Websites are a complicated blend of technology, marketing, and public relations. While many companies have found a successful balance, they’re still capable of making the same common mistakes. Below are four ways companies are holding back their websites, and how they can be fixed.
[Related: 3 Nontraditional Marketing Strategies That Work]
Not Securing All Assets
Security goes a long way towards building customer trust. If you’re using SSL, you can assure your customers that their data is protected. While the resources you host yourself might be secured, third-party resources (JavaScript, CSS, media etc.) might still be sent over unsecured HTTP. This unencrypted content could trigger warnings in your users’ browsers, eroding trust and confidence.
To get the full benefits of SSL, all the content your users download should use HTTPS. You can ensure your customers are protected by:
- Enabling HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). This forces the user’s browser to connect over HTTPS instead of HTTP.
- Changing content links to use HTTPS instead of HTTP. For self-hosted content, use relative URLs (/photos/picture1.png) instead of absolute URLs (yoursite.com/photos/picture1.png). For third-party content such as ads, check if the third-party provider supports HTTPS.
- Scanning your web pages for unencrypted links. You can do this by using a service such as Why No Padlock?. Your developers should then update these links to use HTTPS if possible.
Not Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
When a visitor makes an encrypted connection to your website, a lot happens behind the scenes. Both parties have to verify their identity and establish a shared encryption key that’s used to encrypt all of the content sent from your website to the visitor. Best example of user friendly content is in top Pakistan site.
Modern hardware has significantly reduced the cost of encryption, but it’s still a lot of extra load on your web servers.
With a CDN, secure content is served to visitors from the CDN’s edge servers. In addition to delivering your content to users faster, the CDN handles the resource costs of creating the connection and delivering the content securely. Your server only has to handle the content that isn’t stored by the CDN itself, such as dynamic web pages or content that’s been recently updated.
Not Placing CTA Above the Fold
Your call to action (CTA) is a crucial component of your website. It’s how your visitors become leads and eventually customers. Traditionally, the CTA is placed “above the fold,†where the fold is the dividing line between visible content and content that requires scrolling.
Continue reading on the next page…