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10+ Professional Secrets to Beat the Competition!
There are millions of websites, and depending on your niche thousands of competitors trying to steal your business!
15 seconds is all it takes for visitors to bounce (leave) from your website to a competitor's website.
So how do you prevent your potential customers from leaving? How do you beat the competition?
That's exactly what this article covers!
After we're done you'll have what it takes to stand out from the crowd and beat your competition!
Optimizing Speed is an absolute MUST
How do you feel when you're stuck in traffic, waiting for the car in front of you to finally start moving forward?
Or after one too many hungry minutes waiting on a server to bring out the meal you ordered an hour and a half ago?
Most feel absolutely irritated, some honk their horns (in the case of traffic), others leave bad Yelp reviews (in the case of long restaurant wait times).
This internal need for swift results is ingrained within us.
And here's the thing -- we're even more impatient for websites!
Slow loading pages are notorious for causing visitors to jump ship, and quickly swim to competitor sites.
Consequently, slow speed leads to poor search engine rankings.
So the takeaway is speed is very important for your website!
Keep reading to learn what your website needs to outrun the competition!
Speed: Compress images
Compressing images of all sizes is a major boost, that can tremedously help in speeding up your website.
Images take time to fully load, so by compressing your images you reduce the corresponding lag.
Just make sure that when compressing your images the image quality is not severely impacted.
Speed: Cache
Cache is a type of temporary memory that helps in serving frequently accessed data faster.
By having a caching system setup your visitors automatically store static pieces of your site on their browsers.
When they return to your site, the caching system will automatically parse the stored cache, and render your page that much faster.
Caching can significantly improve user experience by upgrading your site's speed across the board.
Speed: Lazy Loading
Typically, when a web page is opened, all page content is loaded and processed simultaneously.
This means that if you have 10 images on your page the browser must first download the images in full as well as the rest of the content BEFORE it displays the results to the visitor.
This can result in a pretty big bottleneck, especially if you have more than 1 image, video, or media file.
That's why leveraging lazy loading is a really good idea.
The concept is only load what the user sees!
When the user begins scrolling to the new content, immediately load it in, so it shows up just as they scroll to it.
Like this your page loads quickly, and your user is none the wiser!
In practice, pages are integrated with placeholder content, once the user scrolls, the placeholders are immediately swapped with actual content!
Speed: Minify files
Just as with compressing images, minifying files is another great way to minimize your site's footprint, and speed up it's load time.
Minification is the process of removing redundant or unnecessary code without influencing the way it’s interpreted by the browser.
Here a couple measures developers take to minify code.
- removing unused code
- limiting/removing code comments
- using shorter functions
- removing line breaks
- single letter variable
- function renaming
Minifying files helps decrease the overall file size and thereby improves your website's speed.
Now that we've sufficiently covered speed, let's discuss other factors that heavily impact your site's influence.
SEO
SEO is the practice of growing both the quantity and quality of your website traffic through organic and inorganic means.
The traffic in turn brings more business and exposure to your brand.
SEO is all about refining your content to meet search engine criteria, understanding your niche, and professionally leveraging industry-approved tools -- to get your site ranked higher on Google (as well as other search engines).
To stay ahead of your competition, you need to pay good attention to the SEO on your website.
As such here's some golden nuggets that'll help your site reach more potential customers!
(Below are just a couple awesome SEO tips, if you're looking for even MORE tips - check this SEO article!)
SEO: Keywords
The specific keywords your pages utilize directly correspond to whether they're displayed on relevant search results.
The issue most of the time is that most short phrased keywords are so competitive, that they're basically impossible to rank for.
If you tried to have your site show up in results for the keywords - hair loss - you'd likely have a better chance waiting for your own hair loss.
So here's a pro tip - use variations in your keywords and use unexpected long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords are longer keyword phrases that typically aren't as competitive, and can still push in traffic!
For example if you wanted to rank for a dog training service, instead of trying to rank for dog trainer, you'd likely be better off focusing on something like -- best dog trainer in NJ (longer = less competition)
Above all, keep exploring the keyword possibilities, and analyze your results using analytics.
SEO: Google Ads
Paid advertisement is another way of reaching more potential customers and staying ahead of your competitors.
Ads are known as inorganic SEO, as they basically correspond to paying for SEO, where as organic SEO corresponds to search engines organically parsing the value of your site.
That being said, inorganic SEO can be just as effective as organic SEO, when integrated appropriately.
Google Ads is a powerful platform that allows you to setup and run custom ads that show up in search results.
By leveraging Google ads you'll be able to reach a greater audience at a fraction of the time!
SEO: Facebook Ads
Facebook ads are also a proven way of incorporating inorganic SEO.
As it allows you choose the target audience, budget and user action required.
Be sure to leverage both Google and Facebook Ads in order to be one step ahead of the competition.
Just keep in mind that not all ad campaigns are created equal, some may need a bit of refinement and optimization to align with your target audience!
So don't be afraid to test the waters, as your results can make it all worth the while!
Design
The design of your site is your user's first impression of your business.
Regardless of your content, the audience will subconsciously judge your business in a matter of seconds -- solely based on your design.
It may not consciously invoke a reaction, though their initial impression will undoubtly influence how they decide to interact with your site
As such, it's crucial to make good first impression in the first couple seconds.
Design: UI / UX
UI and UX are short for User Interface and User Experience.
User experience (UX) denotes the experience a person has interacting with your software application.
User Interface (UI) is the graphical bridge between your frontend and the UX.
These 2 concepts are pillars in web design.
Good user interface equals good user experience, which equals greater potential for your visitors to act in accordance to your business's goals.
Design for CONVENIENCE
Design with convenience and as much simplicity in mind as possible!
Make it easy for your great grandma to use your site -- by doing so you round off the edges, and invite better results.
Some examples of designing for convenience:
- allow visitors to find relevant information or products in a single click.
- showcase your offerings and services on your landing page.
- make your sitemap clear and convenient.
- have breadcrumbs!
- iron out your navigation and put it somewhere users can see it.
Design: Convey Quality
One of the most important secrets to being ahead of your competitors is presenting the utmost quality.
How does Starbucks charge 3-5 times as much as their competition?
They convey quality through their design!
Want to get 3-5 times as many customers as your competition, then you have to look the part.
Make sure your website provides the best quality service AND design.
Embrace The Holy Triage: Speed, SEO, Design!
To overwhelm your competition, a good website consisting of stellar speed, effective SEO, and professional design are all highly recommended.
- Speed caters to your customers need for immediate results.
- SEO ensures your users see you first on search engines (before your competition!)
- Design reinforces your brand's authenticity and facilitates interactions go as smoothly as possible!
Although there's always room to improvement (to further increase your business's margin of success),
By leveraging these industry approved methods, your website will blow your competition out of the water in no time!