Those who are savvy in the advanced tasks involved in managing websites would know that site problems can be classified as either “on page” or “off page” problems. Beginners, however, would just want to solve certain problems and are unlikely mindful of the classification of the problems. For them, the goal would simply be to try methods that could possibly address the problems as soon as possible.
This post is intended for those who lack the savviness in properly managing websites. Presented below are five of the common tactics that can be employed to address commonly encountered website issues.
Choose a reliable, fast, and suitable web host
Good web host choice solves a lot of website problems. Notably, it prevents instances of downtimes, which can mean lost sales or a bad experience for customers. Nobody wants to frequent a website that repeatedly becomes inaccessible so it’s important to find the best possible web host. Additionally, carefully choosing a web host is important to avoid slow page loading time as well as to avoid or properly react to online threats.
It’s important to make sure that a web host provides responsive round the clock customer support. It’s also important to choose a web host that can provide automatic backups or pertinent solutions for enabling convenient data recovery. Additionally, the web host to be chosen needs to be capable of addressing prevalent online threats, DDoS in particular.
Making the right choice for a web host is an understandably complex process. There are many factors that need to be taken into account. Can the web host properly provide the required bandwidth and reliable connection? Which hosting package is the right one to get? Is shared hosting good enough? Which option is more cost efficient? These are just some of the questions that need to be carefully answered to come up with an informed decision. If it becomes difficult to come up with a decision, it’s advisable to consult those who have the experience and are actually successfully running websites.
Use a responsive web design
What is responsive web design? It is basically web design that allows the site to automatically change its layout and the amount of content shown on the screen to be suitable to the display size used to access it. It is mainly intended to address the difference when accessing websites using desktop and mobile devices.
Obviously, mobile devices have smaller displays so it does not make sense maintaining the same layout and font size. That’s why in the past mobile versions of websites have become a necessity.
With responsive web design, there is no more need to maintain a separate mobile version of a site. This means saving time and resources that would have been required to set up, optimize, and maintain two different websites. Moreover, doing this makes a website mobile-friendly, making it easier to reach out to potential visitors or customers on the mobile web.
Update to most recent and more popular technologies
Websites should always be running on the most recent technologies. This is not only because it’s what everybody else is doing. It’s not just to ride on the “being updated bandwagon.” It’s about ensuring website security and compatibility. Updates are made usually to address a security issue, fix a defect, or to achieve efficiency.
Take the case if the Flash player as an example. Nowadays, Flash has already been relegated to being a virtual outcast. The world’s leading web browser, Chrome, has already ditched it. Apple devices don’t support Flash out of the box. Flash now has a growing reputation of being resource intensive and prone to become problematic. That’s why HTML5 is now what’s being promoted among website owners. A website that refuses to switch to what is largely perceived to be the better technology is likely to suffer.
On the other hand, it’s also worth emphasizing the preference for more popular technologies. More popular technologies are generally more advanced, well-maintained, more regularly updated, and more feature-rich. Because it has more users, there’s a higher likelihood that more features are developed as users clamour for them and that bugs or problems are more promptly spotted and addressed.
Use right strategies for Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization or SEO is not just about making web pages friendly to search engine crawlers. The common strategies used in SEO such as the optimization of pages to ensure fast page loading, the use of proper HTML tags, and the adding of unique titles for each web page are useful in creating a good user experience. Working with professional SEO provider like Day Digital could help you so you’ll be on the right track.
Additionally, making sure that broken links are addressed is also part of SEO, which is something that does not only prevent penalties from Google. Ensuring that all links on a website are working is necessary to avoid bad user experiences. A website with several broken links will only irk visitors and discourage them from returning. These broken links are also bound to damage the reputation of a site. Who would rely on a site that can’t even properly maintain the links in it? Links, here, by the way, don’t only refer to the text links within the content of a site. It also means the navigation buttons/links and other links in other parts of the site.
Use tools for tracking website statistics and conversions
Lastly, it’s important to use website metric trackers or tools for evaluating the performance of a website. It’s important to have a way if the website is getting the desired traffic or if it is able to achieve the expected conversion rate. Without these metrics, it becomes difficult to implement tweaks or improvements. For a retailing business with online and offline operations, for example, the success of the website cannot be properly determined through the sales, as it’s possible that sales improvements could only be attributable to offline efforts. There has to be a way to measure a website’s performance.
Again, the tactics mentioned here are multipurpose. They don’t only address specific concerns. Doing them will yield several benefits or address many problems in a website. Those who are encountering problems such as slow page loading, frequent downtimes, browser incompatibilities, low conversions, and defective page rendering (on web browsers) should consider using the 5 tactics briefly discussed above.
