Digital marketing has never been more important. The advent of the internet has completely changed the way we do marketing. From traditional TV commercials and radio ads, the field of marketing has expanded to include a wide variety of social media ads that you’re bound to see as you browse through your feed. While these ads are effective, they are merely supplements to the mainstay of every digital campaign — the website.
Websites are one of, if not the most important thing for any legitimate business to have. It is one of the best ways to cement your brand’s online presence and it is often indicative of a business that means business. You only need to think of the biggest brands you know and you’re going to see that each and every one of these brands has a website. Having a business without a website to represent it is like having a brand name without a logo. You’re not getting optimal results without it, that’s for sure!
Because websites are a very crucial component of any brand, you need to ensure that your website is able to provide a solid user experience. This doesn’t just mean that you have to create a website that’s aesthetically pleasing and one that has good, relevant content; you also have to ensure that your website performs well. A website that takes too long to load will have a high bounce rate, whereas a website that loads quickly is more likely to be browsed through. A great logo is also important for branding and there are plenty of businesses that can help in making a logo. There are also plenty of ways to optimize your website. So, what are the ways that you can ensure that your website performs at optimal levels?
Observe Your Website
The very first thing you need to do is to figure out how your website performs. It’s rather easy, as you can do this by clicking through your website and observing how the pages load and how long it takes for them to load. Do the images load quickly? Are there missing links and page elements that are buggy? These are a few things to look out for. There are many tools that are available to help you check your website. Ping Sweep tools are a great way to check for website functionality and speed.
Clean Up Your Code
In order to do this, you need to hire a developer that knows how to write the HTML document by placing your CSS and Javascript in the right places. An ideal set up here is to keep your CSS up top and your Javascript below. While this isn’t going to improve website speed, it’s going to ensure that your website visitors aren’t greeted by a blank page while waiting. If most visual elements of a web page are loaded, they are more likely to wait for the rest of the page to load, as opposed to visitors who get the impression that the web page isn’t working because all they see is a blank page.
Enable Prefetching
Prefetching is a process that allows a website to silently fetch the resources needed in order to load a website. These resources are stored in the browser’s cache, which then allows the browser to load the data much faster than if the resources weren’t stored. This is what allows some websites to load instantly, because a lot of the resources on the website have already been stored on the browser.
Reduce External HTTP Requests
In most instances, most of a website’s load time is caused by external HTTP requests. The speed at which a website is able to load is dependent on several factors such as the web host’s server infrastructure, the total amount of external HTTP requests, and the server’s location. There are many ways to reduce external HTTP requests. The main task here is to eliminate any features that do not improve your user experience.
Anything unnecessary should be discarded — this means things such as unnecessary images, CSS, Javascript, and plugins. Once you’ve been able to successfully rid your website of all unnecessary features, you can further improve its performance by compressing files.
Compress Your Files
Compressing your files makes your website content light and easy to load and manage. The most widely-used file compression method is Gzip and is currently one of the best methods used to compress files that have not been previously compressed.
Ensuring that your website is able to perform well should be prioritized by any business that’s worth its salt. Websites are no less than the most credible representation of a company’s quality. They are the official source of information as well as the portal through which purchases can be made. Use our tips here to ensure that your business is bringing in clients, not turning them away.