Reviewing Your Website’s Performance in 10 Minutes

Here’s the situation: your boss stormed into the office this morning and called you to his office.  He then gives you 20 minutes to identify any problems with your company’s website and propose solutions. He says that he’s been paying the web designer an ungodly sum every month since 1998 and it’s about time it delivered some returns.  And yes, it falls upon you because you are the marketing manager.  You spend 5 minutes recovering from that ringing sound in your ear and make a note to get that long overdue analytics package, then proceed to:

Check Contact Forms, RSS Feeds, Shopping Cart

These are usually tied to the KPIs of most websites.  They allow users to perform desired actions like subscribing for your email newsletter or even make a purchase from your website.  The Javascript and PHP files supporting these functions rarely break down but it’s a good practice to check them from time to time.

Check Last Update

Here’s a webmaster secret. Website performance is tied very closely to the frequency of your updates.  If your website has not been updated for a while, chances are that you will experience low traffic.  Static sites without updates give little incentive for visitors to return to your site again, effectively “killing” it.  Usually in the case of a long-dormant site (more than 1 year), it is a good idea to redesign the site and relaunch it.

Quality Content

Just as important is the quality of your updates. Frequent postings of poor quality content is.. just not a good idea.  It may be tough to determine the quality of your content yourself, especially if you’ve had a hand in crafting it.  If you have an analytics package you can be able to tell by the number of repeat visitors and the average time spent on site.

Missing Images and Broken Links

Don’t wreck the user experience by having missing images or broken links on your site.  This usually happens when you change your site directories or after a revamp of the site.  These may also be due to deleted or misnamed files.

Browser Compatibility

Most users in Singapore are still on Internet Explorer, followed closely by Mozilla Firefox.  Test your website out in these 2 browsers (at least) to see if your content is displayed correctly and that all your forms and important functions work.

Check for Extra/Redundant Steps

A furniture site I recently visited took 6 clicks for me to get to the tables page, when I felt 3 would have sufficed.  Make it easy for your users to find the information they need in the shortest time possible.  Another common problem is that of the Flash Introduction ordeal that users are forced to go through every time they visit a site.

XHTML Navigation Menu & Sitemap

On the note of making it easy for your users, your navigation menu is crucial to a good user experience.  Decide if you have too little categories or if they are nested too deep.  It is good SEO to create a non-image, non-Flash navigation menu since images and Flash content are harder to index for search engines.  Also creating a sitemap both helps to give your users an overall view of the content on your website as well as any spiders visiting your site.

Take the remaining 5 minutes to compile your findings, grab a quick cooler break, then present them to your boss.  No problemo, amigo.