Posted on 07.17.11

Twelve Tips for Improving Website Performance and Increasing Engagement

by Rob Lynch

Tim Frick and Joe Grossman, creative director for Jell Creative, provided tips and tricks for improving search engine optimization and online engagement as part of Harris Theater’s Learning Lab on Thursday, July 14th.

Joe’s presentation to an audience of Chicago-area performance organizations focused on the importance of how companies appear online and continually auditing one’s website to improve search engine optimization while Tim focused on content strategy, social media engagement, and measurement.

Joe’s key takeaways included:

Back to Basics

Today’s feature rich websites can be overwhelming so get back to marketing basics—who are you trying to reach and why?

Front Load Keywords

Assume that interested parties searching for you don’t remember your company name so focus on the best three words that define your organization. Front load those words on your homepage by making them integral parts of the page title, headers, body copy, and so on.

The Two-level Audit

Monthly: search the name, topic and terms similar to your organization. Take a screen shot of where your organization appears in Google, date it, and save it in a folder.

Every six months: Try 10-15 different word combinations people may use to search for your organization or products/services and update your site content based on what you find.

The Three H Rule

The most important content on your Web page should be tagged H1, H2, H3 (in order of content importance) because it tells Google to pay attention to that particular information.

Tim’s key takeaways included:

Create a Value Filter

Kill boring content. If your content doesn’t provide some sort of value to those who read it youʼre wasting your time.

The 80-20 Rule

Generally, shoot for the following content ratios:

• 70-80 percent of content adds value (i.e. not self serving).
• 20 percent of your content is about your organization and its accomplishments.

Leave Your Comfort Zone

Your best interaction with audiences may not be on your website or blog. Go where people are talking about topics relevant to you.

Find Your Friends

Connect with people of like interests. Start with keyword searches. Twitter searches. Niche social site searches.

Build Relationships

Listen, join conversations, and provide information beyond just your organization and what it does, i.e. content that matters.

Measure What’s Important

Figure out the data that’s most important to you and define specifics on what a good return looks like. Define your metrics:

• What, specifically, are you trying to measure? Site visits? Conversions? Ticket sales? Define targets.
• What constitutes success for these measurements? Define objectives.

Collect the Data

Though it’s far from the only metrics game in town, Google Analytics is a good place to start for your website because it provides helpful data like time on site, page/site visits, unique visitors, operating system, mobile devices, Flash support, etc. Setting up goals and funnels can help track important metrics, like how many people signed up for a specific promotion or completed a purchase.

The Social Media Metrics plug-in for Firefox also allows you to see how many times a specific URL was shared on social sites. Seesmic and Hootsuite are just a couple options for social media monitoring while Google Alerts, Social Mention, and TweetAlarm are simple free tools that will let you know what others are saying about you, your industry, or any keyword phrases you define.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Benchmarks are worthless unless you have something to compare them to. Once you have amassed a set of metrics, use the collected data to improve performance over time. Create better user experiences, streamline processes, and optimize your site for search engines. Use social data to tweak design and usability, join conversations more often and engage your community. Wait a bit, track performance, then do it all over again.

Launched in 2010, the Harris Theater’s Learning Lab program helps the theater’s 35 emerging and mid-sized resident companies develop tools and tactics for growth and sustainability.

Looking for more information on these topics? Check out Tim’s presentation:

Download Learning Lab Presentation (1.7 MB PDF file)