27 Ways to Improve Your Website Immediately

Adam Walker @ajwalker

@sideways8com You can see these slides here: http://bit.ly/27atv

sideways8.com

- Sideways8 - We believe a good website is the anchor point for great marketing. So lets talk about how we can improve your website!

Why?

Why should you care about improving your website?- I often hear “we don’t really worry about our website because we don’t get business from it”.

- That’s right, but you do lose business from a bad one.

Your website (in)validates your business

Why?

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- I recently decided not to use a service based on how bad their mobile site was

Branding

Consider your message

Branding

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Consider what your message is:- Can you describe what you do in one simple sentence?- Does your website clearly communicate that message within 5 seconds or less?- Example: "Sideways8 is a digital marketing company that specializes in telling your story online.”- Example: 48in48, most non profits do good and don’t look good. My 8 year old remembered that phrase and tied it into why I’m doing all this work on 48in48.

Consider your user

Branding

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- What does the user want to read and how you can speak to that directly?- What is most important for you to say, and what your user wants to read are not necessarily the same thing.

Images

Get real ones

Images

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Everyone recognizes stock images from a mile away, and often they feel inauthentic. Invest in the time and cost to get real images taken for your site.

Or REALLY good stock

Images

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Don’t choose stock photos that look like stock photos. Avoid the “business hand shake” type images.

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which image seems authentic?

Go higher resolution

Images

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For web, images don’t need to be high def, but they can’t be grainy!

Also consider that more and more retina devices are using the web, meaning you need to load images that are twice as large so that they look crisp on the screen.

Crop / place well

Images

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An image all alone on a huge white screen looks lonely… and unprofessional

Pushed to the side. Images accent the text.

Which image seems authentic?

Stop using image sliders

Images

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Reason: no one looks through them, so the message you are trying to communicate with them is getting lost.

Sliders are good for things like:- Client testimonials- Show different views of physical space or and event

Sliders are bad for:- Trying to tell a story- Showcasing work- Showcasing your various services

Copy

Use clear headings

Copy

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Remember, people usually scan pages for the content they want. So make sure your page has sections of content with clear header titles showing what is in the content.

Write 350 - 600 words

Copy

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- This is a good rule of them for a internal content page or blog post.

- If you write too little you hurt yourself for SEO, and for user understanding- If you write too much, people lose interest and miss the point.

Check grammar & spelling

Copy

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This one should be obvious…but most people don’t do it. Always have someone proof read what you write.

Make use of lists

Copy

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People love to skim content. Lists make skimming content easier. There is a reason that there are a million “top ten” lists.

General Content

(un)Link to social media

General Content

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If you are on social media, be sure you link there. If people like your site and your brand, they will want to connect with you and interact.

However, if you aren’t active on social media, don’t link to it. When someone clicks from your site to a twitter profile with 20 followers, that is particularly unimpressive.

Keep content current

General Content

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- Nothing makes you look more unprofessional than outdated content on your site.- Can you imagine if my site still listed that we do flash work?- I can’t tell you how many companies I talk to that tell me that they don’t do some of the services that they list on the services page of their website.- Make sure the copyright in your footer doesn’t say 2003

Create a call to action

General Content

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- On each page determine what you want your website users to do, and then ask them to do that.- If you don’t ask a user to do something, its very likely that they will do just that, nothing at all.

Code

Add analytics

Code

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How do you know if your site is successful if you aren’t measuring website traffic?Measure:- bounce rate- popular pages- path a user takes through the site- referring sites

Get your site indexed

Code

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- Make sure your site is indexed by Google. Setup google webmaster tools, its free.- Make sure your site has a sitemap.xml file. You can use a generator or plugin to create one. This helps to make sure that Google crawls your site, finding all of the

pages and indexing them.

Make it mobile friendly

Code

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(Responsive)

- A site that is not mobile friendly need to be rebuilt or updated, immediately.- A site that is not responsive will be penalized with Google moving forward.

Mobile Friendly (Responsive)

- According to comScore, mobile search queries (smartphones + tablets) were roughly 29 percent of total search volume. Smartphone search volumes were just over 2X tablet volumes.

- Google says “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.”- What Google is now saying suggests that either the comScore data were incorrect or the growth of mobile search is happening much faster than anticipated or some

combination of those explanations.

Mobile Friendly (Responsive)

- Google and recently indicated that the number of mobile device searches have now overtaken desktop searches

Plan for social sharing

Code

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Make sure that when someone shares a link to your site in Facebook, the right messaging shows up. Don’t trust users to share your message well.- Did you know that you can control the image that shows up in Facebook when your link it pasted in there?

When http://48in48.org is pasted into Facebook, this happens.

Add a favicon

Code

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- The tab to the left has the favicon from the company hosting the site. Not Professional- The middle tab has a custom favicon and matches company branding.- The right tab has no favicon at all and has a little document icon that almost looks like an error.

Testing

Check your contact form

Testing

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You may be surprised how often someone thinks a contact form is working when it is not.

On multiple devices

Testing

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- Test on laptop, desktop, phone and tablet.- You can also use responsinator.com or other similar tools

Site load time

Testing

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Improve site load time by:- Make sure your images aren’t too large- Don’t load too many images or videos- Use caching- Minify CSS and optimize HTML- Reduce plugins and integrations

Security

Use a secure password

Security

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Ten most common passwords from last year:1. 123456 (Unchanged)2. password (Unchanged)3. 12345 (Up 17)4. 12345678 (Down 1)5. qwerty (Down 1)6. 123456789 (Unchanged)7. 1234 (Up 9)8. baseball (New)9. dragon (New)10. football (New)

One of the most secure passwords you can ever use is a combination of 4 unrelated words with spaces in between them. For example: horse car folded leaves

Use good hosting

Security

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Cheap hosting and good hosting are not the same thing.Good hosting will be:- Faster- More secure- Offer regular backups- Etc.

Keep your CMS current

Security

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The most common reason that a site get hacked is an outdated CMS.

Install an SSL certificate

Security

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This helps to secure information submitted to your site. Also, google is starting to give priority to sites with an SSL certificate.

#27…

Get a good partner

#27

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Questions?

sideways8.com

Adam Walker @ajwalker

@sideways8com You can see these slides here: http://bit.ly/27atv

- Sideways8 - We believe a good website is the anchor point for great marketing. So lets talk about how we can improve your website!