Your 2021 Website Refresh: A Checklist for Website Performance

November 24, 2020

If you’ve followed our previous checklists, your site is stable, and it’s looking good and reading well – now comes the technical checklist. With this checklist, you can boost the performance of your website further, taking it from good to great. We’re going to level with you – many of these changes may require help from a developer. We have a whole team of experienced devs who can help – call Rearview Advertising if you feel like you could benefit from these upgrades.

Performance

Plan the switch to a dedicated IP and hosting – the average host will put 200-300 websites on a single server. We’ve discussed it earlier, you don’t want your host affecting your performance, and you don’t want bad IP neighbors to hurt your reputation. Dedicated hosting will take your site far in both performance and search visibility. Create a plan to switch to dedicated hosting, and take control of your site.

Readdress slow loading – after your design update, you’ll want to take another look at load speeds. Again, less than two seconds for the page is ideal – but if you can provide a quick first contentful paint within that time, users will know your site is almost loaded and stick around.

Reduce the overall size of your website – compress or minify CSS and JS elements on your site, and your performance could skyrocket! Be careful, though, not all compression methods are created equal. Research your potential cache plugins to determine what’s right for your website.

Putting it all together

My refreshed website looks good – the design is clean, fresh, and recognizable as your brand. The website doesn’t look like it would have in the early 2000s. It directs the eye to your goals and helps convert users into customers.

My refreshed website reads well – for example, all of your content uses good grammar and style, and it’s interesting and highly SEO-relevant.

My refreshed website works well – it’s quick to load, easy to navigate, responsive, and – most importantly – the user experience is consistent across mobile and desktop.

Google might still hate me. – This last point is one of the most important. Search engines may still pass your site over for the keywords you want. Generic strategies are only a starting point, and as we like to say here at Rearview Advertising, SEO is like tending a garden. There is always weeding, watering, feeding, and pruning to do (and, little tip, the definition of “good SEO” changes pretty much every 90 days – you’ll need to stay on your game). With a well-kept website, you’re starting the year off on the right foot, but that’s not the end. You’ll want to consider these checklists frequently to keep your website in top shape – and grow your SEO effectiveness.

This concludes our 2021 website refresh checklist series – take a look at the previous checklists; our website triage checklist and site content and design checklist, to get the full picture of how you can refresh your website for even better performance in 2021. If you want any help filling out these checklists, call Rearview Advertising. We can give you a free coaching session and help identify what’s most important to the function of your marketing efforts. Take your marketing to the next level for the next decade – invest time into your site and watch tangible returns roll in.