Every website owner wants a more efficient website, both from the perspective of themselves managing their site to the way users experience and interact with it. The great thing is that, for the committed website owner who will stop at nothing to make life easier for anyone involved with their site, there are many options available.
Here are the top five tips and ideas that we’d suggest you consider in order to get the biggest gains from your website performance:
Hire a Webmaster
If you’re not the most technology or internet savvy person in the world, then a hiring a webmaster to look after your site on your behalf could prove to be a masterstroke. This has a number of benefits:
- Frees up your time to focus on your business and the areas that you’re an expert in
- Removes any bad practice you might have been using mistakenly
- Allows you to outsource everything related to your site maintenance
- Potentially saves money on outsourcing individual tasks
Your main concern is going to be finding a webmaster that is qualified to do the job. You do need to be realistic, however, around what you want them to achieve if you only have the budget for someone to spend an hour a day looking after your site.
This step will make your site more efficient from your perspective, and a great webmaster will improve the user experience, too.
Upgrade Your Server
There’s a chance you jumped straight into your hosting package and opted for a shared server because it was the cheapest option. However, this could have a dramatic negative effect on the operation of your site, especially if you’re starting to see traffic spikes.
If upgrading could make a difference, then look at whether your current host offers the relevant service.
Use Managed Hosting
Sometimes, it can be the administrative side of things taking up more of your time, and making you much less efficient than you’d like to be. Using managed hosting services, either as an alternative to or in conjunction with a webmaster, depending on your budget and objectives, is a great way to ensure that your site operates without any problems.
Use Responsive Design
When people think about website efficiency they think a lot about server power, but often forget about things that can make a big difference like the design of a website.
Hire a professional designer to come up with a responsive design for your site; if you’re using WordPress, then you can buy some brilliant ones at a reasonable cost, and make the navigation of your website, and finding your calls to action, easy for your customers.
Keep it Simple
There is no reason to have a website that is carrying more content or features than it needs to. Having applications and plugins littered around every page, and having extra pages of policies to try and grab Google’s attention, isn’t going to get you anywhere. Instead, keep it simple, and you’ll find your site is easy to manage and a pleasure for browsers to visit.
Put these five ideas into action on your website, and you’ll quickly start to notice efficiency gains in all areas, as well as in other parts of your business.
