Common Website Optimisation Errors

1.No Mobile Support

It is absolutely essential to build a site that is responsive given that more than 50% of internet browsing is now performed on mobile devices. Your website needs to look as good on mobile as it does on a desktop, if not better. Building a website from the start to look great on mobile first is best practice for web designers.

2.Too Much Content

Some sites are crammed with content making it difficult for the viewer to understand where to find the content they are really after. Sites should be structured to give the essential information early so that the viewer is not made to scroll through multiple pages to find the information they need to make a decision. Some people of course are detail people so it is important to cater for them as well. Additional information should be stored on separate pages so that people who are uncertain can investigate further.

3. Text content full of jargon and obscure abbreviations

The text content should be capable of being read and understood by the majority of people. Sometimes I meet clients who want to stuff their website with jargon. Their intention I think is to show their credibility to their peers but it can be very off-putting for people who are unfamiliar with the jargon and who may be looking for a solution to a problem without really understanding the full details of the problem or the solution. The text should be written in a way that is easily understood by most high school pupils, is jargon-free and any abbreviations are fully explained.

4. Managing Software Updates

If you run a WordPress site you have an additional headache. WordPress is a very common platform but is notoriously easy to hack so releases of new software are made regularly to stay ahead of the hackers. It is very easy for different components to become out of sync with each other introducing errors into the website so it is vital to employ a professional WordPress expert to keep on top of all the updates to the WordPress environment otherwise you can quickly find your website displaying strange errors, or worse, being hacked.

A better option is to avoid WordPress if you don't need to use it

5. SEO Optimisation

A well-optimised website, with the right text content, with regular new content and with a bit of help from social media posts may well achieve a good ranking for you without recourse to additional cost overheads such as paying for advertising. Before embarking on a new website project it is always a good idea to have a plan for the keywords that the site is going to be targeted at to attract visitors. Search engines nowadays tend to use semantic searches in their ranking statistics but it is still important to focus on keywords and ensure that a new website is properly optimised at a page level. It is also important not to stuff your text content full of keywords. Search engines will recognise this behaviour and penalise a site accordingly.

6. Website Speed

Website speed is critical, especially for rankings on mobile devices where most of the traffic lies. To get a good ranking on a mobile it is vital that images are optimised and sized appropriately for a mobile view. The hosting that a site is on may also play a part in how fast your site loads on mobile so be wary of assuming that all hosting companies offer the same speed. If a hosting offer is cheap, there may be a very good reason why that is the case.

7. Missing analytics

It's difficult to understand where you are getting your website hits from if you do not have some analytics in place. Some analytics plug-ins however do carry a speed overhead if they have to load data from an external site.

8. Hidden Information

Many viewers will spend a very short time on your site so it is important that your key information to attract attention should be high up on the Home page. It is also important to use intuitive navigation so that a viewer looking for further information can easily determine where to find it.