If you’re not sure how your website is performing, there are plenty of free online tools available that will let you assess your website, and help you determine whether your website needs updating.
You should assess your website for the most critical factors, which are:
- page load time
- SEO (search engine optimisation)
- mobile-friendliness
- accessibility
Very few websites will score top marks for everything, but consistently low scores (or a large numbers of issues) would suggest that your website needs updating.
Page load time
Why it’s important
When you assess your website, it should ideally load in less than two seconds. This is important for three reasons:
- Abandonment research has shown that 47% of customers expect a website to load in two seconds at the very most. 40% will abandon it altogether if it takes longer than three seconds.
- SEO Google added site speed as a significant factor their algorithm upgrade in August 2021 (known as Core Web Vitals), so a slow site can have a negative impact your placing in the search results.
- Customer satisfaction better site performance = enhanced satisfaction = increase in customer base and brand strength
You should be very concerned if your website is taking significantly longer than three seconds to load.
(source: thedrum.com)
Resources
These websites will each run a comprehensive test using your URL and most relevant test location. The results will tell you how quickly/slowly your site loads, and what actions can be taken to improve the scores.
SEO
Why it’s important
If you don’t optimise your site for search engines, then the chances are that your website won’t rank very highly in search engine results, and so potential customers won’t find you.
Resources
Seobility will assess your website and score how your site is set up for SEO, highlighting any issues which need to be addressed.
Mobile-friendliness
Why it’s important
In the UK, desktop computers account for 47% of all website traffic, with mobile accounting for 47% and tablet 6%. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, then it’s definitely time to update your website.
(source: statcounter.com, December 2021)
Resources
Google has a Mobile-Friendly Test tool which will assess your website and rate how mobile-friendly it is.
Accessibility (aka A11Y)
Why it’s important
In the UK alone, around 14 million people have some kind of disability, and many will use aids to help them surf the web. Common practices include:
- using a keyboard instead of a mouse
- changing browser settings to make content easier to read
- using a screen reader to read web content out loud
- using a screen magnifier to enlarge part/all of the screen
- using voice commands to navigate a website
When you assess your website therefore, you need to make sure that it supports each of these scenarios.
It’s also worth noting that accessibility is a factor in Google’s algorithm, so if your site isn’t accessible then you could well end up with your site being penalised in search rankings.
(source: Scope, December 2021)
Resources
Wave is a browser-based tool that will scan your site, and notify you of any accessibility issues.
How did you do?
If your website fared well in all of these tests, then congratulations!
If, however, your website didn’t score so well, then give me a call to discuss how your website performance can be improved.