More about Enlighten Designs

The Problem

A client suspects there might be some issues with the recently developed e-commerce functionality on their website. They feel they should be making more online sales (especially since they’ve just spent money on it!) but they don’t have the expertise to identify the exact problem, let alone make any changes that might be needed to get the results they were really hoping for.

The Solution

Enlighten Designs’ Web Health Check is exclusively tailored to solve this problem. A Web Health Check is specifically designed for clients who have existing websites they feel are not operating at peak performance. The first step to crafting improvement measures lies in understanding what and where any issues exist.

How will this help?

The main aim of this service is to thoroughly examine your site and provide a detailed report across key areas to help you understand factors that might be causing your customers frustration, as well as highlight issues that could cost you if not fixed. The Web Health Check doesn’t just measure the security and performance of your site – it also considers how well it has been optimised for search engines. It seems like a minor consideration but lifting areas of your SEO can really help drive traffic to your site and keep users engaged for longer … and that could mean more items in their cart and higher sales for you.

What does Enlighten Designs look at?

To begin with, the Web Health Check covers:

1. Performance

This explores how your site is coded and the improvements that can be made. For example, using the right size and kind of images impacts how your site loads. It also looks into how optimising JavaScript and CSS can improve your site’s overall performance and loading speed.

Page load speed is a big factor for both user experience and search engine rankings. Calculating page load speed to evaluate website performance can be a little tricky. According to a 2019 study by Backlinko, the average time to fully load a page is more than 10 seconds on a computer and more than 27 seconds on mobile, which seems like a lot, but the page might be usable and interactive for your customer long before.

Why should you care about how long it takes for a page to load? Users are likely to ‘bounce’ if it takes too long – and a higher bounce rate means a possible loss of customers as well as revenue. For example, a change in the loading time from just 1 to 6 seconds increases the bounce rate by 106%.

Getting back to the example client, an investigation into the website finds their page load speed is less than ideal, hence the poor conversion rate. Google uses several metrics within its Core Web Vitals to measure page speed and rank pages and performance. This provides lots of opportunities for continuous improvement, so you can get great results when they’re done right.

2. Security

Maintaining and improving security can be as simple as keeping plugins and other software up to date, using SSL and HTTPS, and changing the default CMS settings. Further security hardening can be achieved by limiting administrative access to your website, and by choosing a secure web host.

Trust and reputation are essential for doing business. If your customers cannot trust you to keep their information safe, then they are likely to take their business elsewhere. For example, our client was now handling sensitive customer data since revamping their website for e-commerce. The Web Health Check discovered some minor security holes that, if hardened, would mitigate impact to customers in the event of a cyber-attack.

A secure site means building a creditable repute which builds customer trust and has the flow-on effect of improved business. Google also rewards businesses meeting their standards by offering better rankings.  It’s a win-win situation.

3. Accessibility

In this digital age, accessibility is essential. For websites, this means catering to all users, regardless of device, operating systems, or ability. It’s all just part of creating an inclusive society.

The example client’s website turns out to be inaccessible to people with screen readers, just one of an increasing amount of assistive technologies that allow people with vision limitation to access digital content. By making a website accessible, a business can not only tap into a bigger market but also be recognised as an organisation that truly is user-centred.

4. SEO

The right SEO is vital for an effective website. While the client was following all the best practices for SEO, there’s always room for improvement – especially since Google continuously changes and updates its algorithms. The Web Health Check evaluation provides suggestions for changes and tweaks in this area. For example, is all the metadata that’s been included relevant? Is the alternate text appropriate? How often is the content reviewed for relevancy?

5. User Experience

The Web Health Check also looks at the overall user experience of the website. User-centred design is a critical aspect of an optimally performing website. It turns out the client was missing plenty of opportunities for them to polish the UX and design of their website, thus providing a simpler and more seamless shopping experience for their end-users.

The user experience of your website needs to deliver a balance between what your customers want and what they need. Content has its own place in augmenting search rankings by increasing time spent on a site and lowering the page bounce rate. But if your website is not easy to navigate or does not provide the information customers expect, they won’t stick around to make a purchase.

What does Enlighten Designs offer?

Enlighten understands that websites are your digital shop fronts and a key driver for sales – but not all businesses are created equal. This is why Web Health Check packages are divided into three categories to cater for different needs.

Improving and updating a website can often mean investing in new software, writing new code, and using new tools to help with performance. A Web Health Check gives you a clear idea of your website’s issues as well as a framework to begin addressing the problems. As a result, you can make efficient and informed decisions, and be sure that the measures you take will help you improve your website performance and achieve your strategic business objectives.

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As an award-winning creative technical agency, Enlighten Designs is on a mission to deliver digitally transformative experiences for SMB to enterprise customers.