5 Top Website Health Tips

1. 1 Information Hierarchy/Architecture

   The structure and order of information on your website must be intuitive for the audience. It is important for businesses and organisations wishing to have an effective online presence to first understand what their audience is looking for. They could be making an enquiry, researching a product/service or looking to make a purchase. The most important or relevant information for the audience should hence be the easiest to access. Want to know what people are looking at on your site, when and for how long? One easy way is to setup Google Analytics.

2. 2 Web-Optimised Copywriting

   Whilst the communication on your site should delight, surprise and engage the audience it is also imperative to understand search engine optimisation. This will ensure your site can be found with ease. Using straightforward language to describe your product or service will increase the likelihood of traffic from search engines. As Google is hungry for ‘new’ content it is also crucial to update content on the site at least once a month to stay strong in search rankings.

3. 3 Engaging Design Communication

   You may understand what information/functions on the website are of most importance to your audience and have crafted your text with SEO in mind, but is your website design letting you down? What you’re aiming for is a dynamic website design that is easy to navigate, draws the audience into the content and gives the audience a reason to come back. It’s not about bells, whistles and shininess, but rather effective communication with your audience.

4. 4 Social Media

   Social Media can broaden your audience and engage customers with powerful two-way interactions. Increasingly the web is where people go to research, share and discuss content – whether it’s products, services, causes, or videos of cats falling over. It is wise to embrace the opportunities this social media environment offers. Social Media facilitates peer-to-peer recommendations that are proven to be very powerful motivators in decision making. Here are some examples of exceptional social media campaigns.

   mashable.com/2010/09/14/social-media-campaigns

   simplyzesty.com/video/10-of-the-best-social-media-campaign-video-case-studies

5. 5 Consider Accessibility

   Accessibility is not simply about making your website cater for the vision and hearing impaired, but also involves understanding what devices, speed of connection and even what menu system is suitable for the audience. For example - those with poor fine motor skills might struggle with drop down menus, or those using predominantly tablet computers will not be able to view rollover states. Understanding your audiences’ technical limitations as well as physical, are the guiding principals of accessibility.