As a business owner, you have your hands full. There is just so much to focus on at once and the time it takes to grow your business can feel overwhelming. The good news is, there are simple changes you can make to improve your website performance that will have an immediate impact in your business success. And knowing these simple tips and tricks can be the difference between growing a successful business or not.

5 Ways To Improve Your Website Performance

1. Conduct a SEO audit.

Conducting a site audit is an important step in your website’s optimization. An audit helps you identify the areas of your site that need to be improved to increase its visibility on search engines and social media platforms. This includes evaluating:

• Keyword research
• On-page optimization
• Link building

2. Understand your audience.

Understanding your audience is one of the most important steps in designing a website that will be well-received. You want to make sure that you understand what it is they want from their experience on your site, and how you can provide that for them.

One way to do this is by creating buyer personas for each different type of audience member that visits your site. For example, if we were talking about a website selling products related to gardening, we would have three basic groups:

• Newbies – these are people who have never gardened before but think they might like to try it out
• Beginners – these are people who have been gardening for awhile and are looking for ways to improve their skills or expand their knowledge base
• Experts – these are experienced gardeners who may not know everything there is about growing plants but could certainly teach others

3. Update your website’s design.

• Choose a clean layout.
• Keep it simple.
• Have clear navigation.
• Use colour wisely, and make sure it’s not too bright or too dark so that your visitors can see the different elements on your website easily.
• Use original images instead of stock photos; if you’re not a creative person and don’t have much time to create them yourself, hire someone who knows how to do it well to create some unique illustrations for you! This will give your website more personality than just using generic clip art from Google Images (which everyone does).
• Use white space effectively – don’t fill up every inch of space with text or images! Only include as many elements as necessary so that there’s room for everything else on the page – this will make things easier for readers who want to follow along with what they’re reading/watching/listening while staying engaged throughout their visit.”

4. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.

Mobile-friendly websites are a must. As of July 2017, Google announced that mobile searches were more than half of all its searches. Businesses need to make sure their sites load quickly on mobile devices and that they’re easy to navigate.

If you’re not sure if your site is mobile friendly, there are a few things you can do:

• Check the “viewport” setting in your browser (this will open the menu where you can change these settings)
• Type in “m” before “dot”, add “.com” or “.org” after it, then hit enter on your keyboard. If it says “mobile version not available”, then this means that Google has detected that your site is not optimised for viewing on smartphones or tablets.*

5. Update your content management system.

A content management system is a platform that allows you to manage the content on your website.
It can be as simple as a blog, or it can be a full-blown eCommerce site with catalogues and shopping carts.

Content management systems are important because they allow you to make changes easily and quickly, without having to hire someone else to do so.

They also ensure that all of your webpages are consistent in how they look and function.
The most popular CMS platforms right now include WordPress (40% market share), Joomla (10%), Drupal (7%) and Magento (6%).

Make sure your site is running smoothly to avoid losing potential customers

If your website is slow to load, customers will quickly exit and find another store to visit. A slow-loading site can also affect a site’s ranking on search engines, so it’s important to make sure that your website loads quickly for everything from mobile users to desktop users with various browsers.

Here are some tips for making sure your site loads fast:

• Choose a host with optimised servers and fast load times
• Use an image compression tool like TinyPNG or JPEGmini
• Reduce the number of plugins you’re using (e.g., social media sharing buttons)

These are great tips to improve your website performance. However, It doesn’t always have to be a major undertaking. Often, it can be as simple as following some of the tips above. After all, a good website is beneficial to any business, and it’s something that you shouldn’t take lightly.

Improving your website is a great way to become more profitable, visible, and grow your business.. Whether you’re a freelancer looking to attract more clients or a small business owner in need of better web design skills, you can use these suggestions to bolster your own site, today.

Need an extra hand? That’s what a Creative Partner is for – reach out today to get started.