5 Subtle Factors that Can Drive Positive Website Performance
Websites are massive hubs of data. As you can imagine, one small factor can influence the performance of the entire website. Web developers work together with search engine optimization (SEO) teams to get the best out of a website.
They also experiment with websites on a regular basis to ensure they are working properly. If you are a business owner, then it’s important for you to understand your website fully to recognize the core factors that can drive its performance.
This article will point out these five core aspects in a language that’s easy to understand.
1. Speed
Website speed is one of the most important aspects of positive website performance. In regard to SEO, Google won’t rank slow websites. They’ll even penalize websites that load too slowly. In regard to user experience, no one wants to use a slow website.
A person usually spends less than 15 seconds on a website. If they have to spend ⅓ of that time waiting on your website to load, then they’re going to leave and explore their options on thousands of other websites.
The major takeaway here is that a slight difference in website speed can play a huge role in your site’s performance. A website that loads anywhere from 1-5 seconds has a 90% bounce rate, which is really high.
However, a website that loads 1-3 seconds has a 32% bounce rate, which is normal. That’s a huge difference!
2. Design
Design matters when it comes to positive website performance. Even a small tweak of your website’s design can have lasting benefits for your entire company. Brian Dean, a SEO genius and founder of the Backlinko blog, switched his blog feed homepage into one that just featured a sign up prompt for his newsletter.
This change resulted in an increase from a 10.22% to 60.5% conversion rate. Brian’s new homepage isn’t difficult to create and now prompts new web visitors to sign up to his newsletter.
3. Navigation
Your website’s navigation is also very important on your website. Ideally, your website should feature a seamless navigation to allow web visitors to get where they want to go in a flash.
On many websites, this just isn’t possible. A developer term known as friction is defined to describe the difficulty in turning a web visitor into a customer. Websites with high friction are too distracting with complicated navigation structures.
A website navigation menu that’s plain and to the point provides value to web visitors in getting to their desired location.
4. Widgets and Elements
If your website was built on WordPress or another content management system (CMS), then it relies on widgets and elements to operate. However, if you use too many widgets and elements on your website, you could risk slowing it down.
Websites have to load all of these elements when a person clicks on your website. Therefore, it’s always advantageous to be conversative when using widgets and elements.
This is why it’s important to hire a professional website developer to build a custom website for you.
5. User Experience
User experience is the level of satisfaction a person had while visiting your website. Google pays close attention to user experience, considering that if they rank the most popular sites, they’ll keep their monopoly as the world’s best search engine.
Something as simple as user experience can be improved when you improve your website speed or create blog content your web visitors want to read.
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Feature photo by PhotoMIX Company from Pexels
