Kleinburg Brewery
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A website’s standards are always changing. Although you may have developed your website only a few years ago, with the way the web is rapidly shifting, your site has likely become outdated. Common mistakes businesses have made in recent years include overusing a trendy effect like parallax or prioritizing only the desktop experience at the expense of the mobile. If you haven’t updated your site recently, then you should definitely consider it.
Keep reading to learn about some of the most impactful ways to optimize your site so that it’s up-to-date!
Secure Your Site by Enabling HTTPS
If you launched your website in 2015 or prior, then there’s a chance that you haven’t installed an SSL certificate to serve pages over HTTPS. Around 2017, Google started prioritizing sites with HTTPS, making them rank higher in the search results. When a site isn’t secure, visitors are more reluctant to interact with it or enter sensitive data such as credit card information.
Google Tag Manager
In the past, you likely relied on a developer to create and install event tags within your site. You also may have used a WordPress plugin to insert tracking codes on a page. The problem with the WordPress plugin is that it might not be secure anymore, especially if it’s an outdated plugin.
When you switch to Google Tag Manager, your site will be especially organized and will manage almost any kind of tracking code available. There are endless possibilities of customization with the Google Tag Manager when considering built-in tags, and one-click integration with platforms including Facebook Pixel and Google’s custom tags, triggers and variables.
Eliminate Google Plus in Social Media Icons
Having social media icons on your site is always beneficial. If you’ve invested in any website re-design or development in the past decade, then you likely have your socials in the header or footer of your site, with Google+ being one of the icons.
When Google+ first launched, it was expected to be a success in competition with Facebook. Since it didn’t gain as much popularity and engagement as they thought, the platform was discontinued in 2019. The one simple step of removing the Google+ icon from your website will keep it up-to-date!
Anti-Spam Systems
No one enjoys visiting a site with contact form spam from automated bots. Since several websites are powered by WordPress, it’s easy for automated bots to target these sites when they’re not secured.
Protect your website with anti-spam systems that are used to filter out frequent spam keywords and alert you of suspicious traffic, so that visitors can have a better user experience. One way to do this is by installing Google’s RECAPTCHA security system, so that human users can identify items in a grainy photo, in order to be able to submit a form.
Reduce Friction
Have you noticed that your website has a higher bounce rate and a lower conversion rate? This problem may occur because there’s friction on your site, causing users to exit it without converting. Friction typically happens when there are errors on your site such as broken links, broken buttons and an outdated design. Other factors include: having a website that’s insecure; a poor user experience, a difficult checkout process, and a lack of optimization for mobile devices.
Speed Optimizations
Majority of users will leave a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load a page. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to determine how you can optimize your site so that it loads faster.
Examples of how you can increase the loading speed of your page include:
- Acquiring a faster server
- Serving cached content over a content delivery network
- Compress images
- Placing scaled images on your site
Determine whether or Not Your Content is Still Relevant
When you’re busy running your business, it’s easy to forget about managing the content on your site. If you haven’t updated your site in a few years, then chances are that it’s probably outdated or irrelevant. One example of how this can frustrate website visitors is when there’s outdated promotions being solicited on your site. Not only will this lead to a poorer user experience, but it will also make your website rank lower on Google. Always make sure to update your web content!
Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Currently, more and more people are visiting your website using their mobile device. The number of people visiting via phone or tablet continues to grow! Until now, it’s never been more important to ensure that users have a pleasant mobile-experience.
Some ways you can optimize your site so it’s mobile-friendly includes:
- Responsive text and images
- Resizing images to fit the screen without side scrolling or pinching
- Include large buttons that are easy to press
- Forms and checkouts should require as little data input from the user as possible
Contact UV Designs
At UV Designs, we recognize that site optimization is a priority in order for your site to rank higher on Google and reach a your target audience. Staying up to date with the latest web design trends is the key to success! Stay tuned for more information on our next blog!