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Optimizing for quality of user experience is key to the long-term success of any site on the web whether you're a business owner, marketer, or developer.
What is Google Lighthouse?
If you have immersed yourself in optimising sites for search engines, then you will be familiar with your trusted friend Lighthouse. If not, then there are few things that you need to know. Lighthouse is an auditing tool to help increase the quality of web pages and applications. It can be used through the web, through google chrome, or even through the terminal. The audit gives a glance at a few of the most important technical metrics that a site should strive towards. Performance, accessibility and search engine optimisation ( SEO ).
Is it important?
Yes! Lighthouse is built and maintained by the best in the business, Google. They not only understand browser internals, user experience and code quality, but also search engine internals. It is a well known tool that is free to use. Here are the scores that is shown for this website MCT Web
I've listed some of the metrics below and displayed the scores of some of the most popular web development agencies in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
I have blurred out urls as I'm looking to educate, not call out.
Performance
Performance is an easy area to overlook. This is where your cheap and cheerful template sites fall flat. Performance is one of the most important aspects to user experience, yet is so often ignored, especially by developers that cater to the lower-end market. Here is a Aberdeen website design company that has a few issues!
Accessibility
Accessibility is another metric in Lighthouse that is essential to a great user experience. Ultimately, you want every person that visits your website to have a great experience. Accessibility in terms of web development means making your web sites usable by people with vision, hearing, or other limitations. Here is a company that specialises in Aberdeen digital marketing. This one is looking to charge between £10k and £25k per project. Even with a project at this price range they are at risk of legal action for not complying with the The Equality Act 2010.
Best Practices
These checks highlight opportunities to improve the overall code health of your web app. This metric covers security, depreciated technology and general best practices. You don't want to reward your users for visiting your site by putting them at risk. This Aberdeen web design company has quite a few vulnerabilities.
Search Engine Optimisation
The Lighthouse search engine optimization (SEO) audit scans your page, tests for things that matter to search engines, and gives you a score so you can see specific areas for improvement. SEO matters because it's how you get more relevant users viewing your content. If your score isn't high in this metric, then you're possibly missing out on traffic sources. Here is an Aberdeen digital agency that offers SEO as a service.
Conclusion
Hopefully this gives you a better idea of how to use Lighthouse more effectively! Let’s create a faster, more accessible and enjoyable web experience for everyone.