Many people mistakenly believe that web site optimization consists solely of SEO solutions, which allow the site to appear more often in search, rise up in search engines rates and take first place among competitors. In fact, raising the ranking and reputation of your site with search engines is just the beginning. Full web page optimization will require special skills from the executors and preliminary in-depth analysis.
Why Do You Need to Optimize Your Website?
In short, website optimization is all about improving your user experience so that people will be more likely to convert on your website. Many businesses try to optimize their user experience by completely redesigning their website from time-to-time, or improving content and SEO. However, true website optimization is a scientific process.
Computools’ experts know that everything on the website could probably use a tune-up. However, most businesses don’t have the time or traffic or money to optimize every little aspect of the website.
To find out exactly which areas of the site require optimization in the first place, it is necessary to conduct an analysis and tests, discover the main goals of the business. As a rule, increasing the speed of the site, optimizing for mobile devices, improving user experience and the quality of service solve most of the problems. However, specialists recommend applying individual solutions for certain problems – this will increase the effectiveness of the site several times.
Apply Mobile-First Approach
The widespread use of mobile devices has led Google to include the site’s adaptability in the list of categories for which it is rated by the entire system. No matter what device your potential customer uses, the webpage should be convenient. Another fact in favour of adaptability of the site – Google officially began rolling out the mobile-first index in March 2018. Well, pages without mobile versions still work on mobile and are usable for indexing.
However, statistics show that sites that do not have an adapted mobile version are less likely to attract customers because their use is not so convenient. These are some standard guidelines that you can apply at any time: scaling images when using a responsive design, using short meta titles, avoiding pop-ups that cover content.
But creating a full-fledged mobile version of the website is more than using basic content tips. You may need the help of a dedicated team of programmers, designers and analysts who will do all the basic work for you. Depending on the functions and purpose of the site, it can be supplemented by new features available only to users of phones and tablets, which will attract more customers and expand the target audience.
Want to know what solutions will help to improve your website performance?
Contact us →Adopt Cloud Technologies
The benefits of cloud technologies have been repeatedly stated by both providers and active users. The use of the cloud for the website opens up a lot of opportunities, both for internal optimization of the site structure and for improving user experience. Traditional server architecture can fail and does not guarantee the stable operation of the site. In addition, servers require maintenance and service, which can also make the page temporarily inaccessible or impair its operation. With the use of cloud storage, you can avoid such problems.
One of the main advantages of cloud storage is accessibility from anywhere, with any developer or third-party team. This means that you can make improvements, refine the page of the site at any time without breaking the stable display.
Of course, in this case, the issue of data security is very acute. Providers offering cloud storage services provide maximum protection for all data, carefully monitor that all measures are taken in a timely manner and constantly test the system to identify possible gaps in protection. But even if this is not enough for you, you can use a hybrid cloud and additional – individually developed – solutions for your site. Created according to your specifics, they will not slow down the site and violate its stability.
Speed-up the Website
Page speed has a direct impact on both traffic and conversions. Slow page speed creates a poor user experience, which is why Google takes page speed into consideration as a ranking factor. Increasing website speed will increase conversions and search engine rankings.
Some practices for optimizing page speed include:
- minimization of HTTP requests for the different parts of the page, like scripts, images, and CSS;
- reducing the file size by compressing them and combine common files;
- making JavaScript load after important files have;
- reducing DNS lookup time;
- improving server response time.
These all are common advice that can be applied to any webpage or site. However, a thorough investigation of your website made in advance will be much more useful than the implementation of ordinary solutions. It is proved that individually developed applications or scripts solve problems faster and more reliable.
Moreover, the introduction of the latest technology will automate some processes, which will also speed up the site. But in order to save money and time, this should be done with a clear understanding of the main problems. Thoughtless use of even the best solutions can have the opposite result.
Optimize Database
Database optimization refers to a variety of strategies for reducing database system response time. Whether it is cleaning out old unused tables or creating indexes for faster access there are always things that can be optimized.
With a lot of dependence on the database for the operations of the system, the high performance of the database is always kept in high priorities. Any slowdowns in the database can affect the entire system’s performance. To avoid any disruptions in the operations to prevent any kind of loss for the enterprise, database performance tuning is practised regularly under the supervision of diligent Database Administrators. It is a regular practice of database optimization techniques, which enhances the performance of the database and resolve any possible issue even before it occurs.
If your site has tens of thousands of posts, chances that you’re experiencing slow search performance extremely high. The reason for this is two-fold: firstly, search queries to your database are having to examine millions of rows to return search results that match. And, the query that site uses by default does not scale well once your site hits a few thousand posts. It can take multiple seconds to perform the search operation, and if you have multiple people searching on your site at once this can easily lead to slow performance. In this case, you can use ready-made solutions or apply the individual one in order to offload the strain of performing that search to a separate system fully optimized to handle it and returns better results faster. There is also the added benefit of freeing more server resources to handle more concurrent traffic, making your site more scalable.
Track and Analyze The Traffic
Tracking and analyzing can help you with your website in a plethora of ways; all of which can bring in a great deal of income. If you are able to track and analyze your website then you can find what you are doing wrong, change it, and keep doing so until the problem no longer arises. With website optimization through tracking and analysis, comes real opportunity to make your website better.
When you know who your site visitors are by their age, gender, geographic location, interest topics, etc., you can take proper measures to enhance their user experience. Similarly, when you learn about the technology (device, operating system, and browsers) they’re using to browse your site, you can test your site’s compatibility with those technologies and make necessary improvements.
Website analytics tools show you exactly which content gets the most visits, average duration, and bounce rate for the individual pages, so you can analyze, and optimize, for better engagement. You can add more call to action (CTA) buttons, purchase links, etc. on the top pages of your site and boost your conversions. Similarly, you can update the top landing pages with the latest information or revamp their whole design and structure to make them look fresh and updated. In addition, you can learn what type of content works and what doesn’t. That way, you can focus on the type of content getting more visits to boost your site engagement and gain more customers.
Standard analytics solutions for tracking and analyzing the traffic of the website offer wide opportunities. But the problem with most of the tools is that there are too many of them. They provide analytical data that have yet to be sifted, select the necessary ones and carry out additional analysis of these data already. Smart optimization allows you to use only the instruments you need specifically customized or specially developed for your needs. AI and Machine Learning, the Big Data Analytics showed themselves very well here.
Website optimization brings huge benefits to its owners if done correctly and by experienced specialists. The truth is that no one knows the site as the people who work with it constantly, but it is also true that no one can improve its work the way the optimization experts do, because they constantly work with it. Let everyone do their job to get more benefits and profits.
Computools has extensive consulting experience helping businesses get better operationally and more profitable. Email info@computools.com for a one-on-one consultation.
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