by Shiran Sugerman - Head of Onboarding at Spitfire Inbound
Jan 18, 2022
A website grader can help you measure the health and effectiveness of your website and show you problem areas which can then be optimised. This article highlights the importance of a website grader, why it’s needed and how DXG can help you every step of the way.
In the online world, a website does so much more than simply attract visitors. Today, your website acts as your sales rep, telling potential customers what they need to know about your products, services, and pricing. Your website portrays your culture by sharing information about your team, your brand, and your services. Ultimately, your website is VERY important. It’s no wonder we see so many businesses invest so much in their websites.
But once a website is live, it doesn’t mean it’s done. The Growth Driven Design philosophy is all about ensuring you’re constantly improving your website. This is where a good website grader becomes a crucial part of the inbound methodology. Curious to know more about website graders? Let’s dive straight into it.
What is a Website Grader?
Simply put, a website grader is an online tool that performs a graded analysis of your website. Utilising a 100-point scale, the website grader assesses the strengths and weaknesses of your website.
HubSpot defines a website grader as: Website Grader measures the marketing effectiveness of a website and provides an inbound marketing score (on a scale of zero to 100) that incorporates website traffic, SEO, the blogosphere, social media and other inbound marketing factors.
Why do you need a website grader?
Your website is ultimately the backbone of your business and is crucial if you want your business to flourish in today’s digital landscape.
But attracting visitors to your website in an environment saturated with competitors requires your website to be more than just functional. Your website needs to perform on all levels, both for search engines and the people viewing it. From your site speed, to the way it displays on mobile, everything plays a role in the success of your website.
Ultimately this all requires a consistent way to measure your website’s performance, and that’s where a website grader comes in. Grading your website regularly and optimising based on the results means a better experience for your users, which results in increased sales and meaningful relationships with your customers.
How DXG can help
DXG uses a powerful website grader that is powered by HubSpot. This Website Grader rates your website based on the following four metrics:
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Performance
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Mobile Optimisation
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SEO
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Security
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Performance
Performance depends on page loading time and responsiveness of your website. When searched, a website that is slow to load and does not respond well does not rank well. Google’s search engine algorithms can drop your rank if your website grader does not evaluate performance. According to Graffiti9 Digital Marketing Agency, 39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images won't load or take too long to load.
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Mobile Optimisation
This involves making sure that your website is accessible and works well on mobile devices. Mobile phones are sometimes more accessible than a desktop, which makes them more convenient so consumers would prefer sites that can be easily accessed on their mobiles. According to Google, 61% of users are unlikely to return to a site on mobile if they had trouble accessing it and 40% visit a competitor's site instead.
SEO
According to Hevo, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the quantity and quality of the traffic generated by your web page from Search Engines. It is the process of ensuring that your website pops up when a prospective client searches for a keyword relating to the contents provided on your website.
The HubSpot website grader evaluates your on-page SEO to ensure that you have all of your bases covered. On-page optimisation ensures that Google can appropriately crawl your website and helps to ensure that your website is easy for your potential audience to discover.
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Security
Just like performance, you should assess your site security regularly. The HubSpot website grader can check whether or not you have an SSL certificate. SSL certificates help to protect websites from a variety of attacks and give visitors confidence that the website is trustworthy.
Here are some tips from Hevo to help improve your security grade:
- You should ensure that your Content Management System has SSL capabilities enabled. If they don’t, you may have minimal options. Ensure that SSL is prioritised and request a timeline from your host’s customer support and development teams for its implementation.
- If you cannot get a solid timeline for SSL protection from your host, you should consider moving your site to one with SSL as a core feature.
- HubSpot enables your website to undergo constant improvement, and as a result, helps you generate more traffic to your website and increases your Sales.
What’s next?
Now that you’ve graded your website, you need to examine the results and act accordingly. Here’s what we would recommend.
- Review & Prioritise
Take time to look at the results of grader and understand which elements require the most urgent attention. After reviewing your report it’s perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed, especially if you’ve received a low score. We recommend you take some time to prioritise which elements to update first.
DXG tip: tackle any security issues first and then move on to your site speed.
- Bring in the experts
Whether it’s an external agency or your own internal development team, once you know which elements require optimising, bring in the relevant experts in your business to review and help.
- Test it again
Once all the issues have been resolved, it’s important to re-test your website to determine if the recommendations have been successfully implemented. Remember, we are here to help.
Your website is your most important asset when it comes to attracting and maintaining business. Run your site through our Website Grader to see how it measures up and how you can make your website more engaging, effective, and delightful.
