Ever heard the saying "you'll never get a second chance to make a first impression"?
Well, when it comes to web visitors, this is very true. You see, people dislike waiting for sites to load, especially when laden with clunky ads.
They'll just move along and go to your competition. Which is why you must do everything possible to ensure your website is fully optimized for your users.
While speed may kill in real life, it will save you on the internet.
Website optimization plays a crucial role in determining it's profitability. A website with poor user experience has serious optimization issues and should be fixed immediately.
If people are leaving your website in droves, shortly after arriving, it's probably because they don't find your website particularly easy to use.
How can you change visitor user experience, time on site, and conversions? The following 6 website optimization tips should help you correct site visitor issues:
1. Increase Your Page Load Speed
A fast loading website is a joy for visitors. They love it, and will most likely stay on for longer. In fact, fast websites are directly responsible for higher conversion rates. For instance, the BBC lost 10 percent more users when its site took one second longer to load.
Worse still, DoubleClick found that mobile users tend to abandon websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. The fact is people hate a slow loading website.
Unfortunately, there are many causes of this. It could be anything from heavy images or backgrounds to poor javascript coding. This is why you must test your website's page load speed.
Don't know what's causing it? No problem. Just use free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights. Tools like this will scan your website and show you what's responsible for the slow speed. More importantly, it will show you what you need to fix for improved website optimization.
2. Compress and Optimize Images
We live in an age where cellphone cameras shoot high-res photos. Unfortunately, these pictures tend to be heavy, with many being in the 5-10 megabyte range.
While this may not be an issue on your phone, it is an issue on your website. You see, every time people click through to your website, everything on the page has to load. So, if you have heavy images on there, it'll take a bit longer to load than regular texts or embeds.
So, the best thing to do would be to optimize images so that they send as little data as possible. Or, you can compress all images to be used on your site.
Ideally, a 60-70 percent image compression rate will do just fine. This will minimize the size, whilst still producing good picture quality.
Another option is to go light on images or forgo it completely. Websites with minimal images tend to load very quickly because it's all text and nothing else.
A third option is to upload those images to image sharing sites, copy the embed code, and place it on your site. This way, the photo-sharing website bears the brunt, while your page only renders the code.
3. Deploy Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on Your Site
Accelerated Mobile Pages often contain stripped down versions of your web pages. So, when people click through to them, all they'll get is only the most important information. This is a super effective site optimization trick.
So, not will the visitors enjoy the benefits of a fast loading site, they'll also get all the details they need. And you'll reap the benefits of a higher conversion rate.
Deploying this on your website depends on the code powering your site. If your site runs on anything other than WordPress or Wix, you will probably need to write complex code.
But if your website is WordPress-based, simply installing a plugin will take care of it. This handles all the heavy lifting and takes away the stress of getting someone to write the code.
There are many AMP WordPress plugins in the marketplace; most of them free. Just pick one and install for wondrous website optimization.
4. Get Solid Web Hosting
A good web hosting provider will not only provide fast servers, they'll also give you access to compression technology like GZIP. Tools like that will compress all large data on your site without compromising its rendering quality. It's essentially the best of both worlds.
Your web hosting company can also determine the speed at which your pages render. If they cannot load your content quickly, the reality is there's nothing you can do. You need a web host with fast servers and configuration.
Otherwise, all your tinkering will amount to nothing. If your website experiences high traffic volume, you might want to get a hosting package that's built specifically for that.
Most web hosts have VPS hosting services that provide you with dedicated ultra-fast, high-speed servers. These are optimal for people with a lot of traffic volume.
5. Pay Attention to Your Site's Plugins
If you're running a WordPress-based website, you need to be careful about your plugins. Plugins are great, but when they're too many, they can slow down your website.
Many site owners routinely install far too many plugins on their website. And when they deactivate, they don't completely delete them. So, only install relevant WordPress plugins.
The basics include one each for SEO, security, catching spam, caching your site, and image compression. If you need a number, anywhere from 5-20 is great, depending on your hosting plan.
Go check out your WordPress website plugins right now. Ask yourself if you really need each one. Keep the WordPress site plugins you need, and delete any website plugin that you don't.
6. Minification Works for Website Optimization
Minification involves removing excess comment, text, or white space. This way, it strips down the text to its most useful. As a result, your website won't need to load too much data to render properly, without it affecting its functionality.
Think of it as a shortcut that eliminates all redundant data, freeing up your website to run smoothly. And remember, site speed is also a crucial consideration for Google when ranking your website on its search engine.
Wow Customers With Website Optimization
There are many other ways to wow visitors with website optimization. Make your website very easy to navigate, pay attention to error 404 pages, and take advantage of caching to speed up your site. These additional website optimization tips will improve user experience on your site.
Website optimization is just the first step. Once you get them on your website, keep them coming back by using these amazing tips on increasing conversions and loyalty.
