For the first, First Wednesday of 2016 Brian Tait, Founder and Director of Aillum, joined us to discuss, ‘Is your website working hard enough?’
First Wednesdays are monthly training and networking sessions for Culture Republic’s Partner network. This month we explored how to improve website efficiency. Brian highlighted the importance of tracking your own data. This is the best way to measure your website’s performance. Your own data will provide meaningful insight into potential issues and highlight opportunities for change and growth, as well as help establish a benchmark from which improvements should occur.
In this event summary we’ve focused on three challenges that organisations regularly come up against, how you can address these issues and some cost-effective tools to help:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
One of the most common reasons for organisations wanting to redesign their website is that their current version doesn’t rank high enough in Google.
There’s often a significant difference between what you think people are searching for, and what they’re actually searching for. You need to understand the difference before you can judge if your site is working.
Webmaster Tools (for either Google or Bing) are useful for identifying what users are really searching for. Free and easy to set-up, these tools help you monitor and maintain your site’s presence on search engines. They provide Click, Impression and Ranking information on keywords.
- Mobile
At Culture Republic we have seen a growth in mobile traffic over the past three years and it is on the rise. Our recent research into digital use in the arts sector, however, found that 47% of websites were not optimised for mobile browsing.
When it comes to mobile optimisation Brian suggested that the best place to start is simply to better understand how your website currently performs on mobile devices. Google Analytics will give you a good overview of this. Use the data available to you to provide objective input and to help prioritise any changes.
Brian recommended a range of tools that you can then use to make your site faster and more responsive. For example, you can check if your website is fast enough for mobile using GTmetrix or Google Developers. Both these free tools summarise how your site is performing and give guidance on how to make improvements. Simple changes, such as resizing an image or altering landing pages, can make a big difference.
- Users
It can be frustrating if users don’t engage with the site as you want them to. How do you make users read the right content, click the correct links or purchase tickets? Brian advocated considering exactly what you want users to do, and then eliminating any obstacles. This will be easier than developing a perfect solution.
There are lots of affordable tools to help you better understand your users’ behaviour. Crazy Egg, for example, generates a heat map based on the click behaviour of website visitors. This gives you a much better understanding of how people engage with your website and will help you to identify what works and what doesn’t.
Don’t forget that if you’re looking to revamp your website we can help. Get in touch for more information.
Follow us on Twitter @Culture_Public and join in the conversation with the hashtag #1stWed. You can also reach out to Brian @taitbw