Have you ever visited a website that’s full of errors, dead links, and broken images? This is surprisingly common these days because many people don’t check their website thoroughly before launching it. In fact, there are some common practices that new website developers and business owners use that can lead to page issues.
So in this post, we’re going to explain why you should always test your website from a user’s point of view and what you should be looking out for.
It helps to identify any errors that you might encounter
When it comes to creating an enjoyable website experience, you need to remove all of the errors that you can find. This ensures that your website is working as expected and is able to perform its intended function and provide the value that you expect. For instance, if you have an online application that allows customers to color your products in different tones and preview them, then the tool needs to be flawless and work correctly. Making it presentable should even be considered a secondary objective. It has to actually work in order for it to be useful. After you’ve achieved that, you can focus on making it look good.
This “function first” approach to your website should be applied to every other aspect as well. You should never feel like you have to make your website pretty with fancy transitions and effects. Good design is just a nice-to-have and your priority should be on delivering excellent content with minimal errors. The more creative features and designs you put on your website, the more likely there will be errors. It also creates complications when testing your features on different browsers and devices.
In short, try to keep things simple on your website so that you have an easier time testing for errors, and don’t hesitate to put function and purpose first before design.
Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/7okkFhxrxNw (CC0)
It allows you to check how well your SEO is doing
One important aspect to check is how well your SEO is performing. You could use SEO tools to help optimize your content, but it’s much better to just search for the keywords that you’re targeting and see where you place. It’s a good idea to do this on several different browsers and devices because you don’t want there to be a bias towards the keywords that you’ve already been searching for. Remember that search results appear differently to everyone, so you might want to ask some friends, family members, or work colleagues to help you test as well.
Alternatively, you could work with an internet marketing agency. There are companies like https://tessa.tech/northern-virginia-internet-marketing/internet-marketing-northern-virginia/ that are great for helping you identify opportunities to improve your SEO, but they can also help create new content that will improve your search rankings.
It helps you check for broken links and images
Broken links and images can have a negative impact on your SEO, making it harder to find your website on Google. It also makes your website look like it’s incomplete because there are missing images all over the website. This can make your website look extremely unprofessional and it’s important that you fix these problems as quickly as you can. There are tools available that can help you check for broken links and images, but it’s a good idea to check them manually on multiple different browsers and devices.
Once you’ve identified these broken areas, fix them by replacing links with new alternatives and consider using a different image host if possible. If you can, try and upload the images to your own web server so that you’re less likely to get broken image links in the future.
It gives you ideas for improving your website
When you check your website from a user’s point of view, you might end up discovering new ways to improve it and make it more appealing. You might even notice this from checking your competitor’s websites. They might have features that could be improved upon, their navigation might be a little confusing, or they might have strange color choices that make it hard to read the content. When you notice these issues, it gives you ideas to improve your own website to make it a better user experience.
In short, consider the possibility of improving your website. Look for features that you can add or improve, and search for ways to enhance the user’s experience. The more opinions you get, the more ideas you’ll have.
