WordPress Website Scanner: It’s Not Just for Blogs Anymore

WordPress has always been a bit of a Swiss Army knife of blogging: it’s been around for a while, it has a lot of functionality, and it has applications for just about every kind of website or blog you could imagine. But it’s not just for blogs anymore. Thanks to a few great plugins and the emergence of static site generators, it’s possible to take advantage of WordPress’ power without needing to be tied to the backend services that platform depends on.

If you’re looking for a content management system (CMS) that can grow with you as your business does, with features that rival those of expensive proprietary solutions, then WordPress is the CMS for you.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. As great as WordPress is, it can still be a challenge to optimize it for websites that rely on mobile users to access content. And let’s face facts: not everyone can (or wants to) set up a full-fledged WordPress installation on their computer just to run a web property.

That’s where a service like GoSquared’s WordPress Website Scanner comes in. With a single click of the button, you can have a complete analysis of how your WordPress site is performing from a mobile user’s perspective. All you need is a WordPress blog or website to test with. And best of all, it’s completely free.

What Is WordPress Website Scanner?

If you’ve followed the WordPress news in the last year, you’ll know that the platform has undergone some pretty major revisions to accommodate mobile users. Gone are the days of slow loading times and frustrating glitches that prevented you from doing anything on your site while it loaded up. Nowadays, pages rarely if ever fail to load completely, and even if they do, the glitches are usually minor and easy to fix. For the most part, WordPress is fast and stable enough to be a reliable web presence in spite of its age.

One of the biggest changes WordPress has made is in the way it handles websites that are mobile-first. Back in the day, if you wanted to create a responsive website, you would need to deploy a separate, dedicated WordPress installation for mobile users. That’s because WordPress assumes that all content will be accessed via a desktop machine, and it wasn’t particularly designed to serve up content to users on their phones.

The good news is that WordPress has addressed this issue. There are now special directories and tags designed for mobile users, so when a WordPress user lands on your site, they will automatically feel as though they’re browsing your content on a phone. This is a massive improvement over the days when desktop users would see huge banner ads and auto-play videos when they loaded up a mobile version of a site.

Mobile users also have an entire WordPress dashboard specifically designed for them. The bad news is that most of this functionality is locked away from standard use.

Thankfully, there are a few exceptions. One of the best things about the WordPress dashboard is the ability to create and manage posts and pages using the touch screen. It is very easy to use and feels just like using an app on your phone. Another great feature, which makes managing posts on the go much easier, is the embedded media manager. This allows you to upload images, videos, and other files directly from your phone and insert them directly into a post or page. You can choose which ones to display, and the post or page will automatically refresh when you select a new image or video to feature.

These features make WordPress Website Scanner a special tool for bloggers who want to write and schedule content while on the go. Whether you’re a recreational or professional blogger, you can benefit from this service. When you’re finished, you can export all of your blog posts and pages in a single HTML file for archival purposes.

Why Should You Test Your WordPress Blog From a Mobile Perspective?

There are a few good reasons why you should test your WordPress blog from a mobile perspective. For one thing, backlinks are extremely important for SEO purposes. When Googlebot crawls your site, it will look for signs of quality and consistency. Building links to your content from other websites is considered ‘link building.’ When you’re doing link building, you’re essentially trying to get other websites to link to your blog or website. You can do this via email, social media, or even through some really cool widgets that you can add to your site. As you might imagine, widgets that attract links are quite popular nowadays.

When a web user lands on your site and sees that you have a lot of interesting content, they will most likely want to stay and read more. From a mobile user’s perspective, this is referred to as a ‘long-click’ or a ‘scroll-down-click.’ These scenarios result in a much more successful conversion than an ‘exit-intent’ cookie, which closes down the webpage the user was on prior to their visit to your site. That’s because a ‘scroll-down-intent’ is a lot less likely to be cancelled when the user is actually engaged with your content.

Another advantage of mobile-testing is that you can get real-time feedback on how a given design or feature of your website is performing. This is especially useful for smaller blogs, where UI and UX matters because there isn’t necessarily a designer on staff to create beautiful banners and buttons. Testing on a mobile device also means that you can directly compare user experience (UX) on different platforms, since all screens are the same size. This makes it easier to isolate issues and identify opportunities for improvement. For example, you might discover that a responsive design is much easier to use on a mobile device than on a computer. Or, you might find that a particular color scheme performs much better than you’d expect given the computer’s screen size.

Also, if you’re not performing well, it might be a good idea to re-evaluate your entire marketing strategy. One of the main reasons why Google favors responsive web design is because they feel that websites perform better overall when used on mobile devices. If you’re serious about growing your business, then it might be worth considering a paid upgrade to a premium account with GoSquared, which provides you with real-time traffic reports, enhanced functionality for your posts and pages, and additional features.

How Does WordPress Website Scanner Work?

WordPress Website Scanner is a simple tool that leverages Google Analytics to provide website traffic data. To use the tool, you will need to have a WordPress blog or website that is publicly accessible via the web. Also, you will need to have installed the Google Analytics tracking code on your site. Once these items are in place, all you need to do is click the button below to get started.

A few things will happen once you click that button. First, you will be redirected to the Google Analytics dashboard for your blog or website. Second, you will see a popup explaining that Google has sent you to their site to learn more about their product. Third, you will see a second popup confirming that you want to continue using Google’s products. Finally, you will see a Google Analytics cookie, with a unique ID that’ll enable them to track your activities on their site. This is an important point: Google will track your activities on their site whether you have an account or not. Even if you’ve never used their products or services, you will still be subject to their tracking practices. So it’s important to remember that you’re authorizing Google to track your activities.

If you follow the steps above, you will have configured Google Analytics to track your activities on a mobile device. From here, you can simply access your reports to see the data on how visitors use your site.