As the sizzling weather of summer wanes, we can look forward to the cool, crisp temperatures of fall. As temperatures decrease, many people start preparing for the changing of the seasons. You might “switch out” your closet, replacing shorts and t-shirts with pants and sweaters. You may also winterize your home, checking pipes and outdoor faucets, disconnecting hoses, and checking the windows and insulation. If you own a small business, another important thing to check is your website.
(Pixabay / ShenXin)
As people spend more time indoors in late fall and winter, they may also spend more time at their computer shopping, not only because of the cold weather but because of the approaching holidays. Black Friday and Cyber Monday will drive up sales, and continuing Christmas purchases will keep e-commerce websites hopping.
Here are some tips to “spruce up” or tune up your website to work more efficiently for seasonal increases in traffic.
Optimize your Website
For starters, make sure that your website is working quickly. A website that opens in slow motion or gets stuck when loading images will be a significant turn-off to shoppers. You can ascertain your website’s speed by running some quick tests. GTmetrix can help you with this testing process and give you feedback about your site’s performance.
W3C Compliance
It is imperative that your HTML and CSS are in line with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. The consortium sets the international standards for the Web. By ensuring that your website is W3C compliant, you’ll keep your website user-friendly across a variety of computers and mobile devices.
Optimizing Images
Improve your website for the holiday season by optimizing the images. Many websites lose potential customers because the images, including the thumbnails, load very slowly. A slow-loading website may not only cost you customers, it could also cause your search engine rankings to slip. Using image optimization plug-ins could help solve the problem of slow-loading images.
On a Mac? We recommend ImageOptim. Using WordPress? We recommend Smush.