Show your website some love this Valentines Day!

That means they have already formed an opinion about you and the business you run before you have had an opportunity to tell them about how amazing you are!

Scarily, in just 50 milliseconds a visitor to your website has formed an opinion on your business. That’s just 0.05 seconds for you to make that all-important first impression. (Source:Forbes)

What does your website say about you? When was the last time you paid it a little attention to ensure everything is working as it should? Luckily there are a few things you can do today to ensure your website is not turning potential customers away.

The average user will abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load with over 40% of users abandoning a site if it takes longer. Reducing the file size of images is something you can do quickly yourself, also speak to your web developer about removing redundant web code, and implementing lazy load to increase your website speed. Google have a handy tool called Lighthouse that’ll provide you with an audit of your web page speed. Lighthouse is a free automated tool for improving the quality of websites.

Mobile browsing accounts for approximately half of website traffic worldwide. In the fourth quarter of 2021, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 54.4% of global website traffic, with 74% of users more likely to return to a mobile-friendly website. So you need to make sure your website remains easy to read and navigate regardless of what device or screen size your potential customers are using. Test your website today to see how it performs on a mobile device.

Having fresh content on your website encourages users to return regularly. There’s nothing more offputting to a potential customer seeing last year's sale advertised. If you don’t show you care about your website, visitors will think you don’t care about them.

Are you asking your customers to search how to get in contact with you? At a minimum, you should have an email address and contact number at the bottom of each page. If customers can visit you in person, add your address with opening hours in a prominent position too. Make sure you have a contact us page with clear links to it throughout your website.

Are you asking your customers to search how to get in contact with you? At a minimum, you should have an email address and contact number at the bottom of each page. If customers can visit you in person, add your address with opening hours in a prominent position too. Make sure you have a contact us page with clear links to it throughout your website.

Ensure the content of your website has keywords that relate to your business, and those that your customers will be using to find your products or services. Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see what keywords you are ranking for. Use this information to give your images filenames and alt text to help with ranking. Be mindful of duplication, using the same image repetitively or the same text can result in you being penalised by search engines.

There is nothing worse than clicking on a link and the page no longer exists. If you have used links on pages or in blogs regularly check them and make sure they are still working. There are several tools available to check your site for broken links such as Google Search Console.