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Steps to an ultimate website roadmap

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customers might land on your site and leave seconds later because it takes too long to load or the UX design is outdated.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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The Right Time for a Website Optimization Roadmap

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.

So, What's Website Optimization, and Why Does It Matter?

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.

Defining Your Goals

Before we create your website optimization roadmap, you need to know what you want to achieve. Just like planning a road trip – you need to know where you’re going and how you’ll measure your progress. To do that, we set some goals, and we use special metrics to track them. Here are some important things we look at – trust us, there’s way more:
  • Marketing Qualified Leads: This is about finding potential customers who are genuinely interested in your products or services.
  • Monthly Website Traffic: We check how many people visit your website each month.
  • Call to Action (CTA) Conversion Rate: This is about how often people take action on your website, like signing up for a newsletter.
  • SERP Rankings: We want to see how high your website shows up in search engine results for target keywords.
  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This is all about how much it costs to get a new customer.

What's Included in the Website Scope?

When we begin, there’s a lot to consider. Your website roadmap is actually made up of several smaller roadmaps, each of which plays a vital role in achieving optimal results. To clarify, let’s dive into the scope of your website.
  • Design Roadmap: The design should be attractive and easy to navigate, with a clear hierarchy of pages and intuitive navigation.
  • Content Roadmap: The website should include SEO & keyword-rich content that is relevant to the purpose of the website and should be written professionally and engagingly.
  • Functionality Roadmap: The website should include all the necessary features and functions to ensure a positive backend & user experience. This can include search capabilities, contact forms, payment processing, and social media integration.
  • Optimization Roadmap: The website should be optimized for all devices and browsers with high-quality images & videos, which are always tested to ensure compatibility.

Why We Audit Your Website

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:

  • You’re not clear about who your ideal customers are.
  • You don’t know much about your visitors.
  • Your content isn’t great.
  • Your website design is confusing.
  • Your SEO isn’t working right.
  • Your website has bugs and broken links.
  • Your site is hard to use.
  • Your site doesn’t look good on different devices.
  • And muuuuch more.

How We Find Weak Points on Your Website

Once we know where to look, we use some tools to identify what’s not working well on your website. Again, just like using a magnifying glass to find problems. If you’re curious about that too, here are some of the tools we use:

Listing the Website Structure

Now let’s get to work. This is like deciding how many rooms your house will have and where you’ll put them. What pages will the website have? What new pages need to be added? What navigation structure will it use? We write it all down before you start building or revamping your website roadmap! Depending on the business your company is in, a website may include some or all of these pages:
  • Homepage featuring an overview of the website and its content.
  • Product/Services page for listing available products and services that you have to offer.
  • About page or section introducing the business and its mission.
  • Contact page or section for customers to connect with the business.
  • Blog page or section for regularly updating content.

Note, this is not a comprehensive list, so don’t worry if you have more or fewer pages depending on your project.

Prioritizing Fixes for User Problems

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:

  • Researching your competitors 
  • Finding competitive niche keywords 
  • Designing the page
  • Writing copy/content for the page
  • Developing the page
  • Testing the page
  • Deploying the page
  • Monitoring the page
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.

Adapting Your Roadmap as Your Website Grows

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.

Conclusion

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. 
Let us navigate your way to success
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  • Copyright © 2024 The Roadmap
Request checkup
Let us navigate your way to success
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  • Copyright © 2024 The Roadmap
Request checkup
  • Copyright © 2024 The Roadmap
Let us navigate your way to success
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