Fast load times and meaningful content. These are the words that absolutely must describe your website in 2021 or you could lose traffic, leads, and business. Google has already announced plans to update its search engine algorithm to put an even bigger emphasis on user experience in the new year. This algorithm update is all about speed. People want the websites they visit to load fast, offer helpful answers to their questions, and provide additional meaningful content to make their lives better. And did we mention they want it fast?
We’ve analyzed the data and want to help you be certain that your website is ready for these changes. What it boils down to is this: today’s consumers don’t want to waste any time. They want the brands they engage with to make it easy to do business with them online—especially from mobile devices—and they want the right answers to their questions, followed by supporting content they can engage with if they want to learn more.
In some ways, this info seems a bit obvious. No one wants to waste time, and while no business is intentionally trying to waste their customers’ time, it can happen unintentionally when website basics are neglected or ignored. In today’s post, we’ll help you evaluate the user experience of your website and how to address any problems you may discover in the process.
Give Your Customers What They Really Want From Your Website: Meaningful Content and Fast Load Times.
The best thing you can do to improve user experience on your website in 2021 is schedule a regular time to evaluate your content. When your task list is bursting at the seams, it’s difficult to take a step back and examine your website but it’s critical to ensure it is offering a great user experience. Here are some questions to help you assess your website content:
1. Is your website content up-to-date?
Are the “about us” pages accurate including current employees and contact information?
Is there old content buried in your site that’s outdated but still appears in search engines? (This is a good time to check your digital footprint)
What can you learn from Google Analytics? Are there stale pages that need a refresh?
2. Is your website content easy for visitors to understand?
Are you using too much tech speak or jargon that outsiders won’t understand?
Do you use videos, graphics, photos, and other interactive content to communicate your messages?
Is the site navigation intuitive to a visitor, as opposed to someone already familiar with your site?
3. Are you blogging?
If you don’t have a blog, start one! This is the best way to generate organic traffic and engage your audience.
If you have a blog, are you using it? The only thing worse than not having a blog is having a blog with ancient content.
If you are blogging regularly, consider revisiting older blog posts, refreshing the content, and reposting/repurposing it on social media for even more traffic.
4. Is your content generating traffic?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key to getting organic traffic to your website. The pages of your website as well as your blog content should be rich with keywords and links that improve your page rank.
What’s your bounce rate? You may be ranking on the search engine results page, but if your content is boring, hard to read, or irrelevant to the keywords, you’ll lose those leads.
Speaking of keywords, if your content isn’t generating qualified leads, it may be time to revisit your SEO keywords to ensure they’re relevant to your target audience. This can be confusing so please contact us for help evaluating your website’s SEO effectiveness.
5. Does your website load quickly?
Google has said its priority is speed. Regularly run speed tests to make sure that your website loads fast on all devices and all browsers.
Remove unnecessary pop-ups and ads that contribute to lag time.
One-half of your website visitors are coming to your website on a mobile device. This means that it’s equally important to ensure that your website is designed for mobile and desktop display.
Make sure that your website isn’t working against you. Always choose responsive design with the end user in mind.
The Fool-proof Way to Get Your Website Ready for 2021
Let us help you! It’s a lot of work to make sure that your website is ready to meet the demands of 2021. We’d love to help you create a great user experience for your customers. If any of this is overwhelming or confusing, please give us a call. We can audit your website and recommend ways to improve it. We look forward to working with you in the new year!