How well does your website perform?

Nibbler's report screen

Understanding how well your website is performing is vital if you are to make it work for whatever you want to achieve. 

You need to understand what is working and what is not working on your site. You can easily see which blog posts, products or pages are working well in terms of how many visitors are looking at those pages. Google Analytics will help you with this information.

However, it is not just the content which will show you what is performing.

There are technical aspects of your website which will need to improved so that you can increase its visibility on search engines and, ultimately, in people's attention.

If you run your own website, then it is likely that you will be able to fix some of the items which need attention yourself. If the website you edit, or contribute to, is run by web team, for example, you will need to ask them to improve it for you.

Speaking the right language

But, how do you explain to the 'technical team' what you think needs to be done?

This is where free website performance tools come in handy. For example, Nibbler will analyse your website and report on what needs improvement so you can talk the same language as your technical people.

Just type in your website's address and click 'Test' and Nibbler will analyse your site. When complete, Nibbler provides a page which scores how well your website is performing overall and various details including how well your site is doing among social media websites, how well the code in your website is written and which are the top priorities for improvement.

The beauty with Nibbler (apart from being free) is that you can then understand why your website is doing better (or worse) compared to your competition. Then, you can speak more confidently with the people who manage your website about changes you need to happen to compete and work harder for you.