Quick tips for running your site smoothly

Managing a website requires you to focus on many elements. You have to think of making your site appealing to visitors, and easy to navigate. Besides, you should ensure it is SEO-friendly and secure.

If you miss any of these points, you end up with flaws or glitches that slow everything down. As a result, you discourage people from visiting your site again.

Here are some tactics that help you run your website more smoothly.

Ensure your site is well optimized and has a good loading time

This is necessary for both retaining visitors and SEO purposes. Reason being, Google uses site loading speed as a ranking factor. There are several ways to improve your site's speed.

Optimize images by using smaller ones. Besides, resize images with large file size. You can download plugins like Wprocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache. As a result, you will enable caching.

While some plugins are necessary, others just take up space and memory on your site, and slow it down. Thus, you should only use a limited number of plugins. Moreover, you should only use that are necessary.

If your site is large with heavy traffic, a basic shared hosting account might not be enough. Thus, consider upgrading to a more robust hosting plan. A dedicated server provides greater resources. Hence, your server response time will not get affected. For more details on hosting plans click here

Security & Updates

Security is an increasingly important issue, because many sites get hacked daily. Besides, WordPress sites, in particular, are often targeted by hackers. Additionally, hackers target large sites, as well as the smallest sites. Hence, all sites are vulnerable. Here are some strategies to keep your site as safe as possible.

Use a secure password:This tip is simple but often overlooked. Also, it is more convenient to use your birth-date or your pet's name as a password. However, this makes your site vulnerable for someone to hack your site. Thus, you should use a long and complex password. The password should include upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and characters.
Buy an SSL certificate and install https protocol: Web addresses that start with https are more secure as it encrypts all the data. Thus, it prevents anyone from intercepting your content. Matt Mullenweg, the Founder of WordPress, recently made an announcement. He said that for certain WordPress features to work, all hosts need to have https. Also, Google favors Https sites. So, this is a good SEO strategy. Doing this is especially important, if you handle financial transactions on your site. This builds up customer trust. Furthermore, it informs them their financial information is in safe hands and untouchable.
Limit access to your site: Only provide access to your site to people who need it. So, do not be too quick to give users with admin access. Besides, be careful about allowing users to upload files to your site. This is a common way that hackers gain access to a site.
Limit access to your site: Only provide access to your site to people who need it. So, do not be too quick to give users with admin access. Besides, be careful about allowing users to upload files to your site. This is a common way that hackers gain access to a site.
Keep your scripts, plugins and other features up to date: It is important to update the themes, scripts, and plugins that you use. Reason being, security bugs in any one of these can be a way of hackers accessing and compromising your site. Ensure you perform safe update of WordPress themes and plugins.To check if any updates have arrived and are available go to the 'Update' section on the dashboard. Here, you can check the number of updates available. However, you should ensure the updates are safe and you have a backup file. You can use DesktopServer by ServerPress to install WordPress in a virtual server. As a result, you can test your updates one by one.

Improve UX and User-Friendliness

UX or user experience refers to the general ease and user-friendliness of your site. Thus, as you think about making your site run smooth, it is important to think in visitor’s perspective. Also, consider new visitor’s needs, as they are unfamiliar with your content or layout.

Make your menus and search functions intuitive and easy to navigate. Besides, you must ensure your visitors can easily find what they are looking for on your site. Additionally, make your pages and categories relevant and easy to identify. Have a search function that is easy to see and use.

Reduce clutter

Too many images, videos, ads, popups, and other elements make your site cluttered. As a result, navigation becomes difficult. Thus, you should focus on essentials like informative content and calls-to-action. Generally, make your website responsive.

Nowadays, more visitors access the internet on mobile devices. Thus, you should ensure your website is mobile-friendly. Responsive design ensures that your site is easy to navigate on all devices. Additionally, ensure you have contact information that is easy to find.

Ensure it is easy for visitors and customers to communicate with you, whether by phone, email, or live chat. Moreover, this information allows you to provide better customer support. Hence, it gives people a way to inform you of any problems on your site.

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Vicky Hines

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Director of Full Potential Learning Academy

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I have been working with Helpbot for the past 1 year and integrating them more and more into our business. Their dedication to our projects has been first class. They are professional, efficient and a pleasure to deal with. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Sid and his team to look after your development and maintenance needs.

CEO of JFT International Digital Marketing LLC

Quick tips for running your site smoothly