Everybody knows WordPress. It's used by bloggers, businesses, ecommerce companies, designers and site administrators to expand their online presence. It's an easy-to-use tool that gives site visitors a great experience, but that great experience hinges on having the necessary elements in place that will lead to building a dedicated audience. Thinking about the consumer first and then how to maintain ties to her is essentially how your WordPress strategy should be working. Here we'll examine the five crucial ways to improve your WordPress site and stay current on the latest developments.
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Plugging in
Using plug-ins you can take your site's functionality to new levels. Whether you use Breadcrumbs to drive traffic to your site, Akismet to filter spam or Ajax for contact forms, plug-ins can make your website more productive and fun. The plug-in ShareThis, which allows customers to share content via their favorite social network, can increase your customer base and keep you from bogging down your site with too many plug-ins.
Navigation
Navigating a site with ease can be the difference between a conversion and a bounce. In the interest of SEO and user experience, your site's navigation should be focused on seven items and marketing analytics software can help you decide what those seven times should be. Statistics show that website visitors view pages at the beginning and end of the navigation list the most. Also, SEO is important when labeling navigation links. Prioritize the items, their order and word choice in a way that makes sense to your customers.
Speed and load times
You have only one chance to provide your customers with an engaging experience on your website. You'll lose customers if your site isn't prepared to handle an influx of traffic and content without crashing. Evaluate your WordPress hosting service before a major launch to make sure it can support high levels of traffic and rich media content. Hiring a dependable provider can mean the difference between great traffic and low levels of activity. Architectures such as NoSQL make it possible for Web content management systems like WordPress to perform under the stress of extreme traffic.
24/7 availability and mobile access
If you've done any Web design, you'll know that all browsers don't deliver Web content the same way. A visitor viewing your site on a laptop via Mozilla will have a vastly different experience than a visitor viewing your site on a smartphone via Internet Explorer. Optimize the layouts and content of your website to each browser. In some cases, mobile devices like smartphones will need to be directed to separate websites. Optimizing your site for cross-platform access will provide users with the best experience.
Providing the right content
A visitor to a website is looking for something specific and it's your job to provide that content. Yet quality content is only part of the equation. One of the best ways of determining the effectiveness of your content is a WordPress plug-in such as Facebook Comments for WordPress. It enables your visitors to share comments about your content while allowing you to monitor the way your social media audience interacts with it. Twitter and Facebook also allow you to network with other businesses in your industry and keep up with current trends. You can also become involved in conversations your visitors have started. In the end, WordPress makes visiting your website a better experience for everyone.