Here are the top 10 super easy ways to change your web design to up website traffic.
Is your website not getting the interest that you want — or that it deserves?
Lack of traffic can be a problem for new and established sites alike. After all, for any given webpage, there’s a plethora of competition. Advertising is one of the most often recommended ways to increase your website traffic.
But if you’ve already exhausted your advertising budget or you’re just looking for more organic ways to drive visitors to your site, this list of super easy ways to change up your web design in order to catch more viewers is for you!
1. Build With Clean Code
Some web designers think that driving traffic is more about the content, less about the bones of the site. But they’re not entirely correct in that assumption.
Yes, content does play a big part in driving traffic — but if your site is built on clunky, slow-moving code that tends to malfunction or load incorrectly, it definitely isn’t going to help your traffic stats, either. Some pieces of code, such as some plugins, can actually keep search engines from crawling your site, or push the important keywords too far down the page so that the crawler doesn’t even see them. Both of these outcomes will also restrict your site’s ability to show up on search engines.
Building with clean, simple code that is designed and tailored for your site and which avoids malfunctions will help your site to get more traffic from the bottom up.
2. Optimize Your Site For Fast Loading Speeds
Clean code and optimization also help with the loading speed of your site, which is another key aspect of its ranking on search engines such as Google.
The recommended page load time is two seconds at most. Google claims that they strive for under half a second.
If your site loads too slowly, it can cause visitors to back right out of there and go seek out a more optimized site. And that will affect your ranking, too.
On the other hand, the quicker the loading speed, the happier the visitor, the more traffic you’ll see.
3. Prioritize UX
No matter what content your site hosts, it should be of secondary concern to the user experience that you offer. And there’s a simple reason for that: if you don’t provide a great user experience, your visitor probably won’t bother looking at your content.
Make sure that your site loads quickly, is easy to navigate, and that the content is legible. Don’t hide important information, like contact info or FAQs. If you can add value with user-friendly features, like infographics, videos, motion graphic designs, and other visuals, without compromising speed, then that is recommended to offer the best possible user experience to your visitor.
4. Ensure Your Site Is Responsive
More and more internet browsers are accessing the web via their smartphones and tablets. Predictions say that nearly three quarters of the world’s internet-using population will be using solely their smartphone to access the internet within the next five years.
With that kind of information, it’s obvious that your site should be adaptive. Incorporating adaptability into your website design ensures that it shows up properly on all platforms, including tablets and phones. Without that responsive design, you run the risk of losing out on millions of smartphone user traffic.
5. Learn The Art Of The Headline
We mentioned the importance of content earlier, and we’re going to start explaining exactly why it’s important from here on out. Sites like Buzzfeed have mastered the art of the clickbait title — it’s become something that people expect. That doesn’t mean that you have to go by the same formula as everyone else, but it does mean that you should put thought and effort into your titles and headlines.
On top of that, structure your content with subheadings. This makes it easier to read, which improves your user experience, and also appeals to Google’s ranking algorithm.
6. Use Internal Links To Other Content
Your site isn’t an island — it should have plenty of content to share, in order to attract the most attention from the most people.
Creating internal links to other pieces of content on your site is a fantastic way to make your content work for you over and over again. Creating hyperlinks within your content works well — as long as the links open in a new tab — or you can use footers that highlight similar content that may interest your reader. Driving traffic isn’t just a case of bringing it in from outside — it’s still a goal once your visitor has landed on your page.
7. Include Video Content
We’ve all seen about a hundred cat videos — and yet, if a new one pops up on our feed, are we able to look away? Not unless we’re exceptionally strong!
Video content is a big deal, and the demand for video continues to increase. With millions of internet users watching videos every single day, more than half of them are clamoring to see even more from brands or businesses that they like.
In short, adding videos to your website is bound to be a crowd pleaser — and drive traffic.
8. Make It Easy To Share
Just about the only thing we like more than watching those cat videos is sending them to our friends so they can watch them, too. If we like content, we want to share it.
Make it easy for your visitors to share your content, whether written or visual, and they will help you to drive traffic by spreading the word. Include share buttons on articles, blogs, graphics, and videos. This is one of the easiest additions to your web design, but it can make one of the biggest impacts.
9. Don’t Give Up On SEO
We’ve been talking about the importance of SEO for so many years that it almost seems like it can’t really be that big a deal anymore — but it is! SEO keywords have a huge impact on your searchability and how often you pop up on a web crawler, and they’ll help your potential visitors to realize that your site is worth a click and a read.
We’ve been talking about the importance of SEO for so many years that it almost seems like it can’t really be that big a deal anymore — but it is! SEO keywords have a huge impact on your searchability and how often you pop up on a web crawler, and they’ll help your potential visitors to realize that your site is worth a click and a read.
10. Update And Republish Content
A final way to boost traffic is to recycle content — but not just by reposting the same old thing. Update your blog articles, add new graphics, include a video, put in new links — statistics indicate that doing this can boost your organic traffic by 106%.
This can be built into the overall design of the website by including a content managing system, or CMS, which allows you to cycle through your content without too much extra time spent creating new posts and pieces. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
Author Bio
Maria Anton is a freelance content specialist who likes to help brands develop and grow. She writes about marketing, branding and advertising but open to other business topics as well. In her free time, she crochet knick knacks for her kids.