We are “checkers” of almost everything. We check our vehicles to be sure they are in perfect working condition, we check our finances, we check our appliances, and we check our health, but we often forget to check our websites. Each month thousands of new websites are launched and the competition for visits and sales increases. It’s not enough to have an attractive colour scheme, user-friendly navigation, and great looking graphics. In order to stay on top or reach the top, websites need to be informative, provide valuable content, contain updated business information, be well-written, and be mobile accessible.
Check Your Content
Typos, bad grammar, and a poor vocabulary provide visitors with a bad first impression. Carefully proofread your content and make necessary corrections. If you don’t possess quality writing skills or if your content is repetitive and boring, hire a professional to write your content. The importance of high-quality content cannot be overemphasized. Be sure content is fresh and contains information of value to the visitor.
Check Your Links
Quality links are important to a website, but broken links quickly drive your website visitors away from your site. Instead of following your links to pages that benefit your website, visitors will go back to their search engine looking for another site similar to yours. Although your links work when you first add them to your site, they must be checked on a regular basis. Your Google ranking is also affected by broken links, and repairing them is vitally important.
Check Your Website’s Mobile Compatibility
Statistics show over 20% of website traffic is derived from mobile phones, and a third or more of all mobile users access their favourite websites from mobile devices. Without a mobile-friendly website, your website will be left behind. Mobile-friendly websites are taking advantage of a great market of potential customers.
Check Out Social Media
Social media is running rampant. Your website needs to be connected through sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other popular social media sites. These social sites provide a means for your website, services, and products to be shared. After setting up your social media sites, add the appropriate buttons to your website that allow visitors to share your website with their friends.
Check Your Photographs
If your photographs are huge, slightly blurry, or poorly composed, change them. Take some time and shoot quality photographs of your business or products. If photography isn’t your niche, have a family member or friend take some sharp, nicely composed images. Resize your images before uploading to your website. Large images and graphics slow down your website, and Google will notice.
Your website is a major part of your business and deserves the same kind of attention and updates your physical business location receives. Start off the new year with a “tuned up” website and watch your visitor numbers increase.
To find out about the services offered by Digital Pacific including domain name registration, shared web hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated server hosting solutions, visit www.digitalpacific.com.au.
