Five easy ways to improve your website

There are millions of websites on the Internet, so how do you go about making yours stand out from the crowd?

Or perhaps you are not looking to be different, but you simply want to learn how to improve traffic to your site and make it more user-friendly. Whatever the case, here are five ways to improve your website:

1. Make it responsive

With an overwhelming majority of people owning smart phones today, more and more web and online experiences are taking place on mobile screens. If your site is not responsive in this day and age, it is very likely that people will click out from your site before you can even say “wait”.

(Speak to us today to find out how we can help re-design your site and make it responsive and suitable for mobile browsing).

2. Reduce the clutter

Some may have the mindset that the more they put on their home or landing page, the better. But this could not be further from the truth. Looking at the site example in the image above, the first impression is overwhelming, and the user does not know where to look. There are so many other things to say about a site like this, but that’s another story for another day.

Reducing clutter helps to decrease the overall load time of your page. This means that your site will load faster in general, and this also improves site ranking. A neat and clean layout also gives a more professional image, and thus, makes your brand more trustworthy.

3. Freshness and Quality

No, we are not talking about groceries or food here, but rather, your content. Content that is up-to-date is more likely to get crawled by search engines (and is also preferred) as compared to a site that does not do regular content updates.

Also, what search engines love (or rather, their crawlers) is content that is relevant to your site. In fact, search algorithms are better at looking for good content, and websites with fresh and quality content will get higher rankings on search results.

Besides rankings, if your content is good and constantly updated, readers and users will keep coming back, and this way, you also build customer retention as well.

4. Clear and concise copy

When it comes to copy, there are 3 essential things to remember: grammar, spelling, and conciseness.

This means that there should be little or no spelling and grammatical errors in the text, and things should be written in a simple and clear manner, but still in the tone that your brand wishes to convey.

Avoid convoluted copy and the use of overly bombastic words. Also, use copy that is engaging and draws peoples’ attention to what you want them to. It also helps to write on things that are current and interesting, as these adds to the relevance factor of your site’s content.

5. Easy navigation

This is especially important for e-commerce sites or online shops. If your check-out navigation involves many confusing steps, it might be time to think of how to simplify the process for your customers.

For non commerce sites, user experience (UX) is also important, and a cluttered landing page (see point 2) will make it confusing for users to navigate your site. A good site will have a site map that allows users to see at a glance the content available on a site, and will also have tabs leading to specific pages and to help users be able to see and find what they are looking for.

There you have it, five simple and immensely effective ways to improve your website and help you gain and retain traffic!

If you are keen to find out more about how we can help you to improve your website, or perhaps you want to build an online presence from scratch, contact us here.