Chances are that your website is the most effective sales and marketing tool at your disposal. But is it operating and functioning at its full potential? If not, read on to learn 5 essential ways to improve your website.
Before we begin, look at your website and ask yourself the following:
– Is there a clean and concise value proposition?
– Does it have clear calls-to-action?
– Is it responsive across all devices?
– Does it load quickly on both desktop and mobile?
One of the few constants in this digital world we live in is the fact that everything is continuously changing. This applies to technologies, platforms, software and of course “websites”.
One thing to understand is that websites need to be frequently updated and optimized. This includes improving load speeds, providing valuable, fresh and relevant content, providing secure access, and providing a seamless and great experience for the users.
That said, here are 5 fundamental strategies to help improve your site’s appeal and profitability as the digital landscape evolves.
1. Provide Quality Content
Having quality content is imperative for any website. The content you produce and showcase on your website should always be relevant to your visitors’ interests. If your content sucks, users will leave quickly. And a high bounce rate is a thing to avoid as it sends Google a message that your website does not provide value to the user and that will negatively impact your SEO strategy.
But of course, the content is one part of the equation. The content itself should also be structured and optimized for a great user-experience, and one that encourages conversions.
Be sure to include (but not overuse) relevant keywords in your headlines, meta description, and body as search engine bots crawl your site and use these keywords as clues to understanding what your website is all about. Quality content will help lead to more conversions, will keep users interested and on your website longer, and for SEO purposes, this is an important factor to consider.
2. Responsive Design
If your website is not responsive, solve this as soon as possible. Responsive web design, in a nutshell, means making your website adaptable to the size of your visitor’s screen, be it desktop, tablet, or mobile phone.
Now that Google is moving towards mobile-first indexing, having a fresh responsive mobile website is more critical than ever.
Mobile users are visiting your website more and more every day, and if they find you have designed it solely for desktop users and that it displays terribly on their mobile phone, they are going to bounce pretty quickly. This is no bueno.
Implementing a responsive design is one of the most important changes you can make to your website that will improve your conversion rate as well as help you not get penalized by Google.
If your website is already built and you don’t have the resources to start one from scratch, there are companies out there that can help you convert it to a mobile-friendly version.
3. Present A Clear Value Proposition
Put yourself in your target user’s shoes. From their perspective can they quickly find what value your product or service holds in the first few seconds they are on your website or landing page? If not, you need to create a clear value proposition.
A value proposition, as explained by Conversion XL, is basically a clear statement that explains how your product solves customers’ problems or improves their situation, delivers specific benefits, tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition.
When a user comes to your site without knowing too much about your company or brand, your main goal is to convince them as quickly as possible that you have the solution to whatever their problem is.
And to achieve that you have to make it the centerpiece and have it stand out.
The problem is that too many websites have a lot of bells and whistles, have too many call-to-action elements, or simply have too much clutter and distractions. All of this will only confuse the user and affect your conversion rates.
The best approach is to write a clear and simple value proposition and place it where it is most visible on your homepage or landing page.
If you pair it with a more minimalist design and an eye-catching image or background, chances are you will capture your user’s attention and help lead them to follow your call-to-action.
4. Use Effective Calls-to-Action
The call-to-action is one of the most important steps in the path to conversion on your website. Without it, it will be difficult in getting the user to take the next step or convert. Your objective should be to take the user by the hand and guide them through the conversion funnel you have created for your product or service.
Think about a call-to-action as a prompt for your users to do specific tasks. If you’ve ever come across a Subscribe Now or Add to Shopping Cart button on a website, then you’ve been exposed to a call-to-action.
When coming up with your call-to-actions, it’s a good idea to test a few and see which ones convert better. Most importantly, and similar to your Value Proposition, make sure your call-to-actions are clearly visible on your homepage or landing page.
5. Optimize Site speed
Site speed is another factor that has an enormous impact on conversion rates. As Kissmetrics points out: nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds.
So, it should come to no surprise that you need to do everything in your power to increase the loading speed of your website. To test your website, check Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to see how the grade your website and then review the helpful advice they give to improve performance. Also, try using Pingdom which is another free Website Speed Testing site to analyze the load speed of your website and learn how to make them faster.
Adopt the tips and recommendations that the Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom provide. It could be that you have an image file that weighs 3mbs and reducing it to 200kb improves your site speed by 50%. Take a good in-depth look at your website and its performance and start making important changes now. Lowering your mobile load time below three seconds should be your prime objective.
Focusing on boosting your website’s performance is one of the best decisions you can make for its long-term growth. It also happens to be one of the most rewarding. Factors such as having a clean landing page with great content and design, strong calls-to-action, proper conversion funnels, and other important features are of critical importance.
Having a kick-ass website will help you out-perform on every measure; traffic, speed, conversion rates, sales, and, most importantly, return on your investment. Don’t wait, get started today.