Every website needs a good audit sometimes, and today we will break down our top tips on how to analyze the performance and usability of your site!
Why? Because a slow website is a website that can deflect customers and clients faster than an athlete that refuses to wear deodorant. People exit the premises – quickly.
Here’s what you should pay attention to:
- Your site speed
Honey – if your site loads slower than molasses, you’re going to lose the attention of your visitors before they even hit the homepage.
We use Google Insights or tools.pingdom.com to test this for ourselves and our clients. They give easy-to-understand readings that are accurate and define precisely what you need to do to improve your site’s speed score. Shopify does offer a speed score reading; however, it’s not as accurate as our previous suggestions. Obviously, you can use what you prefer, but that’s just our two cents.
Also – remember that under construction or locked pages cannot be assessed. To ensure your website is live and active before you go to do this test!
- Image Sizes
You know what they say – size counts. And in this rare case… smaller is the optimal size for the best performance 😉
No seriously. Your site will lag and load slower if you are using enormous image sizes! Most people assume that the larger the image size, the better the resolution – and while that is true for print, for web…? Not so much. Most computers run on a 72p resolution and cannot tell the difference between a photo saved at good quality vs. high quality… Especially when on a website. So save yourself space and size them down. It will do you some good.
- Your Links
Odd links may not slow a website down, but they can sure lead to a crappy user experience if they’re broken!
Broken links can happen if you switch a category name for a product section or your entire web name altogether! So it’s essential to comb through your site and ensure all links are attached to their proper destination or desired pages.
It would be dreadful to lose a sale just because you changed your link to a different name and forgot to update it on the site!
- Product Prices
Ever seen a coffee cup selling for $1500 instead of $15.00? We have!
It’s incredibly easy to bypass price checks when you’re in a tizzy of adding new inventory – but guess what? Typos do happen! And they can literally COST you a sale before the COST is off in the first place. Or even worse… you could lose money on a deal if you accidentally left off a digit and you priced an item too low.
That’s why it’s super essential to price check all your inventory items before your site goes live, so cases like this never occur!
- Checkout functionality
There is nothing that stings more than a lost sale because your checkout page had a malfunction. That’s why it’s so important to test it before you go live on your site. Something as simple as you can only use a credit card for payment instead of ensuring Paypal capability worked adequately could cost you a sale.
Although there are test features built into websites like Shopify and Squarespace, it’s also a good idea to publish the site for a moment and test the checkout functionality with your own purchases too. That way, you know the customer can use it and won’t run into any problems.
- Check mobile design
Ever seen a beautifully designed site on your desktop browser that looks like sh*t on mobile? Yeah. That happens – A LOT. That’s why it’s a good idea to do some test runs of looking at your website on your phone before you announce to the world that your site is live!
Make sure the font is sized correctly, the links all work, and your photos and images are placed to make the most sense for the device a potential client could be viewing this on. Remember, most website visits now come from mobile devices… so do not neglect this.
- Newsletter Performance
Do you utilize a newsletter to help drive sales toward your business? Amazing! That’s a great move.
Now you need to ask yourself – is everything working as planned? Because it’s super easy for a newsletter workflow to fail if it’s not set up or integrated correctly. Therefore, you should 100% run some tests before advertising a newsletter sign-up on your website. Try it with yourself, friends, and family members. Basically, ensure that it sends correctly, sign-ups are intuitive and don’t lag when sending out to a massive list of clients.
And trust us – we know this all sounds like a lot because it is. But if you take the time to set up things properly, you will not have to revisit these things down the road. Get the headaches out of the way today and audit your website. At the end of the day, it’s worth the extra time and attention if it saves you a new loyal customer and a super lucrative sale!
