How to Tell if Your WordPress Website Is Live
User Experience (UX)
When a website visitor comes back later to add an item to their shopping cart or to checkout, or to share an article on social media, the goal is to make the experience as easy and enjoyable as possible. The UX of a website is often considered to be the quality of its design and user interface. For example, Uber famously focuses a great deal of time and attention on ensuring that their app is extremely easy to use and is designed to satisfy the needs of their customers. They call this approach ‘affordance’ and the idea is that if you can easily grasp how to use a product or service you will have a much better experience and be more likely to use it. In the same way, you want to ensure that your online store is intuitive and simple to use so that when a customer visits your website, they do so with the best experience in mind.
Content
In addition to UX, you also need to consider the content of your website. The content on your site drives the majority of its traffic and determines its overall appeal. To put it simply, you need to make sure that the content on your site is engaging and of high quality. For example, if you are selling pet products, you will want to ensure that the written content (e.g. blog posts, FAQs, etc) is packed with valuable information about pets and veterinary care. You may even consider outsourcing this content to writers who are experienced in creating informative and authoritative content for websites. Creating original and unique content that will make customers want to return is an essential part of having a successful blog. Make sure that you are consistently putting out high-quality and unique content (e.g. no re-blogs from other sites) so that when a customer comes back, they will see your content and visit your site again. You can also use tools like Google Analytics to track content performance and determine the value of different types of content to your business. For example, did a YouTube video help you to attract more leads or did a blog post about making a sales presentation help to increase conversion rates.
Functionality
Once you have quality content, you can start to think about the functionality of your website. Essentially, this refers to the features that your site possesses that allow a user to carry out a specified task. For example, if you sell pet products, you will want to ensure that the blog posts, FAQs, and other content that you create are all fully functional and able to be used by a customer who is searching for information about pets or who is using your product. One of the best website builders for small businesses is Wix, and one of the main reasons for this is due to their extensive and highly functional website templates. With Wix, you can literally build a fully functioning eCommerce store, an online store, or even a blog in minutes. These templates make it extremely easy for anyone to create a professional-looking online presence, regardless of their knowledge or experience in website design. In addition to speed, Wix also offers features such as multi-language support and free hosting which makes it a no-brainer for anyone who is looking for an easy-to-use website builder.
Usability
Finally, we come to the last but not least factor that you need to consider before you can say that your website is ready. This is usability. In terms of your website’s usability, you need to make sure that everything is easy to understand and accessible to your target audience. This means that your site needs to be usable by all ages and abilities. For example, if you are writing for a younger audience, you may want to ensure that the text is simpler and more appealing to them. One of the best toolkits that you can use to test your website’s usability is Sitemaps, which will create a map of all the pages on your site so that you can see which ones are most frequently visited and more importantly, so that you can see which ones need the most work. In terms of eCommerce stores, UX and usability go hand in hand and it is extremely important to ensure that when a customer comes to your store, they have the best experience possible. For this reason, you will want to use tools like Google Analytics to track every action that a user takes (e.g. which products they click on, how many pages they visit, etc) so that you can prioritize your work accordingly. In general, the more that you can do to improve the UX of your website, the more successful you will be in the long run.