Website optimization is the sum of activities that seek to improve the way the website is performing in various business aspects from technical to marketing. Companies engage in this type of process because highly optimized websites yield a higher ROI. Very often, the degree of website optimization is the only difference between a highly profitable company and a bankrupt one.
Types of website optimization
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) seeks to improve the chances of conversions (sales) to take place on the website by improving user experience. The main activity of CRO is A/B testing in which different versions of a page are tested against each other in order to see which one performs best. Some key aspects that are taken into consideration by CRO are copywriting, relevancy, trust level, urgency and (the lack of) website clutter.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seeks to make the website search engine friendly in order for it to rank in organic search results. It consists of mainly two types of optimization: on-site and off-site. On-site refers to improving the code in such a way that search engines can easily understand what the website is about. Off-site optimization refers mostly to the activity of link-building which seeks to increase the number of links that are pointing to the website from other domains, this being one of the key metrics that search engines rank sites.
Technical optimization refers mostly to improve the website from a technical point of view. For example optimizing tech resources such as cloud servers or 3rd party applications, important savings in monthly tech costs can be reached. Another type of technical optimization is improving the site loading speed by a series of activities such as minimizing images, bundling similar types of code, replacing older and less efficient types of code. Site speed is directly linked with conversion rates, so having a faster loading site means getting more sales from the same amount of traffic. Furthermore, site speed is also an important factor that search engines take into consideration, so faster sites tend to rank better.
Website optimization tools
Since website optimization is such an important part of any online business, numerous 3rd party tools have been created with the aim of helping business owners improve their websites. Some of the earliest website optimization tools are related to SEO and offer a wide array of services such as on-page optimization tips, competitor research, backlink analysis, rank tracking, etc. Other tools such as the Google Analytics help business owners gather data about their users while others offer website speed improvement tips.
In terms of CRO, some of the most popular tools offer the possibility of easily implementing A/B testing experiments. But other features such as website personalization, customer surveys, and advanced segmentation are also in high demand. One such tool, offering all these CRO features is Omniconvert, an all-in-one platform that covers most CRO needs a business might have.
