Red Kite Creative

Website Performance

New WordPress Performance Project

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BedTimes Magazine Performance ResultsMy long-time WP Minder client BedTimes Magazine came to me with a quandary – their newly-redesigned website was very slowly. Could I help? Of course I could.

Looking for the low-hanging fruit, I made some performance tweaks designed to get the best load time reduction with the least input per my client’s request. While there were many third-party scripts in play on the site, which we couldn’t do anything about, there were definitely areas I could improve fairly easily.

We wound up with a load time reduction of about 58% – it’s not the fastest site, but the goal of performance optimization is to get the fastest site possible without requiring a rebuild. And, the project constraints required a quick fix, not an in-depth operation. Work with what you have and make it do the best it can.

Click the infographic to see the results.

Weekly Links Roundup – Lazy Loading, Tracking Downloads, Page Speed, Email Marketing for Bloggers

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Here’s an easy performance win – implement lazy loading on your site. Lazy loading means not loading images that are off-screen; they eventually load when the user scrolls down to them. Learn more about lazy loading and here’s the plugin I like for this task in WordPress sites.

If you offer white papers or other kinds of downloads on your site, did you know that you can use Google Analytics, which you’re most likely already using, to track downloads? Though GA doesn’t natively track this kind of interaction, you can set up this tracking in either Google Tag Manager (easier) or a plugin like Monster Insights, or you can add tracking code manually to your download links (harder and not recommended unless you only have a couple of downloads). Learn more in this thorough post on how to track downloads with Google Analytics.

This is cool… since Google made page speed a search engine ranking factor last year, websites in 95% of the world’s countries have become faster. In addition, we all know that a slower site tends to get abandoned more often. Turns out the opposite is also true – faster sites mean lower abandonment rates! If your WordPress site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, try our WordPress Performance Optimization service.

Do you have a brand new blog, and are you out to change the world? While you’re working on gaining loyal subscribers, learn how to build trust by using the 5 types of emails new bloggers should send to their subscribers.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Site Speed, Product Pages, Contact Pages, WordPress Security Myths

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

You know your website is slow. It’s always been like that. But do you really understand what that slow site could be costing you in terms of customers and conversions? A recent report shows that 70% of buyers are influence by a site’s page loading time. The average site loads in about 15 seconds – but a number of studies show that the majority of online shoppers will leave a site if they have to wait more than 3 seconds. If you need help making your site faster, check out our Performance Optimization service or get in touch with questions.

Learn how to take your product pages to the next level with this great post on design elements to make product pages soar. Start with inviting, high-quality photography – this is really critical – and then polish your text descriptions to make your product seem irresistable. Be sure to have a clear call-to-action (Add to Cart) and don’t pack the page with too much information. Never get in the customer’s way!

Here are tips for making an effective contact page – including having a contact form (form submissions are something you can measure in Analytics). But don’t make your form too long – studies show that the more questions you ask, the less likely people will fill it out (that’s really true for general contact forms, and doesn’t necessarily apply to all types of forms).

Finally… it’s always fun to debunk WordPress security risks, and here are the top 5 for this week. WordPress is no more or less secure than other online platforms. The biggest security problem for a WordPress site is the negligent site owner who fails to keep plugins, themes and WordPress updated, making their site a prime target for hackers. Don’t be that person! Be better and keep your site safe.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Slow Sites, Black Friday, Improving Conversions, Google Reviews, Blogging

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Think your slow-as-a-turtle website isn’t hurting your business? Think again. Google has been looking at page load time since back in 2010, and they use this information when ranking websites. A study from 2016 showed that over 50% of mobile users would abandon a site if it took more than 3 seconds to load. Do you think they’ve gotten more patient since then? Nope. Learn how a slow site impacts your business. And then take a look at our performance optimization service. We can help you stop frustrating your users!

Having a great big sale on Black Friday? It’s time to start sending emails to customers now – like, today. Learn some handy (and timely) email marketing techniques for the big day.

And speaking of the 2018 holiday shopping season… learn how to tweak your landing pages for more conversions. What’s a conversion? That’s an action you want a user to take. It usually includes things like: making a purchase; submitting a contact form; or clicking a contact link. Top tip for this season: chatbots (when done well) can be a big help to your business for both shopping assistance and customer support.

Google Reviews. You know how important they are – and how a bad review can turn your day upside down. But don’t worry… you can respond to bad Google reviews in a meaningful and effective way, and often turn them around to demonstrate how well your business responds under pressure. Hint: you should also respond to positive reviews to show you’re paying attention. The fewer reviews you have, the more important this is.

Finally… does your blog content play it safe? Is it boring? Or do you stretch your boundaries and get out of your comfort zone from time to time? If you think you’re not that kind of writer, maybe you should learn to be. How to avoid creating safe content. This is good advice for all bloggers.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Slow WordPress Dashboard, Facebook Marketing, SEO Problems, Trust

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

If you find that your WordPress admin dashboard is suddenly running a lot slower – guess what? It’s probably that plugin you installed recently. This post on 14 ways to fix a slow WordPress admin includes a list of 35 plugins known to cause dashboard slowdowns, but in case that’s not your issue, there are other things you can troubleshoot and this post will help you do just that.

If you’re using Facebook to connect to your audience, here’s a big post detailing 22 Facebook marketing tips for budget-minded small businesses. Top tip: content calendars are great for blogging, and they also seem to be a good idea for busy Facebook marketers.

This is for the SEO do-it-yourselfers. Ever had one of those really weird problems with your site rankings and no clue how to begin fixing it? This post might help. It’s an 8-point checklist for addressing strange problems with your technical SEO.

And finally… this is a really important one. Does your website inspire trust? Take a good look at it while you read this post on why and how to gain users’ trust. Does it make you look like a pro? Or an amateur? Would people want to buy from you or hire you, based on the quality of your site’s design? Are there spelling and grammatical errors that you could easily fix? Trust is critical and easily lost, but harder to gain. Food for thought.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Optimize Images, Seasonal Marketing, Dark Patterns, SEO Tools

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The top website and marketing links of the week.

“Optimize images” is almost always one of the recommendations when testing a slow-loading website. Optimizing means making images no larger (dimensions and resolution) that they need to be for your site to reduce loading time. It also has to do with making them findable in search engine results. Here’s a nice guide to image optimization, not too technical, that can help you get your own site loading faster.

If you run a seasonal business, marketing can be tough. Here’s a post from Constant Contact with 3 easy steps to year-round marketing for seasonal businesses that might help with ideas for email campaigns.

Ever heard of “dark patterns?” I hadn’t either until I saw this next post. Dark patterns are little user interface elements used to trick visitors into taking action, and they usually rely on you not paying attention. For example, telling you that 5 other people have the product you’re looking at in their cart already may worry you enough to buy even if you weren’t ready. Or showing you that there’s only 1 of a product left with an hourglass. It’s pressure, and it comes across as being manipulative. Here’s an overview of dark patterns and why to avoid using them. Not worth the risk IMO.

Finally… if you’re doing your own SEO (search engine optimization) monitoring for your website, there are a lot more tools out there than you may know. Here’s a review of the top 12 SEO monitoring tools for 2018.