You’re probably here reading this today because you feel like your website is a bit stale these days and that there’s some room for improvement. The thing is, you’re reluctant to make any changes yet as you don’t want to fix something that isn’t broken, so to speak.
You might not realize that there are probably many things you need to improve or change on your website. With that in mind, take a look at the following points to learn about what you might need to improve on your site for 2022:
Design
When you look at your website’s design, you might think it seems okay to you. But, while you might think it’s fine, is that a view shared by the people that visit your site each day – your customers?
One definitive way to answer that question is by surveying a selection of your website users. They could be customers or simply people that have stumbled upon it from a Google search. You can ask them to answer a quick, anonymous survey about your website design.
If you (or your visitors) feel that your website design is seemingly lackluster, now is the time to make some improvements in that area. Consider working with a website development services firm to improve the look and feel of your site design.
Accessibility
Another point to consider is accessibility. You might not know it, but accessibility is a broad subject that covers a vast list of topics. Why should accessibility be so crucial to your business or organization, you might ask yourself?
There are several reasons. Firstly, Google reported that at least half of the people using its search engine are mobile users. Therefore, you’ll need to make sure all your content is mobile-friendly by using responsive designs on your pages.
Secondly, some Web users, such as people with visual impairments, don’t use screens at all to view web pages. Instead, they use screen reading software to “speak” the text content of pages and help them navigate each site to find the information they need.
Lastly, mobile users with slow 3G or 4G connections will want to look at sites that offer a “reading view” of each page to speed up their online experiences.
Content
While a website’s design is essential, so too is the content that goes on a site. One of the biggest mistakes that businesses and other organizations make is forgetting to improve their page content.
When search engines and human visitors visit your web pages, they scan for information relevant to their visit. For example, if a search query like “lawnmower repairs” got entered into Google, people expect sites relevant to that query and not pages on landscaping.
You must ensure that your content is relevant to the message you’re trying to send people. So, if you have a page on lawnmower repairs, your content should discuss how your business can provide that service.
Moreover, your content should be easy to read and understand, and there shouldn’t be any keyword stuffing or other questionable techniques used to boost a page’s search engine ranking.
Page Loading Times
How fast do your pages load whenever someone tries to access them? Sure, you’ve probably loaded your website at your office, at home, or via a 4G mobile data connection. But, how can you be sure that it loads quickly for other people elsewhere in the country?
Plus, how fast does your content load for international visitors? Aside from carrying out page loading optimization techniques like minimizing image sizes, you should consider hosting your website in the cloud with a content delivery network (CDN) like Amazon S3.
CDNs essentially mirror your website content in several global locations. The advantage is that your pages load at lightning speeds, wherever they get accessed in the world. Plus, you only have to maintain one set of web pages and their underlying code.
Search Engine Visibility
As you probably know, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a process for improving an online resource’s visibility to search engines. That resource could be a website, or it might be a file-sharing service.
When you create a website, you do so because you want people to visit it. But how can that happen if your intended audience doesn’t know it exists? That’s why it’s crucial to check that your website visibility is strong.
There are many ways you can achieve that goal. For example, you can conduct on-page SEO by checking things like relevant keyword density and HTML meta description tags on all your pages.
You can also carry out off-site SEO to boost your search engine visibility. Some examples include building strong backlinks from relevant yet authoritative websites to specific pages on your site.
Social Media Visibility
If someone copies and pastes a link from your website onto a Facebook or Twitter post, what happens when they do so? Do they get a beautiful featured image and text description of the page, or is it just a complete mess of a preview?
Should the latter occur, it’s time to work on your website’s social media visibility. One of the easiest things to do is use a social media-friendly CMS like WordPress as the platform to power your site. That’s because it boasts social media visibility as standard.
Alternatively, you’ll need to look into the various HTML tags you need to incorporate in all your pages so that your content previews get displayed correctly on social networking platforms.
Ease Of Management
One final point to consider is the ease of management. How easy is managing the pages and their content on your website? If someone created a website from scratch for you, the chances are high that it won’t be easy to manage.
Again, consider a CMS like WordPress if you aren’t already using such a system for your website.
Conclusion
As 2022 approaches, now is the time to think about how you can improve your website and continue to make it relevant for your target audience. The above points detail the most common things to consider.
