Today, website accessibility is critical. Website accessibility has created many opportunities for people to access important services, platforms, tools, and information. Improving website accessibility is critical because online information and services can be challenging to obtain for people living with disabilities. Sadly, 90 percent of all websites are not completely accessible, creating a difficult environment for people who rely on assistive technology to access services online.
How to improve website accessibility?
Unfortunately, most websites fail to address the needs of people living with disabilities. The good news is that there is a lot you can do to improve the accessibility of your website. No website is accessible by accident. If you want to eliminate barriers to create an accessible website, you need to take the right steps:
Improve your website with accessible forms
When creating website forms, make sure that you correctly label text fields. Each text field should include a descriptive title. The descriptive title will allow people with disabilities, using screen readers, to correctly complete the forms. To increase the accessibility of your web forms, use label tags.
Use a website platform that supports accessibility
Choose a platform that supports accessibility. Everything from themes, plugins, addons, navigation, and page layout should adhere to web accessibility standards. When you think about website accessibility, consider the following disabilities:
- Physical
- Visual
- Speech
- Learning
- Auditory
- Neurological
- Cognitive
Improve website accessibility with a descriptive title for links
A descriptive title helps those who need a screen reader to navigate your website. The descriptive link title describes the purpose of the link.
One of the most common website accessibility mistakes is to fail to include appropriate alt tags. Images with the correct alt tag provide great value to users with disabilities. An image without an alt tag can create barriers for users with impaired or limited vision. For this reason, it is critical to assign descriptive alt tags for every image on your website. Make sure the alt tag describes the image. As a side benefit, alt tags can also improve the SEO of your website.
Use headers for improving your website
Headings are ranked <h1> through <h6> are critical for website accessibility. Headings should be used hierarchically. The <h1> heading should represent the most important idea on the web page. Subtitles should be organized with <h2> level headings. Subsequent sections can be divided with <h3> subheadings, and so on.
To improve website accessibility, the heading structure should be planned out in advance. Planning your headers before composing a page will help you choose appropriate heading levels and keep your ideas organized.
Every page should include at least one <h1> header to inform the visitor about the page’s title. Never use bold text in place of a heading. Using bold text instead of the appropriate header tag is a common accessibility mistake. At first glance, bold text may look like a heading, but it is the incorrect way to format a website for accessibility. Site visitors who rely on a screen reader will struggle to read your web page.
Improve the color accessibility of your website
About 4.5 percent of the population is color blind. If your website has a male audience, the percentage of color blind is as high as 8 percent. Unfortunately, most web designers ignore the needs of the color blind. To make the text easier to read, reduce the background opacity of images.
For a highly accessible website, avoid the following color combinations:
- Green/Brown
- Green/Gray
- Blue/Purple
- Green/Black
- Green/Red
- Green/Blue
- Blue/Gray
How to improve website performance?
Most small business owners think that once they have successfully set up a website, they can sit back and relax and wait for the money to roll in. The trouble is that often there is more than meets the eye. This is a common situation, and it is not so difficult, expensive, or time-consuming to fix.
If you want a great website, you need to improve your website.
Your website must meet customer expectations. Your website has to engage your site visitors. Most importantly, your website must convert visitors to prospects, leads, and ultimately paying customers.
There are many ways to improve your website. The great news is that you can do it simply and without spending a fortune.
How to improve website content?
By far, the most important part of your website is its content. The website content must be of great quality. When visitors land on your website, they must feel like they are looking at your business niche’s best website.
If your website content is not the best in your industry, you must make improvements.
Go through your content carefully and see if you can implement some simple website optimizations. These include things like text linking web pages to one another or using appropriate header tags. You will be pleasantly surprised at the impact some of these small changes can have.
Great website content includes the following:
- Your target keyword within the headline. For even better results, begin the headline with your target keyword.
- Also, include your keyword within the first paragraph of your page content.
- Include your target keywords 3-5 times within the body of the text content.
- Optimize your images with the appropriate alt-tags.
- Detailed content. Your website should include detailed content on your topics. Longer content is ranked higher in the search engines.
It might be helpful to hire a professional to assist you in improving your content.
How to improve the design of your website?
You need to make sure you are capitalizing on every opportunity to intrigue people by using a clean, professional website that accurately represents your business. If your website is slow or ugly, visitors will likely leave, and worse yet, never come back. It is also vital that your website doesn’t look homemade.
Your designs need to be simple; overcomplicating things can cause visitors to become confused or distracted. Avoid popular website design trends. The latest website trends are not your friends. It is more important to have a website that functions well than one that includes the latest web design trends.
If you are personally not a designer or don’t know design, then consult a professional website design company. This will allow you to get a fresh perspective of your website. You will have an experienced web designer help you and tell you what’s lacking in your website’s design. The designer can then go on and work with you to improve your underperforming website.
How to improve your website SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
Most businesses ignore SEO. The result is a website with no traffic. It is a real shame because even the greatest websites need SEO.
Step #1 for SEO is research. You have to identify your target keywords. Each business should be able to come up with a long list of keywords. Don’t stop until you have at least 100 keyword phrases.
A web designer located in San Diego should target keywords like:
- San Diego web designer – It is important to include the city where you want to find clients.
- Web designer in San Diego – Come up with variations of similar keywords.
- The best web designer in San Diego
- Web design company in San Diego
- San Diego web design agency
- Web development companies in San Diego
- San Diego SEO firm – Also, focus on related services. Since many web designers also offer SEO services, it makes sense to target related keywords.
- Graphic designer in San Diego
Create a long list of target keywords. Before you write any content, it is important to know what keywords you are targeting. The content you publish on your website must be optimized for your target keywords.
SEO has two fundamental parts:
- Onsite SEO – Onsite SEO has to do with optimizing your website for your target keywords.
- Offsite SEO – The lifeblood of offsite SEO is link building.
Improve your website with live chat
There are many advantages to implementing a live chat to your website. Think about it; if someone comes to your website, they might have a few questions. A live chat enables website visitors to ask their questions.
Remember that you are competing with many other businesses. The live chat can differentiate you from the competition.
With a live chat, they are more inclined to type you a question than they are to picking up the phone and calling you. It also shows you have nothing to hide, and you are willing to answer any questions.
Granted, it is more impersonal than a phone call, but people are shown to actually prefer that. This allows you to answer your customers’ questions and put them at ease.
You can use live chat for sales, billing, tech support, etc. It allows you to be much more efficient. For example, you can have canned responses, so your customers are never left without a response.
Consider the advantages of having a live chat, and think about adding it to your website.
It is imperative to only have a live chat on your website if you actually use it. There are many websites with live chat without a live person. If your live chat is offline, you will upset your visitors.
Make your business a 24 hour business with a website
Becoming a 24-hour business sounds complicated and expensive. Well, it really isn’t. You can set up a 24-hour live answering service for your business easily and without breaking the bank.
The way it works is: you’re assigned a unique number, which you can then program into your phone. Any phone calls received after office hours will be redirected to a 24-hour live operator.
A person will pick up the phone and answer it in your company’s name with your selected greeting. The beauty of this is that research has shown that people are more likely to leave a message if they speak to a real person instead of leaving a message on a machine.
An answering service is an excellent way to get a distinct advantage over your competitors. It not overly expensive to use, and it’s easy to set up. Popular services include AnswerConnect and Xact Telesolutions.
Improve your website with a help desk feature
Lastly, let’s go over the benefits of setting up a help desk. When you’re a small business owner, customer contact is like gold. Often small companies use regular email. It’s all very well if you’re only getting a few inquiries.
However, once you start getting more customer inquiries, you need a way to structure it. By setting up a centralized help desk, you are improving your responsiveness, and the level of professionalism demonstrated to your customers.
When someone contacts you, he will receive a ticket id, which immediately conveys to him that somebody will deal with his ticket.
The help desk system also allows you to set up different departments. You could have things like sales or billing. Each inquiry will funnel into a different queue so that a particular staff member can deal with it. You can also search help desk tickets so that you can find a complete history of a customer’s email communication. You can set up things like follow-ups. So that if you get a sales inquiry, you respond to it, and a few days later, the system will automatically prompt you to follow up with the customer.
Clearly, there are many advantages, but the main thing is it increases your level of professionalism. That will ultimately translate into more business for you.
Every website can be improved
The above are only a few ways you can improve your website. There are many more website improvement tactics. These few simple things will make a huge difference for you in the long run.
Making the perfect website is a journey, so don’t become discouraged if you do not see your desired results; you will get there. Make small incremental changes to improve your website.
Hopefully, this article has been useful to you. Good luck on your way to a successful website!
