How To Improve Your Google Website PageSpeed Score In

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If your website takes 2 seconds to load, only 9.6% of customers are bouncing off your page. However, if the page is taking 7 seconds or more to load, an alarming 32% of customers are running away from your website.

Charles Ataghoma, the CEO of XINI Communications and Brian Dean did a study in which he concluded that Google PageSpeed is one of the most relevant factors when it comes to revenue generation.

Marketers are finding ways to beat their competitors, eliminate the friction and make page loading time their competitive advantage to grab the attention of target customers. Plenty has been written to optimize a website for better speed, but nothing proves more useful than the Google PageSpeed Insights tool.

What exactly is Google PageSpeed Insights tool?

Unless you are living in a cave, far far away from humans, you must have already heard about Google PageSpeed Insights tool.

For others, it is an authentic tool by Google, designed to optimize the performance of the website.

The tool will give you an option to improve the performance of some aspects of the page which will boost the overall page speed. The tool can be used for both mobile and desktop which gives every website a chance to rise above their competitors.

1)  Start by designing a responsive website

Imagine this. You’ve created an excellent website for desktop users. The interface, the colors, the graphics are making users fall head over heels in love with the website. However, somewhere around the globe, some people hate your website. Why? Because when they tried to access your website on a mobile device, the pixels are distorted. The design is displaced. Moreover, the so-called-interface doesn’t seem aesthetically pleasing to them.

I don’t know about you, but as a marketing professional, I know what it feels like to design a website that is responsive in nature and works well across every device.

You can check the responsiveness of your website by visiting the following website.

A responsive website will improve the user experience which will help Google rank your website higher in the Google search pages.

Last year, Google launched its mobile-first indexing which gave mobile page load speed a significant place in their algorithms.

So, now you know that mobile page speed is vital to ranking your website in Google search result.

2) Optimize your images

Some people are already doing it while others don’t even pay attention to the pictures on the website.

As per the guidelines by Google, you need to incorporate quality images in your website.

Embed titles, alt text in every image. Most importantly, use a sitemap for images which will help Google organize your photos in a better way. Use Squoosh to optimize your images.

Of course, using responsive images are a must. Furthermore, use safe search images which will increase your chances of ranking your website higher.

It is prudent to read the SEO guidelines before you start working on the SEO of the website.

3) Instead of quantity, focus on the quality of the code

If the code on your website is good, the webpage will load fast.

Use Pingdom to know precisely which of the codes on your website need more simplification.

Reduce the CSS code in your website. Try to use inline formatting whenever it is possible for you.

It is best advised to avoid any intensive WordPress themes or bulky codes.

Instead, it is better to use a clean HTML 5 template.

Google uses several machines to gather data from the website. If the code on the site is not well-structured, it will give Google a hard time, and this is not something you want for your website.

We can help you build simple, yet gorgeous websites.

Google PageSpeed Insights enable search engines to look for straight-forward codes and rank the websites based-on the simplicity of the code.

4) Focus on Brower Cache

Whenever you visit a website, the web browser stores data such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images in the local cache. This makes things easier when you visit the website the next time. When the cache is stored, it gives access to the same browser and reduces the delay that occurs when rendering the website. When the browser cache is implemented, it will help load the website faster.

A professional hosting service might already be using browser cache. However, if you want to implement the browser cache, you can always go for the W3 total cache plugin.

5) Accelerated Mobile Pages

When building a website, it is good to learn from the best. The best startup websites employ Accelerated Mobile Pages to pull-up data and present it in a decluttered manner.

Here are the three reasons why you must use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

A mere 1-second delay in loading the webpage can drop the conversion rates by 7%.

Studies have shown that using AMP pages to fetch data from a website can reduce the number of server requests by 77%. Which means that a website will load faster regardless of the device used to browse the website.

6) When it comes to website design, less is more

A clean website is not always attention-grabbing for users but Google PageSpeed Insights necessitate website owners to simplify their website designs.

A clutter free website design will reduce the load-time of the website. Using simple triggerscan boost the UX of your website.

The Speed insight tool will help you eliminate all the extra space that your website is consuming, and you can ask your website developer to mitigate any further damage.

To conclude it all

As a skilled marketer, it is essential to learn website optimization and the holistic approach to every piece of the puzzle that constitutes the site. Furthermore, web speed optimization is an ongoing project. There is no limit to it. You can take six months and still feel that it is not enough.

However, PageSpeed Tool can help you tons. Use the above rules as a guideline and starting point to familiarize yourself with the tool, and start setting clear goals on how you plan to use it to craft your long-term content marketing strategy.

Lets Us Take you further on a series – 1

Since the year 2016, designers have been tinkering around with UX design. There have been changes in the way website designers design app and websites. In the year 2017, website designers came up with personalized designs to save their users some time.

Here, we give you seven website ideas which can fuel you with inspiration and help you create better websites to impress your clients and customers and get the best buck for your money:

• Robby Leonardi Studio

In an era of digital disruption, Robby Leonardi found a way to get hired as a graphic designer. His website is his portfolio. You can flaunt your brand achievements in this way. Trendy retro style inspired by the ’80s and 90’s photography. On a first glance, it looks like a Mario game.

Moreover, when you move forward, you realize that this man is a genius. Just check out the typography, the fonts, and how the images are blending together seamlessly with the character. Everything comes together so well.

• CatScarf

The cat is the epitome of fanciness, faithfulness, and cuteness. Moreover, when you land on this homepage, you feel yourself brimming over with the same sentiments. The visual appeal of this page is impeccable. Thanks to sharp graphics, CatScarf took minimalism to a whole other level. The hero image dominating the top of the page basks in the limelight and instantly catches the eye. Scroll down, and you’ll see that each of the products is aligned beautifully in a transparent grid. This gives our eyes a pleasing effect and if you hover over an item, you can delve deeper in its product details page. I think every ecommerce owner should take inspiration from this website.

• New Acton

Are you hackneyed with the old static design? Why not take a dose of inspiration from graphic designers and illustrators who are doing great work already? You can take some inspiration from New Acton. It is simplicity at its best. Not much content, just amazing animation that will keep you engaged. The sidebar incorporates many categories. Click on any type, and you’ll see relevant animation playing at the entrance. Just a cool way to grab the attention of a new user.

• GC watches

Time is an essential commodity. If you don’t want your customers to leave without buying anything, the best way is to show the products in a straight-forward manner. GC Watches is one of those website ideas which will force you to simplify your ecommerce store. The oversized typography makes for better readability. The crystal-clear photos, the high-definition zoom for every watch will entice every watch aficionado. The simplicity of this website makes it a perfect website design ideas that will generate sales in Nigeria and diaspora.

• Big Commerce

For anyone who has no idea how to show their services seamlessly, Big Commerce is the perfect example. A simple tagline that communicates what the business is all about . The packages are in front. Regardless of the size of your business, you will be presented with several categories which will let you choose from the favorite list of industries. Case studies, testimonials and the use of images to steal the attention of customers and show them what the brand is offering, makes this website steal the limelight.

• Howard Yount

A potent trio – An exuberant background, a colossal title, and clear message right in the front. If your user is not a competitor of Howard Yount, there is no reason for them not to be impressed with such a direct approach. Customers love companies that give them offerings without letting customers dig deep in the sub-pages. The overall design of the website is simple yet impactful.

• Take What You Can Carry

A not to miss website in cool website design ideas. The entire website seems to be floating in the air, allowing so much room for free space. Just check the alignment of words. The design by Matt Porterfield makes it necessary to take some inspiration from this design which blends vertical and horizontal text with perfect alignment.

Closing Thoughts

We’ve been trying to curate the best of seven cool website designs for you. As you would know, a website that is unattractive or poorly constructed harms your business more than helps it. Stay abreast of industry trends and follow all the CRO principles to create the best website design for your business. Assess the efficiency of your website design based on the number of visitors, bounce rate, and conversions.

Lets Us Take you further on a series – 2

Every soul in this world has a higher purpose. Birth is a wondrous experience. You open your eyes to a world rife with opportunities for the taking. You can become anything. For some people, it happens in an instant. Their life’s purpose unfolds right in front of them, but for others, it takes a lifetime to understand why they were born.

If your startup is in its infancy, you might be facing something familiar. Instead of understanding your life purpose, you are struggling to find your brand purpose. If you’re one of those brands that don’t have a direction yet, here are some startup websites which can provide you with some food for thought.

1. AiroHealth.com – Simple is better

Knowledge lies in piling up facts. Wisdom is the elimination of all clutter. Airohealth.com is all about simplicity. The first glance at the website will be enough to safely venture a guess at what the company is selling. On the front page of the website, you realize that it is solving a real-life problem. If you scroll down, you will see how the product works. Next, comes how to think about anxiety and stress. Moreover, in the end, there are testimonials with a call to action in Lagos Nigeria or across Africa.

2) RateYourSeats.com – Selling something unique

Rateyourseats.com is a ticket-selling website with a distinctive feature. Not only does it offer the most market competitive ticket prices, it gives you a bird’s eye view of the seat based on crowdsourced reviews, ratings, and photos of a plethora of concert and sports avenues. This makes sure that our customers make an informed choice based on a particular seat’s rating and reviews by actual users.

3) GrooveJar.com – UI/UX Design

Much has been said about UI/UX Design. If you are looking for some solid inspiration, visit GrooveJar.com. The startup helps other startups boost their website traffic. However, their prominent feature is the clean, sleek interface of the website. Decent navigation, bulging CTAs, and giving out comprehensive information without too much scrolling, makes this website a prime example of the perfect UI/UX design.

The chatbox is easy to locate. Reviews can be found right at the bottom. GrooveJar offers everything that a startup website design has to offer. Take note.

4) SmarthomeNX.com – The Perfect Mobile First website

There is much buzz about mobile first websites. In the midst of all this, smathomenx.com makes a brilliant effort to design the perfect mobile-first website. The website is not at all complex. The Accelerated Mobile Pages allows the website to load immediately. A perfect example of a startup website design where users can log in and join in the discussions without going over lengthy registration steps.

5) Vertoe.com – Mobile Loading Speed

Google Speed Update made it clear that Google is forcing brands to decrease their bounce rate by developing mobile-optimized websites. Vertoe.com took this seriously and started working on the loading speed of the website on mobile.  The website is optimized in a way that users don’t have to download any app or wait for the website to load in the mobile. The load time is super-fast. The one-click checkout helps customers place an order seamlessly. The website works on all primary mobile devices and fits across all screen sizes.

6) EFynch.com – Privacy and Payment Options

If there are a few things that a startup website capitalize on, it is payment options and privacy policy. Other trends include AI and machine learning. Some of the payment methods include complex AI algorithms which simplify processing and make it easier to pay fast. This website teaches a lot. Also, there are some components of IoT to support the simple dashboard.

7) Printful.com – Grist for the mill ecommerce website

The best startup websites provide convenience and simplicity to users. Printful.com takes this approach to the next-best level. You can talk all about white-spacing and how-to optimize the website design to show quality work without sacrificing the caliber of the website. A clean ecommerce design which can teach a lot about how ecommerce stores can use the power of minimalism to sell products online.

The website offers perfect examples in its blog for entrepreneurs to apply across their business. How to send emails that entice customers? Moreover, how to scale business on a global scale?

Facebook #10YearChallenge: A Fun Gimmick or something much more Sinister

Unless you have been hiding under a rock the past week, you might have participated in the #10YearChallenge, or rather the hashtag #2009vs2019. The challenge involves posting a contemporary photo of yourself in parallel with another from ten years ago. Ostensibly it’s about nostalgia and going down the memory lane to see how much things have changed in the intervening years. Replete with opportunities for virtue signaling, reflection, poignancy, bucket loads of humor and celebrity humble bragging, the trend was always meant to pick up steam.

For some people it was fun, just a meme to embrace the past. But to others, it felt more sinister. Something that threatened to undermine their safety. After all, not everyone feels memes are something to laugh on.

The #10YearChallenge hiked when celebrities like Jersey Shore’s Nicole and Kevin Smith joined the party. The challenge spread like wildfire and people started sharing their photos on every platform.

The #10YearChallenge was all fun until a tweet moved thousands of people to worry: Are we inadvertently helping giant corporations boost their algorithms for age progression and biometric identification? Now there’s some food for thought right there. Facial recognition proponents argue that all this treasure trove of data could be indispensable for finding missing people or catching criminals. But critics warn us of unfathomable effects and mass surveillance that we can’t yet fully grasp the intensity of.

While the Cambridge Analytica scandal was still fresh in the minds of users along with the woes of other data breaches associated with Facebook, Facebook has found itself in hot waters again. Even after giving ample clarification on the matter, Facebook is denying its connection with the #10YearChallenge.

Talking to New York Times, Lauren A. Rhue, shared her concerns about the algorithm.

“The #10YearChallenge is giving authorities a clear set of data and how age-progression can be predicted in a few years from now.”

Furthermore, the professor said that there are already trillion on photos on Facebook and people should be wary of their data is out there in public like that.

“The risk in giving up any type of biometric data to a company is that there’s not enough transparency, not only about how the data is currently being used, but also the future uses for it.”

This is another form of biometric data that is being used by the law enforcement agencies to track down prospects.

Finally, Professor Rhue concluded with an alarming thought, ‘There are things out there in the internet which are not treated as a threat now.” And 10 years from now people will understand that they are a threat, but by then, they would have parted with the data already.

Why Facebook really need this kind of data?

As per statistics, 350 million photos are uploaded on Facebook daily. Here, we need to pay attention to the fact that no-one is forcing people to upload and share photos; people are willing to share photos and feel proud about it.

The year 2019 is not about how many photos are uploaded each day, it is about image processing, and the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it is becoming smarter by the day.

Let us take all the strain and help you boost your sales.

Almost every company is using facial recognition to analyze candidates and evaluate them even before they start working with the company. The iPhone app and even the Google Photos app understand, and match faces to people and their relevant contact numbers.

The horrors of social media have been highlighted in Black Mirror – the first episode of season 3. Here instead of rating products, people are being rated. And people that show kindness and generosity towards people are rated high in the society and these people get jobs more often than people with a low rating. These ratings are displayed right in front of a person.

Some people suggest that Facebook don’t really need this data because they have all the photos time stamped but think of the time that Facebook is saving by not having to through every picture which was uploaded by the user in the year 2009. Sure, you could mine Facebook for profile pictures and look at posting dates or EXIF data. But that’s a lot of noise; it’d help if you had a clean then-and-now. What’s more, the photo posting date and even EXIF data wouldn’t always be reliable for when the pic was actually taken. People could have scanned offline photos. People might have uploaded pictures multiple times over years. Some platforms strip EXIF data for privacy; people’s captions are helpfully adding that context back, as well as other context about where and how the pic was taken.

Regardless of how much Facebook denies the fact that it was just a meme challenge that was initiated automatically for the kicks, the reality is that sooner or later, Facebook will use these pictures to train their face recognition algorithm.

If you have partaken in the #10yearchallenge, good for you. You’re now a part of some future conspiracy – just kidding. It’s okay to have some fun but what we need to do is to ponder over the effects that each one of our posts is having. Read

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In the end, it is all about keeping your personal life offline and using social media to establish connections for your business and help your brand reach more customers. Take control over whatever you share on social media, and think twice if it can hurt your personal or professional life in the coming future.

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