What is Website Optimization? Website optimization is the continuous process of improving a website to function and achieve a set of goals in the most efficient and optimal manner. To optimize a website, developers need to look into the keywords, anchor text, back links, design, look and feel, and etc. These different aspects are what a search engine will crawl and what your viewers will “crawl” as well. We all know how difficult and time consuming developing and optimizing a website can be, but when you look at the potential gains one may receive when they optimize, you may think differently. To understand what website optimization is in more detail, we can break it into two parts: Search Engine Optimization and Website Efficiency. Search Engine Optimization v. Website Efficiency Search Engine Optimization SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the designing or optimizing of a website from scratch in order to boost the ranking of your site in search engines. Most ecommerce solutions for speed and efficiency, use a single product details page template which pulls the product meta data from the database dynamically, as a product is selected from a catalog. While this keeps the code minimal and helps improve load time, it provides no SEO optimization value. By creating separate product categories, landing pages, and product detail pages, all of that content now becomes index-able by the crawlers. This means that when a user is searching for the best deal on a product, you are now in the game to show up as a result for that search, leading them to your product page both increasing traffic and an opportunity for conversion. It may be a time consuming task that is often over looked, search engine optimization is paramount to the visibility of your ecommerce platform. Website Efficiency With Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. already crawling your website, you are half way to optimizing your site. Website efficiency is the optimization of your site on the consumer front. By editing your script, html, and css code, you can develop a site which both loads quickly and is still appealing to your viewer. Reducing bandwidth heavy content such as images, scripts and videos with long loading times, you are increasing your chances of converting your site visitors into active consumers. Visitors come to your website with a purpose in mind, and that purpose is what you want to develope your website around. Creating a user experience that nurtures and generates leads is essential to increase your conversion rates. Ultimate Guide to Web Optimization Now with an understanding of what website optimization is, let’s see how you can implement these concepts to your website. Chief Editor of Hongkait.com, Hongkait Lim, has outlined web optimization into three parts; server-side optimization, assets optimization, and platform. By going through this guide, you will learn how to optimize your website on each of these fronts. Click here to read more. Pictures, Pictures, and More Pictures In a world where business is trending towards an ecommerce based platform, the user experience is critical in converting viewers into future clients. Many businesses will tell you that adding loads of high resolution photos and HD videos to your websites will boost your conversion rates. Although all these animations may look and feel great, those who claim over-saturating images and graphics on your site is beneficial, is wrong. The increased loading time from these bandwidth hungry beasts are shaving off the many impatient consumers waiting to load your site. That is where image optimization becomes crucial for your site. Suggested Readings To learn more, follow one of the links below for additional articles, blogs, tips and tools about Website Optimization. Image Optimizaiton Guide Ultimate Website Optimization Guide Google Website Optimization resources Test the speed of your website How Fast is Your Website? Think your fast? Feel free to try out this free web page performance test offered by Webpagetest.org.