Most Digital Marketing Specialists focus on optimising content and the structural elements on each page when performing onsite Search Engine Optimisation(SEO) work. While these factors, along with the visual layout of your website, are very important, performance is equally critical. If your site loads slowly or, even worse, fails to load at all, your other efforts will have been in vain.

Ensuring That Performance Is Not the Weak Link in the Chain

When evaluating the performance of your website you should look at three main factors:

• Speed – How long it takes a page to load is one of the most important factors to address when focusing on site performance. If you have ever waited more than a few seconds for a page to load, you are in a minority. Many studies have been conducted on the effect of load times on visitor behaviour and although the figures they have come up with are not identical, they do all point to the fact that the slower a website’s pages load, the higher the abandonment rates will be among those who are trying to purchase something on that site. This is useful to know, but what how can you improve loading speeds for your website?
  The amount of time that it takes for a page to load depends on a number of factors, some of which are outside the webmaster’s control. The factors that you can control include page elements such as images and flash animations. If your images are too large or you have too many animations, you need to do something about it quickly because they can both dramatically increase load times. You also need to ensure that your backend database is not slowing down the delivery of dynamic content: poorly structured queries and inefficient database designs can both extend the amount of time that it takes to retrieve information.
• Compatibility – When asked what is a digital marketing strategy, the majority of industry specialists will stress the importance of reaching as many consumers as possible and how this should be the core goal of any effective online strategy. If you are to achieve this goal, you need to make sure that your website renders correctly on all browsers and all devices that are used to access the Internet. In other words, it should work just as well on a tablet and smartphone as it does on a high-definition PC monitor.
• Site Uptime – While page loading times are extremely important, what is even more important is that they are actually available. Site downtime is the biggest killer as far as traffic and conversions are concerned and has the capacity to stop a digital marketing campaign dead in its tracks.

While page loading times and compatibility issues can both be addressed by competent web development specialists, uptime is normally the province of the network administrator. Working with a digital agency that can deal with all these factors will of course make it much easier for you to maximise the performance of your website.