Does Your Website Make The Honor Roll?

We all remember report cards. If you were a straight-A student, receiving your report was probably something you looked forward to. But if you weren’t exactly at the top of your class, the days of taking home a less-than-stellar report card were most likely not that fun. Regardless of your scholastic abilities, those report cards were critical in determining just how well (or not so well) you were performing in your various classes.

In a very similar way, your website needs to be graded on how well (or not so well) it is performing. Websites should be updated and refreshed every several years, and our fully-customized Website Report Card will supply you with the feedback that’s necessary for making smart decisions regarding the potential redesign of your website.

Our Website Report Cards are divided into 5 distinct criteria, for which you’ll receive an A-to-F grade. Those 5 items are as follows:

1. Design

It is essential that your website stay true to your company’s branding, style, and personality. Consistency is key, especially as it relates to creating brand awareness across multiple marketing and advertising mediums (e.g., website, online advertising, print advertising, TV etc.) It is also very important for your website to convey a professional appearance, utilizing good use of color (as well as “white space”), images and photos, and other additional graphical elements. A poorly-designed website often leads to prospective customers believing that a business is less than legitimate.

2. Content

Your website should keep your visitors engaged and focused. One method of engaging your visitors is to guide those visitors to accomplish the primary objective of your site. This objective can be anything from completing a “Contact Us” form, to making a purchase, to creating an account, etc. The content of your website, in addition to providing users with terrific information about your company, should also strategically guide those users to completing that primary objective.

3. Usability

Possibly the most critical component of your website’s overall performance is usability. It is imperative that your website’s visitors find the site to be user-friendly and easy to navigate. Navigation (menus, sub-menus, links, etc.) must be simple and intuitive. It is also now very important to take into consideration mobile devices, such as phones and tablets. Now more than ever, website visitors are using devices other that desktop and laptop computers to access your website.

4. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the process of fine-tuning your website so that it has a better chance of ranking higher in search engine results pages. Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo are very often the first places that potential website visitors and customers go, when searching for products and services that your company offers.

5. Site Speed

Your website visitors want information, and they want it now. We, as a society, have seemingly developed shorter and shorter attention spans, and we expect instant gratification — especially when it comes to websites viewed via broadband internet connections. It is very important for your site to display all pages as quickly as possible.

Are you ready to find out if your website makes the honor roll? If you’d like to receive additional information about our Website Report Cards, you can reach us by completing the short form below.