analytics, you can start to change your website’s content, layout and technical aspects to address the issues identified and improve user experience.
2. THE BASICS OF SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of adjusting your website to improve its ranking position in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), resulting in higher levels of traffic to your site.
SEO takes a variety of forms, including On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Local SEO and Mobile SEO. A crucial area for you to focus on is on-page content SEO. The implementation of a keyword SEO strategy across your website supports search engines in understanding the context and relevance of your site. This makes it easier for your website’s offering to be matched with user search intent, increasing awareness and promoting your product/service to your target audience.
Begin by delving into the search intent behind each of your products/services. Try to get into the mind of a potential customer and think about the terms they would use to search for your solution. Google search suggestions can help with this.
Once you have created a list of keywords/terms, you can develop these into short and long-tail phrases.
For example:
Short-tail - Navy rucksack.
Long-tail - Strong and durable navy blue hiking rucksack made from lightweight, waterproof material.
Long-tail keywords allow you to move away from highly competitive search terms, to niche searches with less competition. Don’t only integrate these keywords within your website’s content, but also add them to your pages meta titles and descriptions.
Watch out for keyword cannibalisation! This is when multiple pages on a website target the same keywords. Instead, make sure each page is targeting different short and long-tail terms to avoid your pages competing with each other.
3. MOBILE FRIENDLINESS
Our final tip for improving your website is to focus on its mobile friendliness. Updating your website's device compatibility falls under the Technical SEO umbrella, which we discuss in greater detail here.
The last decade has seen an exponential rise in mobile devices being used to view websites. It is no surprise that Google has adjusted how it crawls, indexes and ranks pages, now following the ‘mobile-first’ approach.
This means Google’s search crawlers now prioritise indexing a website’s mobile layout over its desktop layout and ranks accordingly. If your website has an incompatible or poor mobile design, your results page ranking will be negatively affected.
Take a look on your Google Analytics to gain insight into the main devices your visitors are using. We found 57% of visitors to our website use a desktop, 42% use a mobile and only 1% from a tablet. This highlights the importance for Jolly Good Web to have strong designs for both mobile and desktop screen sizes.
Building your site’s style from a ‘mobile first’ approach can benefit overall design. Starting at your smallest breakpoint, and modifying it for larger screens stops overcrowding and forced layout structures.
Take a look at your website on different devices. Do you notice any layout or content issues when comparing screen size? A common issue to check for mobile devices is CTA buttons in random positions and large bodies of text taking over the screen. If you notice any mistakes like these, it is time to update!
If you’re keen to implement these improvements but don’t have the time or the know-how, reach out to us using the form below.