Website optimization
Imagine you’ve invested a lot of time, money and effort in having a beautiful website designed and developed, but you discover afterwards that the website delivers little results.
Or you had a website created some time ago that has generated quite a few leads over the years, but you feel there’s more potential to be unlocked.
It could also be that you have a website that works well and is full of interesting content, but is still gathering dust on the second page of Google and therefore receives few visits.
In all these cases, there’s a lot to gain through website optimization. Curious about what website optimization is and why it’s important for your business? Read about it below!
Free Strategy Session
Do you want to take your website to the next level? Request a free strategy session now.
Free Strategy Session
Do you want to take your website to the next level? Request a free strategy session now.
What is website optimization?
Website optimization is improving your website on various levels to ensure your website’s return increases, you get more visitors and the conversion rate rises.
Website optimization isn’t something you do once. You’re almost never finished with it: it’s an ongoing process where you continuously look critically at your website’s performance based on data, through extensive testing and using various tools, trying to find opportunities to get the most out of your website.
A website can be optimized on various levels
– Findability/SEO
– Conversion
– Technical/UX
A combination of these three elements delivers the best results.
What our customers say
Why is website optimization important?
Website optimization has the following benefits:
Are there disadvantages? Not really. However, you need to be careful not to over-optimize and focus too much on small details that have little effect in the big picture. It should deliver results, of course.
Who is website optimization important for?
Optimizing your website is important for anyone who uses a website to sell a product or service or to build a business or brand. Such as:
- Freelancers/Self-employed
- SME businesses
- E-commerce entrepreneurs
- Startups
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The different components of website optimization
Websites can be improved on various components. We list them here.
SEO and findability
SEO is probably not a term that comes completely out of the blue. The abbreviation stands for Search Engine Optimization.
With search engine optimization/SEO you improve your website’s findability and ensure more organic traffic to your website via search engines like Google (and yes, a few others like Bing and DuckDuckGo).
And you want this. Why?
Search engines are the most important source of traffic for most websites.
An increasingly large portion of consumers (and B2B decision makers) first search online for information before making a purchase decision or making contact.
Fewer and fewer people take the trouble to scroll through and click to the second and further pages of Google.
There’s increasingly more competition.
So if your website isn’t among the top search results: Missed opportunity.
Search engine algorithms decide based on various ranking factors how high your website will ultimately rank. Although only Google knows exactly what these are, and the list changes quite often due to algorithm updates (there are supposedly more than 200 different ranking factors), the criteria can be divided into 3 categories.
Technique
Search engines find it important that your website’s technical foundation is in order. If the basics are good, Google knows what your site is about and it can be indexed and included in search results. Think of:
– Fast loading time
– Accessibility on mobile devices
– Website structure
– The presence of sitemaps
– The use of SSL certificates
Content
People use Google to search for something. Information about a product, answer to a question, contact details, you name it. To help these people as best as possible, Google mainly wants to show sites with relevant content.
By placing relevant content, Google knows what your website is about and you also help your customers with clear content that’s useful to them.
This means you need to:
Conduct target audience research and keyword research where you look at what content your target audience searches for and which keywords they use. Since it’s becoming increasingly common for people to search via voice search and use longer keywords, it’s important to include those longer keywords in your research. This also applies to search behavior on mobile devices, where people often search for information in a specific way and location is especially important.
This research should ideally produce a list of keywords. You then need to process these into relevant articles and informative web copy where you incorporate the keywords in a natural and informative way.
Something you shouldn’t forget are the meta titles and descriptions of your web pages. Even though these aren’t direct ranking factors, they’re still an essential part of optimizing your content. The meta titles and descriptions determine how your site appears in search results.
When the metas are vague or don’t match the content and page title, users will drop off and be less inclined to click on your website. This can lead to a lower position in search results. Could you use some help with this? ROXTAR’s specialists know exactly what to do to achieve top results for your website!
Links
Then you’re not done yet.
Besides a technically well-functioning website with high-quality content, authority is the third important pillar of SEO.
This refers to a website that’s trustworthy and has a good reputation. Since these are difficult things for an algorithm to assess, Google does this based on incoming links. Especially the number of links and the quality of the referring site are important here.
So you need to ensure that other sites link to you, preferably influential sites with a good reputation. You do this through content marketing, link building, or for example by writing guest articles. Need help? At ROXTAR we have everything in-house to help you with this!
Technical optimization/UX
While with SEO you mainly ensure satisfied search engines, technical optimization or UX (User Experience) optimization is about satisfied users. They are the most important, because they ultimately become your customers. In practice, this means that people who come to your website should be able to quickly and easily find what they’re looking for.
User-friendliness
When thinking about user-friendliness, consider for example:
– Using readable fonts and clear colors
– Clear forms that are to the point
– Simple and clear navigation so users can easily find their way
– Clear call-to-actions
– Clear references
But also think about:
Loading time
Research shows that most website visitors click away if it takes longer than 2.5 to 3 seconds to load a website. This means you’re already losing revenue quite quickly. Just think about it: what do you do when you click on a search result and the website doesn’t appear after a few seconds? Exactly, the click to a competing website is easily made. And as you could read above, Google’s algorithm also takes loading time into account as an important ranking factor.
You optimize loading time by, among other things:
– Compressing media such as images and videos
– Choosing the right web hosting
– Using CDN (Content Delivery Networks)
– Well-written and compressed website code
– Implementing cache
Accessibility on mobile devices
A website that works well on mobile devices is no longer optional, but if you want to take yourself, your customers and your website seriously in 2022, it’s a must. The number of internet users on mobile and desktop is now almost equal, but mobile traffic continues to increase. Where in 2015 mobile usage accounted for 31% of website visits, this has risen to 54% in 2021, with various mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) having overtaken desktop computers as the most used device.
Website Optimization: an example
The last component of website optimization, conversion optimization, is by far the most important component. Sometimes it’s also called CRO, which stands for Conversion Rate Optimization, or boosting the conversion percentage/conversion ratio: the relationship between visitors and customers.
Example.
If your conversion rate is around 2% and you have 10,000 visitors per month, that gives you 200 customers per month. By optimizing your website, you might manage to make that 3% or even 4%, so your number of customers grows to 300 or 400. Worth the effort, right?
And that starts with a goal.
Ideally, you have a specific goal with your website. Selling something through your webshop, getting people to sign up for your newsletter or request a quote – this can be anything. Converting website visitors into paying customers (or quote-requesting customers) and making as many as possible is ultimately the most important goal of every website.
But your customers also have their own goals. Depending on where they are in their customer journey, they have different information needs. In most cases, website visitors are looking for information or visit your website because they have a problem and think you sell the solution. When your goals and those of your customers align, you have a bullseye and this often leads to conversion.
Conversion optimization basically includes everything you do to guide your visitors to that goal as well and quickly as possible.
And it sounds strange, but something we still see (far) too often is websites that are created without logical thought. A design is created based on feeling, without looking at data and customer insights. The result? Web pages without focus, clear goals and lost visitors.
Imagine you come to a website following a search query and you watch a video about the product, you get completely excited, but there’s no call to action or reference to a product page. Or you land on a 404 page (can happen to the best of us!) but can’t click anywhere else and you leave.
Such a waste.
This is where conversion optimization comes in:
- Creating a clear line in the pages
- Adding clear call to actions
- Optimizing the website design so that visitors are guided toward a goal
Where to start with website optimization?
As you’ve been able to read, the different components of website optimization are interconnected and have a positive effect on each other. A well-functioning website is first of all easily findable (because without visitors there are no customers) and secondly pleasant to use for your visitors, which should ideally lead to more conversion. In an ideal world, website optimization ensures more visitors to your website AND more customers through your website.
But where do you start?
The starting point is always research. In other words, a baseline measurement to see where you currently stand and how your website performs. Here you look at how your website performs on the 3 most important elements of website optimization:
- How is the user experience?
- How about SEO/Search engine optimization?
- How is conversion optimization going?
This provides a clear picture of where the bottlenecks are, where the opportunities lie and what the most important action points are. For example, it could well be that your SEO is perfect, but users don’t understand your website, or that your website is technically well-built but still scores poorly in Google and therefore can’t be found. Through a clear analysis, you immediately know which areas need extra investment to achieve results.
Is your website ready for improvement?
Do you feel that your website could benefit from a critical and professional perspective? Our specialists would be happy to take a look with you. After a free website check, we can provide you with tailored advice and you’ll receive a matching proposal.
Get in touch and we’ll look together at what’s possible!
Free Strategy Session
Do you want to take your online marketing to the next level? Request a free strategy session now.
Meet our team
Don
Online Strategist
Sherelle
Office Manager
Peter
Online Advertising Specialist
Seppe
Web Developer
Juliëtte
Project Manager
Bram
Online Advertising Specialist
Mucahid
Web Developer
Vazja
SEO Specialist
Juul
SEO Specialist
Sjoerd
Web Developer & Designer
Lilianne
Online Marketing Consultant