Top 10 Questions to Ask When Building A Website

Want to turn your good website into a great website? We hear you loud and clear.

We have the insights to help you convert your readers into new customers and expanding your business horizons.

It takes more than captivating content, stunning designs and clean code to rank highly on search engines, and we are personally here to help you improve your results and aim for the number one spot on Google.

1. Does site speed really matter?

Absolutely! Your site’s speed affects your SEO ranking and overall site performance. This is your first impression to your potential new customer.

The average load time for a site is a mere 3.21 seconds. The longer the loading time, the more likely the bounce rate chances increase – exponentially.

Think about if you were out for dinner at a restaurant, you would expect the service of your meal and drinks in a timely fashion, so you should expect to deliver the same service to your customers, via your website.

In a world full of rapidly diminishing attention spans, a speedier site is more likely to retain your readers. There is ample evidence to prove that a slow website can cause users to leave.

Site speed is also proven to influence conversion rates, bounce rates, user experiences, drop offs and best practices.

2. What factors affect my website’s speed?

 Heavy page weight, meagre network conditions and poor hosting service are the top culprits of a slow website.

Let’s return to the restaurant analogy.

The wait staff can only carry a handful of meals at once. It’s no use loading them up to deliver 6 plates to the table in one round, that would be disastrous!

Optimise your page weight by compiling and minifying scripts and styling code, use fewer video assets and resize your massive HD images. Be strategic in your use of images and ensure they are absolutely necessary.

It all adds up and it adds up quickly.

In the digital age we now live in, more users are opting to browse via their conveniently placed mobiles, therefore, network conditions can vary.

A page will load much faster via a wired fibre desktop internet connection than on a 3G or 4G mobile. Mobile users also won’t want to eat up their monthly data allowance loading unwanted videos.

Your hosting provider holds another key to your site’s speeds. If data has to travel further, it will take longer to process. Your Melbourne based hosting will take longer to load in Perth than it will in Sydney.

Consider your target clients and where they may be located.

3. What are some top-level things I need to know about SEO rankings?

Otherwise known as Search Engine Optimisation, your SEO ranking determines your prominence on the results of search engine queries.

Now, this is pretty important when 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine query and 75% of users never browse beyond the first page.

You may want to rethink forking out for that AdWords campaign too, because 70-80% of people completely ignore paid search results ads, choosing to only click on the organic search results.

It takes a lot of planning and tactics to nab that number one spot.

Some important SEO ranking factors include:

• Content quality and length
• “Freshness” of content – or how recently your site was updated
• Backlinks – the more people to your site, the better
• Mobile compatibility – Including appearance, usability and performance
• Page speed, in general
• Domain – age and matching the query eg. a search for cars will likely result in cars.com
• Security and accessibility – Do you have an SSL certificate?
• User Experience – Definitely something that will be prominent in future as Google improve their algorithms.

4. Why my website isn’t showing up on Google?

Honestly, it may take a solid minimum 3 months of planning, strategizing and optimising your SEO campaign before you start reaping the benefits.

It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

However, there are other possible reasons for why you may not be ranking in search listings.

• Google has not indexed your website yet (too new – can take about 1 week for Google to update their search results)
• Your website isn’t optimised for search engine crawling
• Your keyword market is more competitive or saturated
• Not all keywords are equal – more profitable keywords are harder to rank for
• You have no content on your site – create pages for each service you offer
• You may have duplicate content on multiple pages – this is a big no-no
• Your website has “no index” tags, blocking it from search engines
• Your website has been penalised and removed from Google

5. What is a Bounce Rate? Is a high website Bounce Rate bad?

The Bounce Rate is the percentage of single page visits – or, percentage of users who leave your website from the landing page without browsing any further.

High Bounce Rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing! It could mean that the reader is finding what they’re seeking without needing to browse the site any further.

For example, perhaps that user was on your site just looking for your phone number. Or they may just be reading a particular blog or article.

Average bounce rates may vary depending on what type of site you have:

• Blog/Article bounce rates tend to average about 70-90%
• Content sites average at approximately 40-60%
• Ecommerce sites average at about 45%
• Service site visitors are only likely to bounce about 10-30% of the time

If you’re still really concerned about it – we can offer some solutions to help improve those statistics.

6. How can I know what is causing users to leave my website?

We live in a fast-paced society these days. If you can convince a user to spend just 30 seconds on your site, you’re actually doing well!

30 seconds is the magic number, if a user stays around that long, they’re far more likely to keep browsing for another minute or two.

So why are people leaving?

• it could be taking too long to load
• they may be waiting for fresh, updated content
• they may not want to sign up for that subscription on that pop-up
• their finger may have slipped on their phone and swiped the window closed
• they aren’t finding the answers/information they’re looking for
• their lunch break ended
• the link they clicked on might not have worked

It’s a loaded question. There are a LOT of reasons why, but we can certainly monitor and prevent the technical reasons people could be leaving.

7. Do I really need a blog?

Oh, I know the feeling… Sitting there staring at your keyboard, wondering what on Earth you’re possibly going to write about on a regular basis.

It is very beneficial to have one, even if purely for strategic SEO purposes. All these articles you’re writing is a new page which could potentially bring in traffic to your site.

The average active business blog gains:

• 55% more visitors to their site
• 97% more inbound links
• 434% more indexed pages

If you’re a small business, blog posts give a little something back to your community that they don’t have to pay for. Financial advice, support or advice, pro tips, DIY…. You name it.

Blog posts are proven to help build those mailout subscriber numbers and improve your conversions from reading your enjoyable content.

8. How often should I be publishing blog posts?

Honestly? At least 3 times per week is ideal, at the bare minimum aim for once per month. That may sound like a lot of writing time in this frantic life we live in, but do not fret!

The important part is that quality is better than quantity. Google will analyse what you’ve written, and they will actually penalise you for poor content.

At the end of the day, more content means more opportunities to gain traffic, leads and conversions.

So, if you have that sudden onset of that darned writer’s block, there’s no need to churn content out just to meet the quota.

Here are a few tips to help out:

• Make sure to keep your blog organised into few select categories
• Nothing should ever be uncategorised!
• Ensure your page slug matches your article’s title
• Don’t forget to proof read and spell check
• Make sure you post regularly enough so that the search engines don’t think you’ve abandoned your site

9 What is a call to action? How do I use them?

Put plainly, a call to action (CTA) is a command on your site to encourage your user to do something.

For example, this could be a button instructing them to buy now, or an email subscription form.

Some tips for usage:

• Don’t use dull call to action buttons. Use colours with pop and clear language for the best results.
• Make sure that your call to actions look like they can be clicked on.
• Don’t overdo it, we don’t want CTA’s scattered all over the same page. Too many options will be confusing for the user.
• Use fitting phrases which are as clear as possible for the scenario. Vague words such as “Submit” or “Learn More” may cause hesitation with users because they don’t know what will happen when they click on it. Concise language such as “Register Now” or “Tell Us What You Think” specify information on where the user is expected to be going next.
• Experiment with CTA locations by testing placements on both sides or above and below the content.

10. How can I obtain further details about my statistics?

There are industry tools that can help you understand the statistics within your website.  The key ones are:

• Google Analytics
• Semrush
• AHrefs
• MOZ

If you would like some insight on how your website is performing, simply jump on these tools or contact your local digital agency who would help you break it down for you.

Get in touch with us to discuss a solution tailored to your requirements if you need some help.