The foundation of a great web presence is making sure that your website doesn’t suck. Remember the grocery store example? You wanted cheese for your burger and had to go through the 9 levels of hallway hell to get there. The only thing with 9 layers I want to get through is a tray of taco dip. Make your website taco dip, not Dante’s inferno.

Conduct a navigation audit of your site.

Navigate your own site, from the home page onward. Better yet, give it the Grandma test. Literally, find a Grandma to go through your website while you watch them. Or a neighbor, friend or good customer that you know is not super tech savvy. Bring a gift card for them and a notepad for yourself - you’ll learn a lot watching someone else work through your site.

My grandma did this for me, and it blew my mind the things that she got hung up on. Let me be clear - in no way am I shaming any older generation folks for this. My grandma could do a thousand things better than me, including baking and kicking my butt at Scrabble. I am aware I have the tech advantage here as an 80’s baby. In the same way, my high school employees run circles around me on Instagram and TikTok.

The goal here is to make a note of any places where there are “broken links” or the site shopper gets stuck or there isn’t a clear call to action or path forward. Then you can fix it.

Add relevant internal links to help your shoppers move forward.

Let’s say you click into the “birthday” occasions, then move into a product listing for a bouquet. Now what? If you don’t click “add to cart”, is there a clear path forward? Options here would be adding similar fresh bouquet thumbnail links midpage, or including a link to your “giftbox” products as a non-floral option… You want your viewer moving onto the next thing, not hitting the back button.

Here’s another example. A shopper heads to your “About Us” page. Then what? Do they read your cute bios and then head back to the main page? What if instead you include each designer’s favorite bouquet or gift product in their bio - and link to it. These “internal links” help users navigate around your site easier.

Include external links on your site.

External links refers to both backlinks (coming to your site) and outbound links (leaving your site). Outbound links will take shoppers to a different website - perhaps your local Chamber of Commerce site or a business networking site. I dive into outbound links in further detail in the ‘Location’ article in this SEO series.

Backlinks are born when a different website links to your page. You want these! Think of each of these links as a ‘vote’ for the credibility of your website and content. Good quality backlinks are worth a little work. Your fresh wholesalers and merchandise vendors are a good place to start. Many companies will have a directory where consumers can find their products sold in retail shops. Make sure you’re on that list - and linked.

If you’ve been featured in a publication at some point, ask that they link to your website in their digital version. Heck, send a press release to the newspaper about something this week and get a backlink. Maybe an employee is celebrating a work milestone or you completed some education. Include your website in the information, as well as your request that it be an active link. In turn, you can include a link to the article on your website and social media pages.

The Chamber or business site I mentioned? They should link back to you on their member listing page. Other easy places to grab backlinks are on city or neighborhood directories and state association pages. You may have to request that they make your listing an active link. This is where a little reciprocation is nice. For example, if you’re a member of a state floral association, include it on your “About Us” page with a link to them, and ask that they also link to you. It’s a win-win.

How easy is your website to use?

Clicking through links to navigate isn’t the only way your customer use your website. Your navigation audit should be on a desktop and a cell phone so you can get a clear picture of how your site looks and works in both cases. Does the content stack nicely? How quickly does the page load? Are your photos clear and in the right place?

Speaking of photos, let’s focus on those for a minute. We all know that high quality photos can make or break a purchase. But you don’t necessarily need a high grade image size to achieve it. When I say “image size”, I’m talking about the pixel dimensions (width and height in pixels), or the image file size (KB or MB). Rule of thumb is to keep the image size as small as possible for the space you’re fitting, without sacrificing quality. If you’re editing and downloading a photo, a JPEG file is fine for most photos, and a PNG file for most graphics. Regardless of the photo editing software that you’re using, you almost never need to export images at 100% (in the quality slider). Choosing something like 70% gives you good-enough quality for much smaller file sizes.

File sizes can slow down your load time, and load time can affect how long a user stays on your website.

Don’t lose sleep over this. Your website developer can be your guide here, whether you’re using a standard site from an industry provider or have a custom designed site. Look at the file size of existing photos and just make a note in your photo editing software. A few different photo sizes to keep in mind are: wide screen gallery images, thumbnails and product images, and photos to include in your blog.

If you really want to dive into this topic, this article explains pinpointing file size very well, foregroundweb.com. And to hone your photography skills, check out this post where I share 6 tips for taking high quality photos with your cell phone.