Phoenix Arizona Web Design and Development

Is your website cheating on you?

Last Updated on Sunday, 07 February 2010 12:19 Written by Spencer Thornock Tuesday, 17 November 2009 07:54

It's almost 2010, the Internet is getting to a place where it's ready to settle down and have children, it's ready to commit itself to you and finally give in to a long term relationship.  The Internet makes available tools and technologies that make taking advantage of a global audience fast and affordable... but you built your website in 2004, we've come a long way in half a decade, how do you know if you need to give your website a reboot?

Think about the following questions:

Question 1: In terms of speed, how fast is your website?
It's hard enough to get visitors TO your website, but how do you tune your website to "pop" fast enough to grab their attention and get them to take some kind of action?  Many studies have been conducted and load time play a huge factor: Slow website = less visitors = less revenue.

Akamai conducted study 2006 and found that if your website takes longer than four seconds to load completely one-third of all visitors will give up and leave your site. Amazon found that a 100ms increase in site load time would result in a 1% decrease in sales, while Google found that an increase of 500ms on load time would directly result in a drop in traffic and revenue by 20%.

Whatever numbers you go by, the one takeaway is that your website needs to load, fast. Try optimizing your website by compressing images for the web, aggregating and cleaning out your CSS, and removing old, unnecessary content to reduce HTTP requests. You can also try switching webhosts if loading issues persist.

Question 2: Does your website lack consistency? Although it may not seem like it, consistency in major elements on all pages of your site is a must. Elements like navigation, fonts and colors, URL format, and editorial style should show consistency throughout your website as it shows your professionalism and attention to detail when conducting business.

If your site is riddled with typos, mismatching font sizes, and non-loading images, not only will it impact the credibility of your website but can also negatively affect your search engine optimization strategy, which can result in lowered sales.

Sites like Yahoo!, eBay, and the BBC have hundreds if not thousands of pages online at any given time, yet almost all of those pages have a similar feel, design, and editorial style. Browse through, compare, and take notes, and see if your website maintains a solid level of consistency when compared to some major leaguers.

Question 3: Does your website scream sensory overload? Don’t try to throw text, imagery, links, icons, buttons, ads, or whatever else at your visitor right off the bat. Information overload will prevent you from surfacing the most important information on your website while delivering a load of clutter your visitor will have to sift through. You’ll be shocked to see how quickly a set of eyes can glaze over. (Check out this info-mess here.)

Take a minute to analyze how the information on your website is organized. Matching the contents of your website up with the right information architecture will not only produce more efficient visitors but will also produce more efficient shoppers as well.

Question 4: Does your website look old-school? Technologies aren’t the only thing that evolve at a break-neck pace online – styles do too. Whatever style was hot back in ’05 probably isn’t what’s hot right now.

Question 5: Does your website render perfectly? And by perfectly, I mean perfectly, in all browsers on all operating systems, and on all platforms with no text overlapping and no extra scroll bars anywhere, etc. You absolutely do not want to degrade your customer’s user experience based on their choice of browser, regardless of if it’s Internet Explorer on Windows, Firefox on Mac, or even Safari on iPhone.

If answering any of the above questions started to make you feel like you've "grown apart" from your website, contact us and let us help you understand the new design and technologies available today.