Why a mid-year website review is essential for your business

These days, a website is undoubtedly one of the most important tools for any business, so it would be ludicrous not to review its progress from time to time. The following ways — from web hosting choice to SEO development — should be among the aspects to check.

Half of 2017 has already flown by. With the summer holidays around the corner, there’s no time like the present to review your website’s performance over the last six months. But what should you be looking for? In this article, we will be looking at a few of the aspects of a website you need to review regularly and why this is a necessary process.

It will help to increase conversions — and make more sales!

If you have an eCommerce site or one that allows customers to book or reserve services, a successful transaction is recorded as a conversion. But without regular reviews of your website, you won’t be aware of any dips in the overall amount of conversions. If there has been an issue for a while, you’ll be losing serious business because of it.

Once you’re aware of the decrease in conversions, you can then set about fixing the problem. It’s often the case that customers aren’t getting what they need from your sales page. It could be the style and delivery of the copy, what the page looks like, how quickly it loads, or if the sale process is user-friendly or not. Whatever the issue might be, a mid-year review of your website means you can identify it before it denies you any more income.

You’ll be able to spot patterns of negative stats

Thanks to software such as Google Analytics (a must for website owners), you’ll be able to keep track of an abundance of statistics. As a business, you will be monitoring the amount of customers and sales you receive each month. Website analytics is essentially the same thing with your site — but on a much grander scale.

We have already mentioned conversions, but you should monitor many other stats, too. The amount of traffic and users of your site should be watched closely, as it could be a signifier of an area of your website which could be improved. Some examples are slow loading times or your bounce rate, or blog content which is not optimised for search engines or relevant in regards to the topic. You also have to consider that there may be an increase in competition in your chosen industry — in which case, it’s time to up your game.

Is your web hosting service up to the task?

When creating a website, you will have purchased web hosting: the online service providing you with the web space and bandwidth to maintain an active site. You may have picked the cheapest option (shared hosting) to begin with, due to having a tight budget or simply because it’s natural to save money wherever possible.

Inefficient web hosting is a common culprit for a website being slow — and if your site takes forever to load a page, people won’t sit around waiting for it. This is even more important with mobile internet when you consider how quickly people flick between apps. If your site takes more than a couple of seconds to load, then people will just give up and move on.

For any website and business owner, efficiency and reliability are two vital aspects for success, both of which are achieved by improved web hosting. Not only will your site be a fast and fluent experience for users; you’ll have the peace of mind knowing you won’t experience any unexpected downtime — and therefore loss of business.

Are you ranking well on search engines?

As the owner of a website, you will have likely heard of SEO by now. It stands for search engine optimisation and relates to marketing techniques used to rank high on search engines. If you review your website and find it isn’t ranking highly or has decreased since the last review, it’s vital to understand why this is the case. Making sure your site is optimised for SEO — the use of keywords and backlinks, for example — will be a great place to start.

You should also consider the benefits of writing a blog. Search engines like consistent, high-quality content with at least 600 words. A blog post ticks all of these boxes, and adding backlinks to high-authority websites will make the topic more relevant and your site more reliable as a source of information.

Chris Danks is the owner and director of Cyber Host Pro, a UK-based web hosting company. With over 17 years of experience within the hosting industry, Chris and his team of experts supply businesses all over the world with a broad range of website hosting services.