HUG recap: A Live Website Review + Optimization Tips

For the second Chicago HubSpot User Group meet up, Stephanie and I decided to mix things up a bit and host a Live Website Review. This was a brand-new style of event for our #CHIHUG and we wanted to make sure that our HubSpot events feel like a community—where we grow and learn from each other.  Each HUG member brings knowledge and expertise to our meet ups and Stephanie and I are here to encourage and facilitate the networking aspect. 

With this specific event, attendees could submit their websites to be reviewed live by our panel of HUG members. For our panel, we asked three local industry experts to review each site, give kudos and ways to improve their website. Meet our panel members:

From left to right: Maria Thimothy, Jill Wilson, and Dennis Kardys.

Maria Thimothy, Digital Marketer & Customer Service Manager at OneIMS. Maria was our analytics expert and chatted about each website’s analytics.

Jill Wilson, President of Simple Machines Marketing, was our SEO expert. She shared insights relating to domain authority, back links, and SEO recommendations for each website.

Dennis Kardys, Design Director at Diagram, shared his knowledge as our User Experience (UX) panelist. He highlighted examples of great user experience and shared actionable DIY tips and tools to use.

Some of the overall key website optimization insights given throughout the night were:

ANALYTICS

• Increase traffic to your website by focusing on channels that you can easily influence like email, social and paid ads.
  
  
• If your website has lots of website visits and a high bounce rate, find ways to improve the user experience on key pages so that your end-users will spend more time on your website.

SEO

• For quick SEO cleanup, you can create more content rich pages to rank for long-tail keywords.
  
  
• Meta descriptions are huge for your brand. They’re like a mini advertisement—a way to give an elevator pitch for yourself. 

USER EXPERIENCE

• To improve user experience, consistency is key on your website. Keep website buttons, both the style and size, heading, font size and typography consistent across your website.
  
  
• One of the best UX methods to identify website pain points and opportunities to improve design, increase conversation and assess content is through in-person, contextual user research and usability testing.

We loved mixing up our usual presentation-style HUGs to include an event where everyone can learn from each other. Our next HUG is May 2 at TechNexus. Lindsay Thibeault from HubSpot Academy will be presenting. We'd love to see you there!