Jasmine Web Starter

Whether you are just starting out or have been running a website for awhile now, you will know that the web can be a great place to quickly publish information and gain interaction from customers. But at times it can also be overwhelming and totally misleading.

Lets explore that a little

Without doubt a website is a super way to promote services or products to a wide audience, whilst offering great speed to market as publishing can be straight forward.

But by the same degree it can be surprisingly hard at times, to find straight forward information about common tools that you might hear about when you are starting out.

Or even if you have maybe had something built for you, as the features or questions you should be asking about are all new to you.

Also not all web companies / web developers are willing to share issues and missing features with their customers, or it might be that they're not as up to speed as they really should be.

One common issue

Lets take a real common issue that comes to light a lot - you are sold or pushed into using WordPress as you are told its the best option for running a website (Sometimes even before you been asked your requirements!).

Which leads you to find

You then find out that using the control panel / admin features are not that straight forward, and that adding new content or changing page layout options are a little overwhelming.

Followed by months later when you start looking at the search engine console's on Bing and Google to register your website and review how the search engine sees it. Only to then find out that its reporting an issue with your pages.

Such as the Meta description tag is missing or empty, then after a little digging you find out that by default WordPress does not make this available for you to use without using a third party add in!

Which really poses the question of why does WordPress who promotes itself as a "website building tool", not meet a search engines key requirement? Also why where you sold a website that clearly did not meet defined search engine requirements?

Search engines use the Meta description within your returned search listing, so this is maybe your first point of contact to get a new customer to explore the link to your website.

I have used WordPress in the above example as this issue comes up every few weeks, and each time the website owner is super surprised and unhappy!

However issues commonly rise up in Squarespace, WIX, Shopify, plus many more website platforms also.

These can range from errors in the browsers console that customers sometimes report to the owner (more on this soon), or poor loading performance which might be issues with the theme, uploaded images, the amount of content entered into each page, or poor contrast between text and background plus other Accessibility issues.

Another very common issue: Is a missing favicon

Oh, what's one of those? A favicon is the image that you see in the browser tab, and when a user bookmarks your website page. It is also used by search engines in the list entry about your website.

So a missing favicon will not make your brand stand out in the users browser tabs or bookmarks, while also missing the chance for your search engine results to stand out.

Plus do you really want to promote WordPress or whatever the default image is for your chosen website technology next to your listing? This is sadly very common across a large number of businesses.

Lastly the browser will report an error each time someone browses your website pages, this can be seen in the web console within the browsers development tools (F12).

All of which are easy to fix or add but if you don't know the clear guidelines you need to meet whilst defining your pages, content and images can be easily over looked.

Though where do you look for this guidance? The product docs or elsewhere, plus what's up to date for you to follow?

Again who is really responsible for these issues in the first place? As they could be having an impact on your customers and search engine placement!

But I can just use a LLM / AI

Today there is no end to the new wave of tooling launching with LLM (Large Language Model) and AI (Artificial intelligence) feature sets.

As mentioned before with the above products, the major question comes down to how do I know that this outputted solution or website is ready to promote my company.

Plus its not going to bring me problems that will lead to us having to tell users that we have lost all of there information that they can't change such as, Name and DOB, but hey the credit card info was safe which could be changed.

All of which is never a good look for any company which is why its important to always think do we really need this information and do we need to store it?

At the end of the day how do you know that this AI output also meets with core web search engine requirements for listing, plus the requirements for accessibility, along with meeting the customers needs on the device that they are using?

In reality AI can be a great supervised tool as a assistant to complete common tasks and explore features, however its really important that all code is reviewed and tested before you publish it.

Benchmarking my website

Google Lighthouse

We have been super keen of this tool ever since it launched, as it provides an opinionated list of tests to check a webpage against, with clear actionable ways to fix the failing issues. You can find it in the browser developer tools if you are using either Edge or Chrome browsers, if not then you can head to pagespeed.web.dev to run a test.

We have clear guidance for running lighthouse tests in our sprout of wisdom - Use lighthouse to performance and Accessibility test.

We especially like that you don't need to know lots about web development in order to use it, as it provides a clear set of four numbers covering Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO for your webpage viewed on a mobile, and another set for Desktop (Note: These numbered results are only for the webpage you tested not the whole website).

These are a great benchmark to provide an open discussion about a website, and empower website owners to ask questions on an informed basis.

Great so I tested my website

One thing we should point out at this stage is that Lighthouse does not fully test your website for all issues / problems that are waiting to trip up a user. But it is a very good benchmark to make sure that your website does not have core usability issues.

Common errors might be: missing or incorrect HTML elements, missing favicon, or issues with fallback images in picture tags, along with third party linked CSS/JS features that maybe out of date or just not needed any more. These types of problems would require more detailed testing.

We don't have a full answer today for a simple way you might be able to stop these issues in your website, however it is something that we are actively working on, and will publish a sprout tip about it when available.

Setting expectations for User feedback

If you already have a website we're sure you've probably seen those emails coming in claiming that they can put you on "page one of Google", or maybe the one where they claim to have "found an issue on your website" and ask if they can inform you of it if you just reply! We're told they then go on to ask for money for standard common website issues!!!

SEO & Page one

Firstly lets look at the SEO ones. Our view is that unless they work for either Microsoft Bing or Google Search teams, then they can not guarantee you anything to do with a search engine that they don't own or work for.

We strongly believe that websites should be designed and built for your customers needs, so it makes sense to follow the guidelines provided from the search engine companies as you build. Its free to obtain clear first party information about your website by logging into Bing's webmaster console at Webmaster Tools - About, or Google Search console at How to get your website on Google Search

You will need to prove to them that you are the owner to be able to add your website, you can do this a number of ways and clear instructions are provided by them that you can follow.

Once you add your website, its a good idea to register your website sitemap.xml which we have written about Sitemaps for your users and for search engines

When you have signed up it takes a few days for issues / recommendations to be listed. These provide instructions on how to correct the issue, once you have you can then test to make sure you have corrected the problem, if everything is okay you can ask the search engine to retest that page.

You also gain insight into how a user has landed on your webpage, and the search terms they used. These can be useful to learn from as these keywords can then be used for titles, descriptions and content going forward.

Depending on the size of your company there are paid tools and services to help you use this type of information for your company's growth, along with many companies that work in this area of the web.

We would strongly recommend not overlooking Microsoft Bing as its search index powers a number of other search engines that your new customers might use.

Reported website Issues

So lets explore that second type of mail / feedback mentioned of finding an issue on your website. Security is a very hot topic at the moment, it seems daily we hear of yet another company losing customer data.

This is a very tricky area firstly we must assume that the feedback could be trying to get us to over share information, or trick us to click on a link that results in a very bad day at work.

But the cost of just ignoring this type of feedback could mean you overlook some really useful customer feedback about your content or website. Or maybe the feedback is in the form of a responsible disclosure about a real problem.

How does this issue get to the right person in your company in a timely manor?

Every company should explore and define clear procedures, for who and how the feedback loop is made available to the right areas of the company.

Its not easy to offer general advice here as every company is different, but its key that everyone in your company understands the risks of ignoring feedback, this does not mean you have to answer everything, but should have a way of assessing the provided details.

Google Search Essentials

Google do publish useful guidance here to the requirements your website should meet to be included in search results, However the first requirement for any website is that it should be easy to use for users, which is where following the Google Search Essentials can really help.

Defining and answering

We plan to explore the "next steps" in defining and answering some of the above raised questions we have highlighted here soon by releasing further tips. Along with exploring can anyone test a website that's going to production or maybe is in production (Published)?

Your feedback

Some of these topics have been on our list to write about for a long time as you can appreciate reading through the above, each area is Huge in its self so if you have further questions about some area or topic please feel free to reach out using the Contact form, we would be happy to help, or update this tip with useful information.