You’re a business owner. And like any business owner occupying the year 2019, you know that your website is a vital part of your business success.
Here’s the problem: there are a lot of websites on the world wide web. It’s hard to get an exact estimate because most sites have a short lifespan and new sites go up all the time, but as of February 2019, one estimate says there are more than 1.51 billion websites currently active.
The point is, if you want to stand out from the crowd, your site needs to be something special. The best place to start? The right website best practices. Here are three you can’t live without.
Need for Speed
Let’s be blunt: your website needs to be faster.
According to one study, we now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. You can despair about what this means for the future of civilization, but in business terms, it means your customers are impatient.
We see this happen in real-time. The average mobile landing page, for example, takes about 22 seconds to load. Here’s the problem: almost half of all web users will ditch a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
If you want to keep your visitors, you’re going to have to do better than 22 seconds.
Not sure how fast your site is? A good place to start is Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool (it’s free!)
Show, Don’t Tell
Let’s say you’re trying to build a new website for a law firm. And let’s say you’re tragically inexperienced in this whole web thing.
If you’re like many novices, your first instinct is probably to fill those web pages with words, words, and more words. After all, it’s a law firm’s website. You’re going to have to explain things left and right.
You are going to have to explain things, but filling your pages with walls of text won’t help you.
Obviously, you’re going to need words if you’re writing a blog post, but when it comes to web pages, your visitors will thank you for creativity.
Be concise. Use infographics. Tell a story in the most efficient manner possible.
For the Love of Google, Optimize It!
Finally, for the love of the almighty Google, optimize your website.
Search engines are answer machines. Google, which has most of the search engine market share, gets 63,000 searches per second, or 3.78 million searches per minute.
Not all of these searches are questions, per se, but when users open a search engine, they’re searching for an answer in some form or another.
Here’s the problem.
Search engines are based on code and algorithms. And given the breathtaking volume of data and websites floating around the internet, search engines have to be smart about how they categorize information.
To do this, they use a number of tools, including web crawlers, to create a search index (like the index at the back of a book). Web crawlers use key identifiers to determine how pages should be categorized and how much authority they have.
SEO is basically the art and science of making your site readable to search engines. And if search engines can read your site, they can figure out how to rank it. If you do it right, they might even rank you well.
Building Website Best Practices
Building a website can be a bit like raising a child –if that child was a nebulous entity made of computer code designed to promote your business on an equally nebulous entity of computer code.
It’s an undertaking, and it takes a village. And even the best website best practices take…well, practice.
So, it’s time to do your homework. Make sure to check out our blog for more useful tips to keep your site ahead of the curve.
