As most communications/marketing directors and managers know, your website is vital. It links you to your customers, members, stakeholders, and the general public. It is essential for any organization to have a website that is visually attractive, user-friendly, and accessible to everyone. In this blog post, we will introduce you to the top 10 free tools to help you assess website performance and ensure it is operating optimally.
Naturally, these tools have their limitations. They can’t fully understand your organization’s objectives or determine if your website is optimized to reach them. To help achieve this, you’ll want to engage the expertise of a professional consultant. They can properly analyze your website and offer tailored recommendations.
Nevertheless, these free tools remain invaluable resources for ensuring that your existing website is functioning at peak performance.
1. Google Analytics (Free)
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that helps you monitor and analyze your website’s traffic. With this tool, you can gain insights into the behavior of your site’s visitors, track engagement, and identify areas for improvement. You can use this information to understand your audience’s needs and preferences. Then you can make informed decisions on how to optimize your web pages’ content and user experience.
You will need to install Google Analytics on your website in order to take advantage of this tool. Once installed you will want to analyze about 6 to 12 months worth of data before making any decisions. You can also take advantage of custom dimensions, a topic we go into at length in this article.
Link: https://analytics.google.com/
2. Google Search Console (Free)
Google Search Console helps you monitor your website’s presence in Google search results and provides insights into your site’s performance. This tool allows you to identify any errors, broken links, or other issues that could negatively impact your website’s Google rankings. By addressing these issues, you can potentially improve your organization’s online visibility and even reach a wider audience.
Link: https://search.google.com/search-console/
3. Moz Pro (Free Trial)
Moz Pro is a comprehensive SEO toolset that helps you improve your website’s search engine rankings. This tool provides many features to optimize your website. These features include keyword research, search terms, site audits and competitor analysis. This can help your website gain better visibility on search engines.
As a marketing/communications director or manager, you can use Moz Pro’s insights to your advantage. This will help you draw in more visitors and increase leads or membership growth. Additionally, it will help promote your brand.
Link: https://moz.com/products/pro
4. Google PageSpeed Insights (Free)
Page speed is a critical factor in user experience and search engine results. Google PageSpeed Insights analyzes your website’s loading speed and provides recommendations for improvement. By following these suggestions, you can enhance your website’s performance and ensure a better user experience.
Link: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
5. GTmetrix (Free)
GTmetrix is another popular tool for measuring your website’s speed and performance. It offers a comprehensive analysis of your site’s load time, page size, and the number of requests. With its easy-to-understand reports and actionable recommendations, you can quickly identify and resolve any performance issues on your website.
Link: https://gtmetrix.com/
6. WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (Free)
Ensuring website accessibility for all users, including those with disabilities, is a legal requirement for some. It is also a sign of commitment to inclusivity. The WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool helps you find and fix accessibility issues on your website. This makes it easier to use for all users.
Link: https://wave.webaim.org/
7. Hotjar (Basic Plan – Free)
Understanding how visitors interact with your website can provide valuable insights into improving its usability. Hotjar is a tool for optimizing your site. It offers heatmaps, session recordings, and user feedback. These can help you identify potential issues and opportunities.
By analyzing this data, you can make visiting your website more engaging and user-friendly.
Link: https://www.hotjar.com/marketing-teams/
8. Yoast SEO (Free version available)
Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website’s content for search engines. This tool offers real-time feedback on your content’s SEO, readability, and keyword usage. With this feedback, you can make changes to boost your chances to rank higher and draw more visitors.
Link: https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
9. SEMrush (Free Trial)
SEMrush is a comprehensive marketing toolkit. It provides a vast array of features to boost your website’s performance and visibility. With SEMrush, you can conduct keyword research, competitor analysis, and site audits to identify areas for improvement. By leveraging these insights, you can optimize your website to better serve your target audiences.
Link: https://www.semrush.com/
10. Siteimprove (Free website checker)
Siteimprove is a comprehensive digital optimization platform that offers a range of tools to help you enhance your online presence. Siteimprove can help you identify issues and opportunities for improvement across your website. It offers features such as content analysis, SEO, accessibility, and analytics.
Link: https://www.siteimprove.com/website-checker/
Conclusion
Take advantage of one or all of the 10 free tools to assess your organization’s website. You can evaluate optimization, usability, accessibility, page speed and other aspects. Start now to make the most of your website.
While these tools offer valuable insights, remember that engaging a professional consultant can provide a more comprehensive analysis. They can provide tailored recommendations to ensure your website is aligned with your organization’s objectives, and help increase conversion rates. You can also check out our previous article about 10 Web Design Best Practices for National Association Websites for further tips.
If your website is underperforming in any of these areas, contact our Ottawa web design and consulting team. We can assist in addressing these issues and unlocking your website’s full potential.
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