Your website is suffering and there are issues that need your immediate attention. Let me shed some light on 10 areas that must be improved on your website. I guarantee after these changes, there will be a significant boost in readership, and overall performance. Here they are.
1. Number of Objects
The objects on a site are images, JavaScript files, CSS files, video and audio files. Even Flash files are objects. Count them. You don’t need any special software for this. To check the number of JS and CSS files, just press CTRL+U and the source will give you the details.
Then trash or combine some of them. Try to bring it to under 20 objects. The key is to improve latency and increase speed.
2. Quality of Headlines
The titles for your pages and articles are weak. Use AMI’s Headline Analyzer and get those titles right. It’s all about the quality. Look at this articles title, got you to click right? Here’s the key, emotional impact.
3. Page Inter-linking
Getting links from other sites might be difficult. But how you link to your own articles is not only easy, but completely under your control. You get to choose what page and anchor text to use. This will increase ranking and page views. Do it as often as possible.
4. Logo Colors
5 colors in a logo might look great to you, but this is not recommended. Logos are best with one or two colors. It’s all about contrast. Look at the top 5 websites on the internet. Google is among the few that can get away with over 3 colors. To further stress this point, think about printing. It’s becomes more costly as the amount of colors increases.
5. Email List (Newsletter) Promotion
“Subscribe” is a weak and overused word. Try giving a name to the Newsletter or Feed. Also bribery is insulting and not very affective. Trying giving something away for free and just offer that. Make the user enter their name and email as a built in requirement. Not a bribe.
So something like “sign up for my newsletter and get a free ____”, just won’t work as effectively as “Get a Free ______”. And put the sign form right bellow. This is not a bribe, it’s a requirement. And it’s not saying what you want. It’s obvious to the trained marketer. But not to your visitor. He’s just being offered a freebie.
6. Privacy Policy
If you collect any information from users, depending on where your website is based, you may need a Privacy Policy. This is a page where you disclose how Users information is collected and used. And for what reasons you are collecting it. This is certainly not a substitute for legal advice, so consult an attorney about this please.
7. Paragraph Size
It’s best to have paragraphs less than 5 sentences long. I make this mistake often. It’s usually corrected during editing. Not something to over-obsess about. Some paragraphs demand more than 4 or 5 sentences. But people usually skim information and may skip a very long paragraph. Try to keep it short.
8. MySQL Queries
It’s a known fact that CMS systems like WordPress makes many MySQL queries. That’s because a lot of the content is stored in the database. Sometimes a custom site that’s dynamic may make too many calls to the database. Tell your developer to try and avoid this by making some info hard coded or flat file based. With WordPress, using plugins like WP Super Cache will help reduce the need to dip into the db for each request of a page.
9. Sidebar Placement
I’m referring to the User Interface. Not the HTML code placement. Some say a left sidebar on a web page is annoying to Users. And a right sidebar is professional. Some say a left side bar with ads increases revenue, while a right sidebar may reduce this. This all as to do with how our brain works. And how our eyes move from one location to next.
If you want Users to read more of the meaty content, then a right side bar may work. But if the sites design places the navigation on the sidebar, a left bar may be more suitable. If you want to increase revenue, a left sidebar with ads may be more beneficial. Split testing will be important in determining the best option here.
10. HTML Size
How much lines of code does the page have? How many bytes is the page? How many comments (HTML comments, not human comments) does the page have? Is there too much space between lines? These questions are important if you have slow loading pages. Try to get pages under 100k of bytes for best performance across various modem speeds.
I’m actually guilty of not following some of these guidelines. There is just so much specifics that it can be hard to get to for even a seasoned developer as I. So don’t be hard on your self if some of these take some time to get right.
If you think I missed anything or was wrong about anything, let us know in the comments.
This article is right on time as I just used a browser speed test on my site to see where I fall and I have a lot of clean up to do (especially with the number of JS files and images)! Thanks for this post as it serves as my reminder to hurry up and correct some of these mistakes