Make Your Website Work For You
Your website is one of the most powerful marketing tools for your business. Every website can help you hit your company’s objectives if you follow the right steps. Often times, a few small changes can drastically improve the function and value of your website.
Plan Your Navigation
People are visiting your website for a reason and it usually revolves around finding useful and relevant information. Your web interface should provide easy navigation to all of your site content. Information pages, product pages and customer-service information should be made very clear to your visitor from the moment they reach your website.
Navigation should be intuitive and easy to understand. Browsing menus should be hierarchical, and all pages of your website should be clearly labelled. Your customer shouldn’t be confused as they make their way through your website – make it clear what page they came from, which page they are on and how they can reach their destination.
Present Your Message
According to recent statistics, you have only 59 seconds to generate interest in your prospective customer before they leave your page. When users visit your website, they want to know what you are offering – or they will leave.
Your homepage and key landing pages are powerful conversion tools. Use these pages to:
- Present your product.
- Present your mission.
- Present a lifestyle.
You’ll convert more page visitors into customers if you show them exactly what they’ll be getting from the very first second they reach your page.
Optimize Your Loading Times
In our growing culture of impatience, people have little tolerance for slow websites. According to Kissmetrics, 40 percent of online users will leave a webpage if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds. This gives you a very small window to attract visitors – particularly if your website is slow. Especially for an ecommerce website, a slow loading time could affect your bottom line.
In addition, Google ranks quickly loading websites more highly than others. If your website loads in less than one second, you’ll be more likely to rank highly on the first page of Google search results. Optimizing your website’s loading times can be done using a number of free and paid online tools:
Beware of Video Autoplay
Video marketing is prevailing in today’s online market. More people than ever are turning to video reviews for products and companies. Including videos on your product pages is a great way to increase your conversion rates, but autoplay can be very frustrating for your users – in fact, a recent study shows that over 70 percent of online shoppers found autoplay videos to be more annoying than helpful.
Videos that play automatically re-direct the focus of your user. They may venture away from your page in order to stop the video. In some cases, customers will close your website entirely, in order to avoid hearing or watching your video.
Stay Active
When users visit your website, they should not be greeted with outdated content – particularly if you run a blog. Some ways to keep your website active include:
- Posting new, relevant content on a regular and consistent schedule.
- Updating sales and featured products on your homepage.
- Re-releasing evergreen content to repurpose your best work.
Update frequently, but don’t overdo it. The more readers you have, the more frequently you should post.
Talk to a Digital-Marketing Specialist Today!
Looking for ways to make your website work for you? Learn how Graphically Speaking can help you optimize your website to attract more visitors today! Book a free consultation.