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Since there are now over 4.33 billion active internet users and approximately 76,000 searches per second, it’s unsurprising that most businesses now have websites. But just because you have a website doesn’t mean it’s performing well or that it’s providing the best return on your investment. In this article, I’ll discuss how you can identify and fix some common website performance issues.
Common Signs of an Underperforming Website
There are specific key performance metrics (KPIs) you can use to see how well your website is performing. Below are some of the most common signs of an underperforming website:
1. High Bounce Rate
The bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave your website after only viewing a single page. A high bounce rate – typically above 50% – can be a sign that people don’t find your website helpful. However, don’t just rely on your bounce rate to decide on the effectiveness of your website. It could just mean that people were able to find their answers on your website easily.
How To Lower Your Bounce Rate
- Avoid a “text-heavy” website. Essays belong in college.
- Make it easy for people to find information quickly (hint: better navigation helps)
- Give them something to do (and make it obvious). This is known as a call-to-action (CTA).
2. Low Number of Leads
If you have a low number of lead contacts, then it’s likely a sign that your site isn’t performing well. When your website is difficult to navigate or offers a bad experience to people, it impedes your ability to generate leads. Tracking email signups and other opt-in submissions help you determine which obstacles are causing people to avoid your company.
How To Increase Your Leads
- Invest in content marketing. Some ideas for content might include email marketing and blogs.
- Make it obvious to people what you’d like them to do (yes, CTAs are important enough to warrant another mention).
- Work on your CTAs. Yes, they’re important enough to warrant another mention. People need direction on your website.
3. Decreased Website Traffic
Low amounts of traffic to your website is usually a signal that your website isn’t optimized to appear in search results. Tracking the number of sessions or visits to your website will help you spot areas you can improve throughout your website.
How To Increase Your Website Traffic
- Get your business’s name out there. One popular way to “there” is social media.
- Consider blogging on other websites that are within your industry.
- Invest in paid advertising. This is a great option if you’d like to see quick results.
4. Low Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate is a metric usually associated with paid online advertising. It measures the number of people that click on your ad after seeing it. For organic search, this metric also works equally well for determining your website’s competitiveness in search results. Just like site traffic, a low click-through rate can show that people aren’t interested in clicking through to your site.
How To Increase Your Click-Through Rate
- Optimize your page titles
- Shorten your URLs.
- Improve your meta descriptions
5. Low Number Of Pages Per Visit
When people view multiple pages on your website, it’s a sign that they’re more engaged and willing to explore more of your site. But when there are a low number of pages per session, visitors aren’t that engaged with your site and may be dissatisfied with the overall user experience. A low number of pages per session results from many things, including stale content, a cluttered design, and confusing navigation.
How To Increase The Number Of Pages Per Visit
- (Re)design your website to improve navigation and overall layout
- Make your content understandable for non-experts (i.e., your customers).
- Link the pages of your website together. This is called internal linking and is great for SEO.
3 Tools To Track And Improve Your Website’s Performance (For FREE!)
Search “track my website’s performance” in Google, and you’ll likely see hundreds of companies trying to sell you “special” tools for tracking your website. But you can follow your website’s performance for free using accurate data provided by these three tools: HotJar, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.
HotJar
HotJar creates a heatmap of your website that lets you track how far your visitors scroll, where they’re clicking, and how they’re interacting with your site. By ranking sections as either cold (unpopular) or hot (popular), HotJar lets you quickly identify opportunities for improvement on your website.
Google Analytics
With Google Analytics, you can track your website traffic, your bounce rate, top referring channels (i.e., social media, email, organic search, direct, etc.), and more. Using the data, you can create goals to improve your metrics and ultimately, drive more leads and conversions.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console provides valuable data such as click-through rate, impressions, and the top keywords that searchers are using to find your business/website. It also gives you insight into penalties (i.e., spam problems, incorrectly structured data, unnatural outbound links, etc.) against your site and offers solutions on how to fix them.
Tracking your website is a crucial step in improving and optimizing it for conversions. Keeping track of how your website performs can help improve your company’s online presence. Be sure to monitor specific KPIs to measure your site’s performance regularly. Using improving your website based on data – not guesses – you’ll be able to optimize your website for a better online presence.