A Full Website Redesign Incoming - Slow Website?

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I know lots of Wealthy Affiliate members talk about not to compare your site and progress to other people and that you should only compare things to yourself.

It's true to some extent and generally I support that opinion.

But I couldn't help but read other people's blogs and see the results they are getting.

And I was seeing things like 3 month progress reports where a blog with about 20 articles is making $5 per week compared to my 1 year old site which is only at $5 per month.

Then I see other people with websites that are making daily Amazon commissions at with a 6 month old website that has only about 50 posts while my badminton website has 100 posts and makes only 1 sale monthly.

I'm ranked on the first pages of Google, I have 130-200 visitors daily, how come I'm not making any money?

Then I see an issue glaring me right in the eyes.

I have 82% bounce rate. So really, only 24 to 36 people actually see my site every day.

And it's even worse when I check some of the individual blog posts too. One of them which gets about 50 weekly viewers has a 97% bounce rate!

Despite seeing improvements and green in my screenshot, it's really not the case. The bounce rate always fluctuates between 80 and 85 percent and the session duration is between 50 seconds and 1 minute 30 seconds.

I've always thought my problem was the content (which it still partly is as I will talk about later), but it looks like the more immediate problem is that my website is unresponsive on mobile!

I've spent way too long not addressing this issue and I think it's about time I do it now.

The 5-Step Plan

After taking the OEC and the first few parts of the Affiliate Bootcamp, I learned that it is much easier to tackle this problem when I break it up into smaller steps.

This is the plan.

  1. Improve My Website Speed
  2. Improve My Content
  3. Making My Website Pop
  4. Generate More Leads
  5. Website Social Expansion

Within each step, I will have individual tasks that I will need to accomplish.

Step 1 - Improve My Website Speed

The biggest issue right now is that my website is very slow on mobile (desktop is somewhat okay) and I need to fix that.

Here are my tasks that I need to accomplish.

1. Change My Website Theme

Currently I am running with the Hiero theme and I am starting to see issues with it. It's time for me to make a change.

I need something lightweight and mobile friendly as well as offer good customizability options for the future.

I have my eyes set on the GeneratePress WordPress theme in which I'll start with the free version and potentially upgrade later on. I have heard many great things about this theme and I'm certainly eager to try it out.

I am open to other suggestions, too! All theme suggestions are welcome in the comment section below.

2. Delete Amazon Banners And Google Ads

My website is way too cluttered and full of Javascript that hurts its loading speed.

Desktop isn't performing that horrible. I have an Amazon banner, 2 Google sidebar ads, and a

Google Matched Content ad on the right side of my widget.

Auto ads only puts in the occasional ad into my blog post so loading times are not that bad.

The mobile version, however, is cluttered.

Auto ads puts Google ads on my top menu, in my footer, a specific ad on the bottom only for phones, multiple ads in all my blog posts, and plus my manually placed ads are all at the bottom of each post.

Way too many ads!

I will turn off auto ads, delete my Amazon banner, and shut off all the current ads.

After I switch to a new theme, I will probably put one sidebar ad back in, but only one!

3. Delete The Plugins That I'm Not Using Or Effectively Using

It's a well-known fact among Wealthy Affiliate members that plugins can severely slow down a website.

I have 7 plugins and there are a few that I should get rid of.

This is a little trickier than the other two tasks as I need to figure out if I really need a plugin and how much it might be benefitting me.

The next few days and weeks might be full of me researching and asking questions.

From what I learn, I will take down what might be hurting my site whenever I see fit.

Step 2 - Improve My Content

Content is king, but only if the content is valuable.

There's a good chunk of people who bounce off my site because the site is loading too slow. At the same time, there is probably also a good chunk of people who find my content boring or the information too shallow as well.

If I wouldn't read my own blog, why would anyone else want to read it?

It's time to go back and fix some things. (I will also continue to create new and better content as well as promote the posts, but that will be done throughout the entire process).

1. Readability And Excitement

There are a few of my posts, especially older posts where my paragraphs are quite long.

I will take time to break it all up and also re-read my posts to fix any sentences that don't make sense or could be better phrased.

My articles are also kind of boring as well. When I go back, I will make all the headings more captivating to really attract people to read my posts.

This brings me to my next topic, though.

2. Long Form Content

One thing that I also know is that lots of my older posts which were targeting great low-hanging fruit keywords need to be longer and go into more detail, especially with Google preferring longer form content.

Lots of these posts only have 800 words or less and I would like to bring them up to 1,300-1,500 words.

3. Reviving Old Posts SEO Strategy

I've read about different ways to improve the SEO of my old posts and why I should do it.

As I go back to my website, I will look for ways that I can put some keywords back into the post without keyword stuffing.

For example, in a badminton racket review, I might add more such as "how much does the badminton racket weigh" or "where can you buy x badminton racket" to try to get traffic from people that might be searching up these keywords.

Adding in a table of contents might be something I do as well depending on if I write enough words for each post.

Step 3 - Making My Website Pop

How can I really make my website stand out from other competitors?

It's time to really make my website shine.

One of the things I got from an old website feedback request was that I should give my website the "sparkle and pizzazz" it deserves.

Here's how I'm going to go about it without slowing down my website again.

1. Nicer Colors, Use Of Gradients, And Picture Perfect

This is when customizability of a theme really starts to play a role.

Specifically around the header but also around my website in general, I want to add more gradients and emphasize my brand a little more.

The details still need to be worked out, but I have a general picture in my head.

2. Restructuring Of My Menus And Categories

While this won't necessarily be noticed that prominently, it will certainly improve user experience.

Currently, my menus can be extremely overwhelming. There are way too many things in the sub-domain and sometimes they overlap too much.

It's time to simplify my menus and make it a lot easier to move around my site and direct people into the places they want to be.

3. Readdition Of Certain Ads

I will certainly have to experiment with this as I learned that some of my website's biggest problems came from too many ads.

I will steer clear of adding more sidebar ads and Google auto ads, unless I learn something else, but the Google matched content ads as well as the Amazon Native Shopping Ads certainly continue to intrigue me.

For matched content ads, I would like to put them at the end of every non-review blog post.

It helps link people to other content on my website and as well provide some revenue by showing ads that people may or may not click on.

For the Amazon Native Shopping ads, I would like to include them on review posts. I could definitely get some more money from this without cluttering my site.

The other options are to manually create my own matched content thing as well as my own product recommendors that directly link to Amazon so I can get commissions instead.

It's all about the experimenting and testing.

Step 4 - Generating More Leads

By now, a lot of the issues with my site's speed and bad content should be fixed.

It's time to improve my site even more and offer more value than ever before!

1. Create An Exit Email Pop-Up

I already have an email list of 2,000 people for my badminton site that I was using lots to get traffic to my website. But I haven't grown it ever for some reason.

Using the Elementor plugin, I will make an exit email pop-up that can continue growing my list.

It will also help a little with session duration as it will extend people's time on the website whenever they are about to leave.

Of course, I have to continually offer great content for people, but by this time I should have more blog posts and maybe even videos created.

2. Homepage Redesign

Eventually I want to have a static homepage rather than a blog roll.

Why?

Because anyone that directly comes to my site by typing in the website or from whatever link will know where to start and eventually get funneled through to what I really want people to see.

Those things would probably be my own courses or other things that I can offer to people that pay out better than Amazon commissions.

Step 5 - Getting Social

Well, this plan was originally designed to fix some of my current issues with website speed and poor content, but since we have come this far, why not improve my social presence too?

But this section won't be about posting more on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. I will do those things continually and make minor changes as I see fit.

There are two big new things that I want to do in this step.

1. YouTube Explosion


I've posted one YouTube video a few months ago and never made one again.

If you have been following me for a while, you'll notice that on just about every single monthly report, I talk about how I failed to make a YouTube video and that I will make one next month.

And I never made one again.

The main issue is what direction I wanted to take my channel and blog. I was making montages of pro badminton players before and I felt that it just didn't suit my business name, Get Good At Badminton.

Pro player game highlights don't help people get good at badminton much. Showing myself doing badminton drills and exercises does help more people.

Unfortunately, I was always too scared to record and show myself to the world so I never did it. But it will be time to step out of my comfort zone or I will never grow.

2. Pinterest Automation With Tailwind

Right now I'm doing a bit of manual pinning with Pinterest. It hasn't been very life changing for me and I get pretty abysmal traffic from the site.

It will be time for me to make a bunch of infographics and pictures that really attract people to my site. Then I want to use Tailwind to regurgitate some of the pins linking to my website with pins linking to other sites so that I can consistently get views and clicks.

I've seen a lot of people have success with Pinterest and I certainly think that it can work out for my website as well.

Will I Be Able To Do It?

Now that I have the whole plan down, there's only one thing left to do; execute the plan.

Time to back-up my website, and start by deleting the ads.

I mainly wrote this post to give myself a reference to what I want to change and hold myself accountable to improve my website. So any comments along the lines of, "Kevin! Go FIX your website NOW!" would actually be appreciated.

I do also appreciate feedback. Any comments regarding things that I could make better will help quite a bit.

Tips on other ways to improve website speed, other WordPress themes, design, ad placement, etc. would be great.

Hopefully, this post could also help you. Perhaps it may have given you new insights on what you could do to improve your blog.

When I finish different segments of this plan, I will definitely give everyone a few updates just to let you know if these changes have actually benefitted my website or not.

Hopefully my theories are correct and my site will improve after this... but we won't know until we actually do it! Let me get started right now.

Thank you for reading and have a great day!

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Recent Comments

10

All the best to you Kelvin!

Thank you!

All great ideas Kevin. Lots of hard work, but I’m sure it will be worth it.

I do hope so as well!

Sounds like a good plan Kevin.
Apparently mobile users are a big part of the market now with more accessing the internet via mobile, than computer.
Its not good to compare as we all have individual tastes but good to learn from those who are having more success.
Good luck.

Yep, mobile users certainly make up a lot of my traffic. About 47%, usually 60% when I'm promoting with Instagram and my email list though.

Good to review and improve to get better results, continuous improvement is necessary for every business. Since you already have customers and a list, good to ask them for their opinion what they find helpful on your site and what they would change.

Makes sense. I actually never thought of that. Thank you!

That is actually good. Knowing where your website stands and learning new things from others are thigs we really need to do!

Yep! And that's why Wealthy Affiliate is so great-- we can bounce all our ideas off of each other!

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