We’re incredibly proud of how well our website performs at Soap. As firm believers in practising what you preach, we’d be of little use to any of our partners if we weren’t proficient at ensuring our website sits at an elite level. A significant component of that process is regular audits and updates to optimise the UX.
Our site updates follow an evolutionary rather than revolutionary lifecycle, with constant tweaks and iterations to keep it ahead of the curve at all times. Think of it more as regular showers rather than a long soak – although we’re partial to both when the time is right.
Our website is a component of our user journey strategy, as we work equally as hard on the one taken by our partners, both current and future, as we do on their customers’ journeys. As such, we’ve spent some time improving the site speed, optimising the efficiency to the point where we consolidated our previously high score further to a near-perfect rating of 99.
Site speed is crucial for several reasons, the impact on user experience contributing to their first impressions alongside your conversion rate. It’s also hugely important for SEO (as we’ll explain in further detail below).
Much like all of Google’s algorithms, the criteria for ranking site speed is shrouded in secrecy. Our development team have likened working on this to Don Quixote’s famous ‘tilting at windmills’ analogy, tackling an unseen or imaginary adversary. We obviously wouldn’t label Google as a nemesis, but the only way we can consistently get close to what they rate highly is by religiously testing every facet of the user journey.
We undertook a comprehensive audit of every possible destination a user could do throughout our site, analysing the speed and responsiveness at each juncture. The result is achieving 99, and we’re relentless with continuous iterations to obtain the mythical level of 100.
Our experience made the difference on our site – and it could be the same for yours. Book a discovery call today to learn more about how we could analyse how your site performs in terms of speed.
The SEO benefits
As well as delivering a smoother UX, site speed has a significant impact on how search engines rank your website, which is why it is an integral focus of our SEO services. Google’s constant focus on optimal user experiences has led to site speed and performance becoming an ever-important component of your SEO ranking – and with good reason.
A fast and seamless website experience contributes to Google sending more of their users towards you. This positive experience also increases the chances of conversion while decreasing churn, amplifying the positivity of improving your speed. Some simple fine-tuning leads to compelling results.
Pivotal in these improvements on our site have been switching our DNS to a Cloudflare system. One of the biggest misconceptions we reencounter time and time is the supposed golden rule of never changing your DNS. While such a big decision for your website should be approached with caution, improving your DNS can lead to a better website and a much better user experience. As long as you undertake the correct indexing procedures, Google or any other search engine won’t penalise you for making a decision that rewards the user.
The problem is changing DNS isn’t always done effectively, and a cack-handed approach to the switch can have a devastating impact on your site’s SEO. The long term benefits of picking the wrong provider can also be detrimental to how Google ranks you. We’re experts in ensuring this process is as painless as possible, so drop us a line today to have a call about the tricks up our sleeve to improve your site speed.
