6 tips to improve your website

Not selling enough? Is your traffic too low? Don’t like your site’s aesthetics? Improve your website now! Many factors come into play when talking about website improvement. The perfect website doesn’t exist, but there are many ways to get closer to it by enhancing various aspects that will increase traffic, visit duration, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction! We explain it all!

Start by checking the basic technical elements of your website

The foundation of a quality website is to be at least secure, free of errors when navigating, and responsive across different devices.

Make sure you have an up-to-date SSL certificate

To reassure your users and ensure a minimum level of data protection, you must implement an SSL certificate to benefit from the “https” code in your URL. If your site’s URL starts with “http,” it does not properly secure data and may be blocked by some browsers, displaying a warning to users. Data security is a non-negotiable element today and can deter many users if it’s not up to standard.

The certificate is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one, and two settings usefully complete the picture. First, redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS, then set the Strict-Transport-Security header so the browser never tries the unencrypted version again: that is what closes the interception window during the redirect. Second, check that no resource, image, script, font, is still loaded over HTTP, or the browser will show a mixed-content warning. Transport encryption says nothing about how solid the application is, which is a separate and usually more important subject.

Fix page errors

Your website must display correctly and allow users to browse it without any issues. You must ensure that no error pages exist. Pages with errors that fail to load are identifiable by 4xx error codes, the most common being 404. These errors often stem from internal links pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist. Therefore, regularly review your links to verify them or set up redirects when deleting pages.

Your site must be responsive

To have a quality website, it must adapt to all devices (mobile, tablet, desktop). Ensure your site remains readable across different formats and that graphical elements and buttons stay properly sized and clickable. A fully responsive site is highly appreciated by users and prioritized by Google.

“Responsive” has a direct consequence for search that is often ignored: Google indexes the web from the mobile version of pages. Content hidden, truncated or loaded only on desktop is content Google does not see. The useful check is therefore to compare, page by page, what appears on mobile and on desktop, headings, text, images, structured data, rather than only verifying that the layout does not break.

To improve your website, optimize the UX!

UX, or user experience, refers to the experience users have on your site. Simply put, it’s how easily visitors can navigate your site and find the information they’re looking for. If users struggle to browse pages, find buttons, or locate the information they need, the UX is not optimized.

Improving your website’s UX means putting yourself in the user’s shoes and making the site’s journey attractive and simple so that users stay on the site longer or take action. Here are a few examples of UX improvements: 

- Streamline the menu

- Simplify and make navigation intuitive

- Move important information to the top of pages

- Avoid overloading a page

- Place call-to-action (CTA) buttons in the right spots and make them highly accessible.

Working on UX can significantly improve your website's conversion rate.

UX benefits from being measured as well as discussed, and three metrics are enough to start. Google assesses the Core Web Vitals at the 75th percentile of real visits, separately on mobile: Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and cumulative layout shift below 0.1. Add an accessibility criterion that improves everyone’s experience: a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and background. Those four values can be checked in a few minutes and give an objective basis for discussion.

Work on the visual aspect to improve your website

Your website must have a modern design and adapt to graphic trends. An outdated design or poorly refined visuals can deter users. For example, display high-quality images, use perfectly legible fonts, space out headings, harmonize colors, and add graphic elements. There’s no reason you can’t have a strong visual identity, just follow these guidelines to avoid alienating most users and make your site enjoyable to use.

Improve your website’s loading speed

To improve your website, nothing beats enhancing its speed!

By optimizing page load times, you reduce the bounce rate. The faster pages load, the more likely users are to stay on them. To achieve this, compress images and all graphic elements to reduce their file size, implement a caching tool, and optimize your site’s code using extensions on the hosting and/or CMS side. To measure your site’s speed, you can use tools like GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights. 

Optimize your website’s SEO

Improve your website by working on its SEO! Optimizing SEO will help you climb the Google search rankings and increase your traffic ! To improve your SEO, don’t leave your pages’ title tags and meta descriptions empty! They should all be filled with strategic keywords that your audience is searching for. Similarly, structure your pages by including these keywords in heading tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.). You can also improve your SEO by creating a blog to regularly add content targeting new keywords or by building external links (backlinks), links on other sites that point to yours. 

Enriching content improves your website

Finally, to improve your website, offer your users high-quality content! The richer, more original, and clearer your content is, the easier it will be for users to find what they’re looking for. If users are satisfied with your content, they’re more likely to return to your site and share it.

Choose Scroll agency for your website redesign!

If you want to significantly improve your website without wasting time or dealing with complex technical tasks, entrust your project to Scroll agency’s experts. Our agency specializes in creating ultra-high-quality, fast, and well-optimized websites! At Scroll, we’ve built the Webflow agency specifically designed to address your website redesign and creation needs. Our experts Webflow make your site secure, attractive, stylish, and lightning-fast! If you have a project, don’t hesitate to reach out.