Google has been preaching the benefits of fast and mobile friendly sites for some time now. With the percentage of users coming to websites on mobile devices increasing, having a mobile-friendly site is a must. As of April 21, 2015, Google will use mobile responsiveness as a signal in their ranking algorithm.
Website Optimization
Case Study: WordPress Theme Optimization
WordPress is the most popular CMS on the Web, with over 60 million users (Wikipedia 2015). WordPress websites use themes to control their look and feel and display the underlying content in the database. Designers can choose from thousands of free or paid themes, or create their own with the requisite skill. Themes come in all shapes and sizes, and therein lies the problem. This article shows the importance of choosing a lightweight theme for faster performance.
Empirical Study of Web Site Speed on Search Engine Rankings – website performance and seo rankings
Having search engine visibility is critical for website success. Search visibility is due to many ranking factors, including speed. Until recently the effects of website performance on rankings have been poorly understood. This article summarizes an empirical study of web site load times on search rankings. The study found that website crawl time and its variability correlates with search ranking position.
Case Study: Responsive Design of PhillyDentistry.com Results
Last time we tested the performance of a responsive redesign of PhillyDentistry.com. The new home page design was nearly twice as fast to load. In Part II of this series, we’ll explore the effects of the responsive design on other important metrics.
Case Study: PhillyDensitry.com Responsive Redesign
Previously we explored the effects of a responsive design on PhiladelphiaOrthodontists.com. We found mobile traffic increased from 20% to 24% after the redesign. This time we look at another responsive redesign, PhillyDentistry.com. In part I, we’ll explore the speed improvements of the new design. In Part II we’ll explore other improvements.
Healthcare.gov One Year Performance Review
Millions of Americans wanting to enroll in Obamacare use the healthcare.gov official website. Just over one year ago, health care consumers were directed to log on to the healthcare.gov website starting on October 1, 2013. The healthcare.gov website experienced growing pains after its initial launch. Starting November 15, 2014 citizens were directed to the healthcare.gov website to enroll or reapply to avoid penalties for not having “minimum essential coverage.” This article compares the website performance of healthcare.gov one year later. How does the popular site fare after one year of improvements?
Case Study: PhiladelphiaOrthodontists.com Mobile Responsive Redesign
Responsive web site design is the practice of laying out your website with DIVs and CSS rules to work seamlessly on both desktop and mobile devices. Responsive designs transform the same content using CSS to linearize layouts, hide features, and create mobile-friendly buttons and click-to-call features useful on mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. This article shows a case study of PhiladelphiOrthodontists.com which was converted from a static HTML site to a WordPress responsive site.
Case Study: Walkerworldtrade.com Server Upgrade
Website performance issues can often be traced to inadequate or overloaded hosting. Upgrading to a faster server is one of the easiest ways to improve website performance. This article uses Google Analytics to document the speed increases from moving Walkerworldtrade.com from conventional shared hosting to higher speed shared hosting (see Figure 1).
Form Conversion Rate Optimization
Optimizing conversion rates is a great way to boost your leads without spending more on advertising. Your website’s conversion rate is the percentage of people that “drink the koolaid” and click, buy, download, or subscribe to a call to action. Forms and shopping carts are an ideal place to apply conversion rate optimization techniques. This article shows how form simplification and speed can boost conversion rates by more than 90%.
Upgrade to a Faster Server: Results
Last time we explored the effects of upgrading to a faster server on the home page of PhillyDentistry.com. We found a significant improvement in response times for the home page, over 60% faster in first paint times and nearly 30% faster in load times. This time we look deeper into the effects of the faster server on the performance and audience behavior for the entire web site.