Every website that has high ranked on the search windows has something in common. They all have been working towards improving the functionality.
Building a WordPress website is a great option for future proofing your site. Pay attention to the following tips to improve WordPress functionality to drive more visits on a site.
Stats suggest that out of the top rated websites on the search option more than 25 % uses WordPress which is a huge number.
Now think about this more than 50% of the total websites built using the same platform for creating their website.
Now the main question arises what are they doing differently? The one thing that is definitely doing is not directly uploading the templates provided by WordPress.
The visitors to any website have a lot of demands; they have become choosy and demands better experience each time.
They want speed-optimization, higher functionality, visual appeal etc. To ensure that the users are getting what they want and keeping the website a step ahead of the competition there are few tips that website owners can follow.
1) Choose a reliable Host: – A reliable and best hosting service is an important factor that determines the functionality.
The options are numerous and they all have different price plans. Think about the features you want with your website. The plans can thus be chosen according to that.
Think about the budget that you have for your project according to that chosen a plan but do not comprise on the features. The option that is available for low budget is a shared hosting plan.
The option is good for small projects which do not have a flow of income. This is a good starting strategy when the website needs a new audience.
The web hosting plans should have regular backups. This safeguards the website content from hackers. To protect the valuable information and the image of the website the steps are important.
To have the website protected from hacking and other vulnerabilities choose a plan that has been providing backing up for that. The plans also determine the loading speed of the website.
The website loading times goes a long way in adding to the visitor’s experience and thus the hosting plan should help load the website faster.
The visitors do not wait for a second extra and immediately move to the competitor’s site and if you do not want that then use a hosting service that loads the page in less than 3 seconds.
2) Use of plugins thoughtfully: – The WordPress users have many free plugins that they can utilize. The count increases with premium services and themes. They are easy to install and add functionality to the website.
The plugins could include a form, store locator, contact form, booking service, chat, etc. The idea here is to be selective while choosing the right plugin, a great strategy is to combine the functionality into one.
The use of many plugins is not always a bad idea but it increases the efforts that go in while testing the updates. It slows that process down and indirectly affects the speed and functionality of the website.
3) Use responsive designs: – WordPress is primarily a blogging platform which was designed for bigger screens and not necessarily as a mobile-friendly solution.
The fact still remains the fact that most of the visitors are using these small screens to access these sites. Now an important thing every website owner should do is install third-party plugins to the dashboard so that the website s fits well on other devices.
There are a lot of plugins that are available that one can choose from that contains these features and are highly responsive.
The new websites are coming with mobile first designs which are higher on functionality, the existing designs also have a lot of support to be accessible to various different devices.
4) Social Media integration:- It is unlikely that any visitor does not have a social media account. The integration with these personal accounts of the website will allow higher visibility and easy access for the visitors.
The visitors then gets a personal connect with the brand which creates loyalty. There are sharing options which allow customers to click on their preferences, the widgets display new additions to the webpage on the social profiles with permission this creates higher connectivity.
The use of login here ensures that the registration form process can be eliminated as the required data is collected and a login is created with the right website.
There is basic social media integration in the themes but users can find the ones which are more suitable for them from different directories. Since it is easy to include them on the website it is a great move.
5) Focus on navigation: – The first-time visitors should find it easy to go through the site and reach the correct information they have been looking for.
The recognizable and intuitive patterns will improve the user’s experience with the website and the loyalty and continuity will be made.
There is no need to beat yourself to find the navigation genie, it is simple and it should be placed right on the top of the website page.
This is where the users intend to find it and this is where it should be. Include categories, archives, and breadcrumbs for enhancement of the feature.
Use Ajax-based search box next to the navigation panel for the ones who quickly want to move to what they have in mind instead of looking around.
Keep it simple and clean, there is always functionality over form. Do not overdo things that might confuse the visitors.
While you are improving the website use SEO techniques that will help you boast the visitors in no time. Maintain the balance in the race of getting something done do not miss out on other things.
Keep your website updates, regular updates have many benefits. It keeps the functionality in place and also safeguards the website from unwanted threats.
The bugs are fixed new features added are included in the website which directly and positively affects the functionality of the website.
There are many tools available to the users they should choose them wisely and discreetly to create a better website.
