Many people make New Year’s resolutions. These resolutions sometimes include eating healthier foods, exercising more frequently, or dedicating more time to volunteer work. Sometimes, resolutions can be more unique such as learning a new skill.

Whatever your resolution may be, these goals always have a common denominator: to improve one’s life. From a business point of view, one of these goals may be to improve your website. Maybe you don’t need a total redesign but instead need minor changes to greatly improve your website’s success. This article will examine some of the factors that affect your web success so you can reach your 2017 goals.

1. Visual Appeal

The importance of a first impression should not be undermined. Websites are vital for businesses to connect with prospective clients, customers, and investors. You must consider your website’s visual appeal and how it represents your business. You must need creative, visual components while maintaining functionality. Make sure your website looks up to date and has a great visual design because if you don’t, visitors will view your business more negatively overall.

2. Mobile-Friendliness

A website’s compatibility with different devices is a key component to achieve overall success. Statistics have demonstrated that users are accessing sites on their mobile devices more so than on desktop computers. If you’re website is not compatible to mobile devices, your brand will miss out on huge opportunities to reach your target audience. Not only should your site be compatible with devices, but it’s important to optimize your site for mobile devices to offer a great user experience.

It’s important to understand the impact that compatibility has on search rankings as well. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, your search rankings on various engines will be compromised. Professional designers today consider mobile-friendliness a crucial component, not just an optional one.

3. Content

Another key aspect of websites is the content on your website. It should be easy for users to navigate your website and find the content they need. This content should also be relevant to the industry and maintained on a regular basis. People don’t care about the past, they care about the present. Since businesses only have between two and four seconds to engage their users, it’s important to make targeted, current content that is easy to find.

Like mobile-friendliness, content is another aspect that affects search engine rankings. Search engines rank sites based on how much content is presented on the sites. If you only have a little bit of content, search engines will rank you lower due to poor quality.

Optimized and relevant content that is optimized for search engines is beneficial to users and businesses alike. While users can be rewarded with a great user experience, businesses can get more traffic. If the content is high-quality, the content will most likely be shared on social media which is another bonus.

4. Effectiveness

Measuring the effectiveness of your website is another crucial component in website design. You must measure how well your site is working for your company, how much traffic the site receives daily, and the conversion rates of visitors. Online tools make it much easier for businesses to obtain these metrics. This data is crucial to analyze the site’s overall effectiveness so you can make business improvements where it is needed.

5. Speed

Since the internet is so fast today, a page’s loading time must be quick. If the site loads slowly, it’s likely that users will abandon the website.  This is especially the case on mobile devices.

Load time is particularly important in providing a good user experience. Luckily, there are several ways to optimize speed without compromising your design.

In addition to mobile friendliness and content, search engines also consider speed in rankings. In particular, search engines look at how fast your websites load on mobile devices in order to rank them effectively for mobile users.

6. Security

Out-of-date websites can make users uncertain of its security. It’s very easy for sites to get hacked in today’s day and age. While security issues can occur on new or old websites, the possibility of these issues occurring is much higher on sites that depend on older technology.

MAXBURST would like to wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2017. We create memorable and effective websites that have a main purpose. We’ve done this for many businesses in all kinds of industries. Our web designers can help you select the appropriate tools for marketing, managing content, ecommerce and more. Contact us by filling out our quick Request A Web Project Quote Form. You can also reach us by phone at 888-MAXWEB (888-962-9932).

Meet The Author

Steph Mojica