A fresh pair of eyes and a quick website health check can often spot problems that might be adversely affecting your user experience (UX) and customer journey. A lackluster or out of date website also seriously affects your SEO.
The three second rule. Three things, three seconds.
Let’s first check that your website meets the three second rule: there’s an often quoted theory that you have just three seconds to keep a user’s attention when they land on your website.
1. Your website must ‘land the eye’. In other words, there must be an immediate draw for the user in the form of a strong image or visual element when they land on your website.
2. Your landing page must clearly state what you do. Even if the user has come to your site via a search term or link, you still have to declare very clearly what your website is about. A quick and dirty test of any five websites will show that on average two out of five sites fail this test in favour of style over substance. Don’t be that guy.
3. Thirdly, and this is your last chance to keep a user on your site and to move them along towards making a purchase, is it absolutely clear what they have to do next? In other words, is there an obvious call to action in the form of a “book now”, “call now”, “buy now” or ‘learn more’?
Website MOT – your to-do list.
Once you’ve checked that your site meets the three second rule, here are our tips for carrying out a quick health check of your website.
– First things first, is your website secure? Check our recent Dugal Media blog on SSL certificates to find out what that means and how you can fix it.
– Check your URLs. If a URL is easy for a human to read, it’s also easy for a search engine to read and index. Check these URLs and tell me what you’d be more inclined to click on https://www.cutepuppies.co.uk/puppies-looking-cute – compared to https://www.cutepuppies.co.uk/f386aa626ac2.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/6d-af99-9431-af0d-f386aa626ac2
– Your website should be mobile responsive – readable on any mobile device eg smartphone or tablet without the user resorting to zooming or pinching. If it’s not mobile responsive, your site will be penalised in search results.
– Check all your content is up to date. If it’s a site that deals with bookings, make sure that any bookable dates are current and valid.
– Check for “Error 404” (or “Page Not Found”). This is an http status code which means that the server can’t find the document requested by the user, i.e. a user has clicked on a link to a page that doesn’t exist.
– Inbound and outbound links. Check that all links from your website are valid and working, and where possible, check sources linking TO your site.
– Above the fold. Try to ensure that all the important content – (as per the three second rule) is visible without the user having to scroll down.
– Check that all contact details are up to date, and that your contact form works.
– Have a quick run through of your menus. If you have more than five menu options, consider moving some into sub menus, to keep things simple.
– Check all your social media icons are linked correctly to your various channels.
Blogging for SEO
Blogging for SEO– You won’t be surprised to hear that blogging is great for search engine optimisation (SEO). If you have a blog or news page on your site, check the date of your last entry. If your blogging has slipped by the wayside, consider either restarting, removing or outsourcing your blogs. There’s a skill to writing great copy that boosts your SEO – give us a call at Dugal Media today to discuss how we can help.
– Hover over images on your site to check that they have alt tags. This means that your images can be “read” and indexed by search engines.
– Remove any out of date pop-ups. There’s nothing more likely to turn a user off than out of date content.
If you’d like more information about improving your website then contact Dugal Media or Business Gateway Dumfries & Galloway to help optimise your business online presence
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