13 Best Practices To Drastically Improve Your Website Performance

A great website attracts the right people and moves them to take action.

Often designers will build a website with pretty colors and cool animations.

Heavy focus is placed on look and feel but not on using the right words.

This problem becomes evident by the lack of online conversions.

Throughout my career I’ve worked on many websites. And every day I find something to tweak; something to improve upon.

This is how I arrived to my 6 Step Framework. This framework guides you on how to improve your website and build a system to create deeper and stronger relationships with customers.

I have compiled all my notes from years of editing and have produced a checklist with the top 13 tips that can drastically improve a website’s performance.

Share it with your teams and watch what happens.

Beginning with the End

At 1marketingidea we teach a simple system, that leverages the Social Media Experience to build stronger business relationships, resulting in higher engagement, more clients, and long-term growth.

The 2^nd step of this system guides you in developing your own funnel. To develop a funnel, you must begin with the end in mind.

Often businesses focus on traffic but forget to ask two important questions: how well is my website converting? And what is the final conversion?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that convert into customers.

Think of it as a marketing funnel. At the top of the funnel is social media traffic. The middle is where you nurture users who have expressed interest via newsletters, video, podcasts. And at the bottom you have your website or landing pages optimized for conversion.

By working on optimizing your website FIRST you’ll discover the right words and craft the right message that helps drive conversions.

Your online presence.

Your website is your Letter of Introduction.

Studies show that between 70-80% of people research a company online BEFORE visiting the business or making a purchase with them.

What is Your Website Saying About You?

At 1marketingidea we focus on creative website design for mobile first.  We use responsive designs, so you make a strong first impression on any device.

We also provide artistic direction to maintain consistency and improve the user experience (UX). Our objective is to deliver the right message, without sacrificing creativity, fun or authenticity.

Before you start driving all this crazy traffic to your website you must ask yourself how well is your website currently performing? Are you producing new content or updating your website every week? Your competition is likely already taking steps to establish higher rankings for the same keywords in search results.

There are 3 ways you can implement this framework:

1. 1. DIY implementation
   2. We do it together
   3. We implement it for you

Checklist: 13 Best Practices to Improve Website User Experience

Diagnosis:

1) Speed

Use the free service at GT Metrix to measure the page load speed of your website. If it takes over 4 seconds to load you have a problem. GT Metrix will provide you with a report for your developer to work on right away.

2) SSL

Does your website have a current SSL certificate in place? Look at your website in a browser page. Does it begin with HTTP:// or HTTPS://? If it starts with HTTP:// it often will be blocked, tagged as unsecure, and users will be prompted to reevaluate their search.

3) Mobile

Run a free Google mobile-friendly test to see how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. Just enter a page URL to find how you score. The majority of users coming to your site are likely to be using a mobile device, so if you haven’t made your site mobile-friendly, you should.

4) Analytics

Installed incorrectly this is fatal – and it happens frequently. Use Google Analytics to monitor the activity of your most popular pages. Search Console provides great insights into what keywords people are using to find your content. Google Tag Manager, Google My Business, Facebook pixels are all free tracking tools that will give you a better understanding of how your site is operating.

Content:

5) Header

This is 50% of your website. The header must be clear on:

1. 1. what you offer?
   2. how you improve your customer’s life?
   3. how they buy it?

Users have no time for cute and clever. They need to know in less than 10 seconds why they should continue reading.

Here’s the 1marketingidea example.

6) Logline

Does your website have a logline or one-liner?

Master wordsmith Donald Miller in his book Marketing Made Simple explains, “The one-liner comes from Hollywood. When the screenwriter writes a film, she must also write a one sentence description of the screenplay that makes investors want to take a risk on that story.”

I credit the one-liner as the single most powerful tool to grow a brand because it costs nothing, and it makes the biggest impact. Before you move onto the next step write your one-liner. The one-liner has 3 parts:

• • Problem: The problem is the hook, and it makes your story interesting.
  • Solution: What you offer is the solution to their problems.
  • Result: This is the transformative value that your solution provides.

7) Gift

Does your website offer a gift?

A digital creative piece, actionable and useful to your audience. A cheat-sheet or checklist where you outline a process or a method towards achieving a business objective; an e-book with examples of how your services have produced results for other clients; maybe a video series with a playbook on how to improve a business.

It is not informational BUT ACTIONABLE. It’s a valuable asset people will opt-in their email address in exchange for it.

8) Call-to-Action

Are you using clear and strong calls to action throughout your pages?

Don’t assume users know what to do when they arrive to your website, show them. Lack of or lukewarm commands give the impression that you are not confident in your offer.

People buy because they have a problem that needs solving. Demonstrate you have the solution that alleviates their pain.

9) Video

Do you have a video that showcases what you’re good at, testimonials, demos?

Show people who you and your team are. Authenticity goes a long way. Put a face and a voice to the brand.

There are many strategies on how to use video on a website we uncovered in our 2021 Annual Trends Marketing report.

10) Funnel

Look at your website as a funnel. A funnel channels users into specific sections of a site where a more targeted message is used to drive conversions.

Russell Brunson killed websites. He’s the founder of Clickfunnels. I’ve read all his books and learned a lot from him over the past years. He is an expert at building funnels. Watch and learn from his keynote.

11) Organization

When developing or improving your navigation bar start simple. Evaluate your content thoroughly and ask yourself what your users need to access quickly.

Pages with no traffic, are an indicator you need better content planning and organization.

Create an efficient and enjoyable experience with less. Less is more.

Include well-designed and written headlines. An organized website adds to clarity and keeps users engaged. Segment key information using bullet points or numbered lists not long paragraphs.

12) Images

Your images must relate to your offer. You can’t go wrong with happy smiling people using your products or services.

These images must be compressed and light – under 80Kb-100Kb at most.

Image optimization enhances Page load speed, SEO ranking, boost conversations, and improve user engagement.

13) Social Proof

Does your company showcase Lacks authority or social proof – no authentic reviews, no blog, no results, no links to social media

Conclusion

This checklist will help improve your website’s performance. But there is a lot more to digital marketing than a great website. Consider formulating a strategy for each service you offer, implementing a content strategy, and tying it all together with social media retargeting campaigns. The success of your marketing will be predicated on how you transform cold traffic into happy customers.