Web Maintenance 101: How to Improve Your Business’s Website

Some entrepreneurs are lucky in that they have plenty of capital and resources available to support their small business. As such, they have no difficulty in hiring talented web developers to design, launch, and maintain their professional website. Unfortunately, many small business owners don’t enjoy this luxury. The good news is, you don’t have to be a coding maven to make a few basic website improvements. With that in mind, here’s our quick guide to website maintenance for beginners. Check it out:

Page Speed

Slow pages and long loading times are a major detractor to business websites. After all, it’s 2019 –– no one is willing to wait for a web page to load. Fortunately, there are a few simple ways to boost page speed. First, reduce the number of redirects on your page. Second, make sure to optimize (i.e. compress) any images on the page so that they’re not larger than necessary. Lastly, you can also use a content distribution network to increase page speed.  

Appearance

Thankfully, you don’t have to have an art degree to create a website that is functional and appealing. Just make sure to follow a few basic design principles, including: 

• Use consistent fonts and font sizes.
• Stick to a pleasing color scheme.
• Use high quality images/graphics/videos.
• Avoid gimmicks.

Remember, it’s totally acceptable to use a WordPress template when you first design a website. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to build an effective site. 

Functionality

Want to know the best way to ensure that your website –– and more specifically your eCommerce store –– is working properly? Simply test it on a regular basis! It sounds so simple, but it does require diligence and patience. Test your eCommerce store and ask for customer feedback about how it works. Pro-tip, the best companies create eCommerce experiences that are seamless and simple. 

SEO Optimization

A number of factors influence a website’s SEO performance –– from mobile effectiveness to page speed. However, it’s fairly straightforward to select apt keywords for blogs and website pages. Just by optimizing these pages for certain keywords, you’ll give your site a much better chance of showing up on valuable search engine results pages. Adding alt text to images and writing quality meta descriptions can go a long way in this regard as well. 

Conclusion

It’s never too late to enhance your software skills. Thankfully, applying a few of these basic website maintenance techniques could make a big difference for your company. So keep this list handy!