Website Optimization: A “best practice” you can’t afford to ignore.

Written by: Phillip Nones

Many people don’t realize that over nine out of ten business buyers conduct their own research online before making a major purchase decision.

For consumers, the figure is nearly as high: more than 80%.

What does this mean? Simply this: The websites that work hardest aren’t necessarily the most attractive ones. They’re the ones that have the best online exposure and search engine rankings.

The web landscape has changed.

Merely having a beautiful or elegant website doesn’t cut it anymore. Design attributes that were desirable a few short years ago – splash pages, fancy animated graphics, high-resolution images and the like – actually could be hurting your website performance.

Search engine optimization (SEO) and the user experience go hand-in-hand. Google and other search engines aim to organize and deliver the most relevant content on the Internet. After all, a satisfied user is one who will continue to use that search engine.

Does your website measure up?

… Or is it failing the test?

Either way, the good news is that there are steps you can take to improve your search rankings over time. Steps like:

Polish front-end SEO – Focusing on relevant keywords and actionable descriptions will attract more customers and conversions.
Revamp back-end SEO – Compliance regarding encoding, sitemaps and language declarations is important, too.
Improve page landing speeds – This is more important than you might realize, because every one additional second of delay means another drop in the conversion rate of 7%.
Page optimization – Web analytics will tell you where to direct your audience’s attention online to where your conversions will be the strongest.