Two of our priorities here at Ghost Blog Writers last year were to 1) improve website speed and 2) get a responsive website.
In the spring we changed hosts to Synthesis, which is a company that specializes in WordPress hosting. From the very first moment we moved our site became faster. I don’t know how all the magic works behind the scenes, but I do know that our site is faster.
In August we launched our new website redesign, which was really just an update based on things we’d learned about our sales process the last couple years. But the biggest change was the responsive design.
Responsive design gave the website a better experience for smartphone users. If you’re like most people today you browse the web on your phone. And many of the sites you visit will still have their desktop design. It’s not ideal. Many desktop sites aren’t even usable on smartphone browsers.
So we wanted to get away from that and focus on the future, which is more people using their smartphones to access the web.
Now there has been an interesting study out on the topic of web use shared in eMarketer.
Faster Connection = More Use
In the UK, 4G mobile access has led to an increased usage of the mobile web.
It makes sense.
Remember back in the late ’90s and early ’00s when you had the old AOL phone line access to the web? Maybe it was just my family, but I remember using the web a lot back then or at least I thought I did.
When I first got access to broadband Internet it was a revelation. I thought I had used the Internet a lot before, but once access became faster I was really zipping through pages on the web.
That’s what’s happening with faster mobile connections.
And here’s the thing – it’s only going to get faster.
Technology is improving. We’re going to get faster connections.
There is a catch, though…
Your Website Priorities Going Forward
Do you want more website traffic?
Of course you do. If you don’t I’m not sure why you have a business website to begin with. In general, more traffic means more new customers. That’s how it works for many businesses including ours at GBW.
We focus our blogging efforts to bring our target customer to the site. We write about the topics they (you) care about. And the chances are that the person is also interested in growing their business with blogging.
Now, if a faster website and a smartphone-optimized website can get us more traffic than it makes sense to do it.
That’s why we got a better host and a responsive website last year.
And it’s helped. Our website traffic has doubled since last year and those two changes are part of the reason for it along with other factors like more blog posts, better blog posts, more blog marketing, more people online, etc.
So those are your two action steps going forward:
1) Improve your site speed with a better host.
2) Get a responsive website design.