When did you last go to the doctor for a health check? If you’re like me, maybe you only visit the doctor when you are not feeling too well. Our partners often encourage us to have regular health checks, especially the older we get. There mightn't be anything wrong, but it’s still good to look under the hood to make sure everything is working ok - a preventative measure. We should treat our website in the same way. We spend valuable time designing, building and maintaining our sites, and our consumers spend time searching our websites, and we expect them to perform at 100%, but we also forget about checking under the hood to make sure they are working to the level we expect them to.

So, if you haven't looked under the hood recently, here are some key areas you should be checking

• Understanding Your Website Google Analytics. It is important to understand how your website is performing across a number of metrics - who your audience is, where they come from and what is their behaviour throughout your site. Understanding these key metrics will ensure your website is performing, being fully optimised and meeting the needs of your audience.  
• Website Speed. They generally say up to 40% of consumers leave a page if it takes too long to load!" If your website is slow in loading consumers will get frustrated and opt out. A quick health check on the load speed enables you to check whether your website is loading quickly and identifies areas that require optimising.
• Mobile Responsive. Expert has this one covered as since around 2014 all their website builds are built to be mobile friendly. However, very quickly sites can get out of sync, so it is still worth regularly testing them as Google will reduce traffic to your site if it is not mobile responsive.
• Keyword Optimisation. It is critical to have the right key words on your pages to optimise the search capability of your visitors, ensuring the key phrases being searched are on your website and appear in the URL, browser title, and within the page itself. Not having keyword optimisation will reduce the search capability for your audience and potentially have an impact on your business.
• PageRank. This is used by Google to determine your place in the search ranking and your site’s importance across the web. A high ranking will ensure your website is at the top of any Google search by your audience; this can be achieved organically by maximising your keyword optimisation over time, or through a paid environment - Google Adwords. If your site, after key word searches, is not listed in the top 10, then your site will not be seen by your consumers, whereas your competitors’ sites might be. 
• Page Errors and Broken Links. Often when something is broken it will not work properly or to the level we expect it to. A page on your website can also be broken, showing coding errors which will reduce the user navigation or leave a bad impression of your website and business. Like any business, first impressions count. It is unprofessional if we don't deliver a fully functioning site to our customers.

So, when did you last look under your hood and check your website’s health and whether it is performing and being fully optimised? Scary thought, I know, but I wonder how much business you have turned away from a poor performing site?

Expert is fortunate to have access to one of the best marketing and sales experts around, Warren McDonald. Warren has created a website health check that he has made available to Expert clients. He’s also able to work one-to-one with organisations who want to get the most out of their website, or need advice on sales and marketing processes.

If you’d like to discuss your website’s health, contact Expert and we’ll put you in touch with Warren.