Your 8 Point Website Health Check

Your website, much like your storefront, sets the stage for your brand and the attitude for your customer interactions. As such, it must run smoothly and effectively at all times. This eight-point check will help you determine the overall health of your website. 

1. Mobile Responsiveness

In 2018, more than 47% of website traffic came through mobile devices. As a result, your website must be mobile responsive. This means:

• Fast load times from any device
• Important content appears on all devices–though supporting information may be hidden on some devices
• Fonts appear consistent across devices 
• Any needed interaction is keypad-friendly, with enough space and responsiveness for finger taps
• Content scrolls and displays appropriately across devices 

2. Website Speed

Most users will remain on a website for only fifteen seconds before determining whether that website meets their needs. If your website fails to deliver the content customers expect, they will turn to your competitors instead. Consider both loading speeds of your homepage or landing pages and load speed of internal pages. Load speed should not influence customers to leave at any stage of the buying cycle. 

3. Website Accessibility

71% of disabled users will simply leave a website that does not provide accessibility for their disability. This includes:

• A website that is usable from the keyboard
• Alt text for images
• Headers to break up content
• Text that can easily be resized
• Clear contrasts and readable text
• Accessible forms that are easy to fill out

Your website should also be easy to navigate, without media that plays automatically or other potential challenges that could interfere with accessibility for the end user. 

4. Cross Browser Compatibility

Regardless of what browser your customers use, including Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, they should receive the same high-quality experience on your website. Unfortunately, coding errors can create significant problems on a single browser or render your website effective only when viewed from one browser. In order to ensure cross-browser compatibility, check your website regularly on all of the big players. Chrome users should have the same high-quality experience as those using Firefox, and vice versa. 

5. SEO Check

Are you taking all the necessary steps to ensure search engine optimization for your website? Many small business owners and marketers find that simply targeting the right keywords isn’t enough. SEO includes:

• High-quality content published on a regular basis
• Appropriate outbound links to high-quality sources
• Image tags and alt text that include your keywords
• A fast page load speed
• The right type of content: video, for example, is gaining increased attention in Google’s algorithm

SEO is an ongoing process. There is no one-stop solution for improving your search ranking. Instead, you must keep up with your SEO strategy on a regular basis to keep your website as high in Google’s ever-changing algorithm as possible. 

6. Copy Plagiarism

Website copy should be as unique as possible, whether you’re looking at product descriptions or your blog posts. Not only does Google penalize repeat content, failing to appropriately differentiate your content from your competitors’ may leave you struggling to attract customer attention. Plagiarism isn’t as simple as copying another company’s blog post, either. Pay attention to details like product descriptions, creating your own unique text instead of using generic manufacturer product descriptions.  Use a plagiarism checker to ensure that your content is unique.

7. Website Ranking

Where does your website rank compared to your competitors? Being in the first search position will get you 30% of the click-throughs for that search term while being in third will get you just 10%. After that, the click-through rate drops even further. Pay attention to what your competitors are doing. Make sure that you aren’t missing any advantages that could help move your ranking higher.

8. Broken Links

Broken links are incredibly frustrating to your website visitors, who need to trust the authority and authenticity of your website. Regularly scan for broken links to ensure that every link leads to precisely where it claims to lead. Remove any broken links and clean up even old copy on a regular basis to create a more trustworthy website for your customers.

Do you need to check on your website? Are there important elements of website maintenance that you need to see to? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help make your website more efficient and more effective. 

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