How well does your website stack up? 

Strides Empower have written an article to help you evaluate the effectivness of your website. 

1. Plan — Have an outline of the journey you want your customer to experience from when they first click on your site to when they become a customer — ensure that your website is effectively meeting the needs of the visitors you want to attract.
   
   
2. Focus — With an audience that only has an attention span of about 8 seconds, you need to create a first impression that easily gets the main points across. A good web design caters its navigation to its target users so that it feels intuitive — the less users have to think about it, the better. This should be done with short, powerful sections of content and applicable photographs/icons that are sectioned off by clear and concise headers. Easy navigation enables your potential customers to find what they need faster.
   
   
3. Social Share and Links — Include icons of different social media to allow your site to share the page directly on the social media channel of your choice. These buttons also act as a non-pushy tool that encourages social sharing from your customers’ persona.
   
   
4. Call to Action Buttons — Are one of the many elements that indicate the next step users should take on a page. While many of us know that, it can be easy to fail to accurately use them to guide users through your website; Keep them clear and relevant — they should lead users to answers that are helpful to resolve your customers’ pain points.
   
   
5. Use the Right Images — Ones of real people that work for your company and the office itself — this will generate your customers’ trust. Make sure the images fit the messages you are conveying.
   
   
6. Use White Space as a Benefit — Whitespace is an essential design element that helps break up the page and increase readability. Also, strangely known as ‘negative space’, white space refers to the areas around elements on a page that are empty and lacking content or visual items. However, this space helps with readability and content prioritisation. It also plays an important role in the design process and positioning website design elements. Strip out what isn’t necessary to the purpose of the page or to your plan in 1.
   
   
7. Mobile Optimisation — Ensure your website is user friendly on a mobile devise — obvious? — I have discovered many sites which are not! “Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead”.
   
   
8. SEO Strategy — Identify the proper keywords first that your audience is actually searching for. This strategy should also include creating content that’s relevant to the needs of your visitors; videos, blog articles, and e-books are a few examples of content that can do this.
   
   
9. Write for YOUR Audience — Use ‘You’ and ‘Your’. Explain what you can do for them and how your business solution will resolve your customers’ pain points — subconsciously this will enhance how your customers see your business.
   
   
10. Testing— Evaluating conversion paths, how far users scroll, and where they are clicking, etc, are important qualities that can reveal if your pages are performing the way you intended. Your pages may contain out dated information or simply need some tweaking or design changes.

So how does your site stack up? — Speak to Strides Empower Ltd for a no obligation assessment of your site. https://stridesempower.com/