You’ve dedicated months, maybe even years, to creating a product or website that exceeds your users’ needs and expectations. But if your audience isn’t finding your website online, all that time spent will have been in vain. What’s worse is that potential customers might land on your site and leave seconds later because it takes too long to load or the UX design is outdated. Time to talk about website optimization – or, better call it, time to talk about our website roadmap.
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First things first – we all know that it’s always better to prevent problems than react to them, which is why the best time to create your website optimization roadmap is when you first create your website. So, if you’re in the initial website design phase, during our Foundations stage, we’ll make sure to create a roadmap that will guide your optimization approach from day one.
But that’s not the only time to create a website optimization roadmap. If your website isn’t performing as well as you would like it to, or your key metrics aren’t where they need to be (think the number of visitors, average time on the page, and bounce rate), then again, it’s time to create a WHAAAT…a website optimization roadmap. This can happen anytime, regardless of whether your website has been around for a month or a decade. In any case, whether your website is brand new or a few years old, starting with a thorough audit, we can still make it work better.
Website optimization uses tools and strategies to improve your website’s performance, both with users and search engines. Optimizing a website requires focusing on all of its facets, including technical performance, SEO, content, and UX design.
To optimize your website, you’ll engage in activities like identifying a website’s weak points, A/B testing to determine which strategies work (or don’t), and collecting and implementing user feedback. From bringing more users to your page and keeping them there for longer to becoming paying customers, there are many benefits of website optimization that will help you increase online sales.
On the flip side, a website that isn’t optimized will fall behind in important metrics like traffic, time-on-page, user satisfaction, and conversions. Low performance in these areas translates into lower revenue, which is why you should always make web optimization a priority.
Oh, there’s so much to be explained here, but let’s stick to the basics. Imagine your website as a powerful engine. While you see the exterior (front-end), there’s a lot more happening under the hood (back end) that search engines care about. Backend optimization helps search engines, like Google, understand your website better.
We check your website’s frontend and backend to make sure it’s all right. Consider which are most important: are you not getting enough traffic to your page? Are people visiting your website but not converting? If you’re not getting enough visitors to your site or if people are leaving without buying anything, we need to figure out why. It could be because:
Note, this is not a comprehensive list, so don’t worry if you have more or fewer pages depending on your project.
Next step, we prioritize fixes for user pain points. Our toolkit helps us identify these issues, making the process of finding solutions to optimize your site much smoother. One of the best ways to address and correct your website’s weak points is through A/B testing. We utilize Google Optimize, which is seamlessly integrated with Google Analytics, to conduct A/B testing and discover what works best for your users.
We identify the tasks that need immediate attention, starting with the most pressing ones and working our way down the list. Breaking these tasks into smaller, manageable chunks allows for quicker completion. If you require additional pages, the process remains consistent:
Don’t forget, everything starts with a thorough audit – we create a customized report just for you and provide suggestions, all of which can be discussed for free in an initial call to ensure we’re on the right track. To learn more about our SEO audit, check out this blog.
The final step in any website optimization roadmap is to keep optimizing. Your product and brand aren’t stagnant, so your website shouldn’t be either. As you adapt your product strategy to your customer’s desires, be sure that that’s reflected in your website roadmap.
It’s important to stay up to date on industry trends to keep your website relevant. Let’s say you’re an ecommerce company, and sustainability efforts are a huge push in your industry. If your product reflects that, your web content should as well. Produce blog posts about your eco-friendly approach and be sure that the keywords you use are relevant and up-to-date on this topic.
At the end of the day, your product is for your customers and users, and your website should be too. A big part of website optimization is ensuring your digital platform reflects the key values of your product and brand, and helps users meet their needs.
Creating a website optimization roadmap isn’t a task for one person alone. When it comes to website optimization, it’s a collaborative effort involving various team members, such as web developers, UX designers, creative teams, and product teams. We’ve just scratched the surface in this article, but trust me, there’s so much more to explore. Stay tuned for dedicated blog posts covering each aspect of our website roadmap, design, UX, content, you name it. In the meantime, if you want to learn more, feel free to check out our SEO roadmap. It’s fun. Well, no, but it’s definitely informative.
