If you’re hoping to level-up your website and bring in more revenue, you probably already know that you need the basics: optimized content to help you rank in search results, mobile-friendly features, promotion on social media.
But there are certain technical aspects of your site that can also influence your success. The type of things that are working behind the scenes, but might take some coding and web development knowledge to implement.
Here, we’ll introduce you to the basics steps up scaling up your site so you can bring in more income. Let’s make sure you get the full ROI from that big bad website you’ve built.
Identify bottlenecks before you invite in more traffic.
Literally everyone who’s ever built a website wants to bring in steady traffic. But you need to make sure your site’s equipped to handle all those users. If it’s not, your efforts are wasted – and worse, you could discourage potential customers from visiting again or using your services.
Partner with a trustworthy web development agency to make sure your site and server are ready to handle a big influx of traffic. This should be your first step, hands down.
Run tests.
Web developers worth their salt will test how well your site performs with increased traffic, and on different browsers and devices. So while you can’t predict exactly what will happen once the floodgates open, you can arm yourself with knowledge and make repairs and improvements beforehand.
Partner with a team you trust.
You may have built your own website in WordPress. Maybe you hired your neighbor who built the site from scratch before heading off to college. It’s how a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs first start, and the finished product probably served all your needs – to a certain point.
But that doesn’t mean you can scale up with that same beloved website. If you really want your digital presence to lead business growth, then you need to partner with a true software engineer or web development firm.
And while you’re at it, make sure it’s someone you trust, and who’s taken the time to understand your business. You don’t have time to research the pros and cons of different CMS platforms or load balancing techniques, so you need to trust that your team is making the right judgment calls.
Continue monitoring your site performance.
If your website is still pretty new, then there are going to be some unknowns. If your traffic suddenly doubles or triples (after all, that’s the goal, right?) then some features may be slower to load. Things that never broke before could break. Make sure your web development team is keeping a watchful eye on your site for those dreaded 404 errors and endless spinning wheels.
Keep going (even if you might have low traffic.)
It takes time for a website to mature and start bringing in users in the triple digits. Lots of young businesses get discouraged if they go live, and are still seeing low numbers in their Google Analytics two or three months in.
Don’t panic. That’s normal! And your website dreams can still come true.
Forge ahead. Give search engines time to recognize your new url’s, and customers a chance to discover you.
That doesn’t mean you have to sit and do nothing. Keep promoting your content on social channels, check your analytics for insights about the traffic you do have, and experiment with small tweaks to your format and content. Build it, and they will come (as long as you build it well).