Increase website success requires ongoing and strategic planning. With many factors affecting the performance of your site, it’s important to remember the key principles that increase conversion rates and user engagement over time.
Webmasters must know what elements are engaging readers, and which ones are making them to click the back button. Here are 6 steps you can take to enhance your site’s design for maximum performance.
1. Make a Fast First Impression
The average website visitor stays on your page for less than a minute. You have a small window of opportunity to hook your reader into your content. In order to keep your visitors longer, use a variety of mediums to appeal to different learning styles.
Although your site may contain well-written and compelling text, some visitors simply aren’t engaged through words. Providing visual information in the form of videos or infographics can increase conversion rates dramatically.
2. Give It Away
A free offer for visitors is a great way to decrease your site’s bounce rate. It gives prospective customers a sample of the value being offered, while building a deeper relationship immediately. It’s also one of the best ways to build your mailing list for future marketing campaigns.
Consultations are a valuable offer for service providers looking to grow their client base. Each business is unique, and you can test which offers resonate with your readers to find what works.
3. Answer the Most Important Questions
When a visitor lands on your website, valuable information must be established quickly in order to engage and guide their attention. Use a powerful headline to answer the most important question: “Where am I?”
By giving visitors an indication of your site’s purpose, you reduce confusion and improve its conversion rate. Readers must know where they are and what they can do with your site’s content.
4. Stand Out
Establishing your unique selling proposition (USP) is one of the primary objectives of your website. Identify your ideal customer, the solutions your product or service offer, and what sets you apart from your competitors.
Your USP draws visitors further into your message and begins to establish a brand identity in the mind of your visitors.
5. Use the Right Call to Action
Your website’s call to action should be easy to find. Use saturated colors such as blue or red to make buttons stand out. These colors increase conversion rates and influence the mood and emotions of your visitors.
Use words such as “reserve”, “discover”, or “learn” to make calls to action positive and engaging.
Neutral words such as “click here” reduce the motive to take action. Worse yet, “enroll”, “buy”, or “submit” can subconsciously increase resistance in the mind of your site’s visitors.
Calls to action should be simple and appropriately positioned. Placing it too early in your copy can drive away customers if you’ve not given them sufficient clarity on your offer, or have failed to demonstrate a unique selling proposition.
6. Help the Search Engines Help You
Search engine optimization is still as vital as ever. Although the landscape of SEO changes constantly, the principles remain. In order for users to find you, search engines must be able to make sense of your site so that they can deliver it to the right people.
Using keywords within your site will improve your site’s search engine rankings. The following are important locations for keyword placement:
- URL
- Title tag
- Headers
- Image and video titles and attributes
Keywords help indicate the theme of your website, giving search engines the ability to provide relevant results to users. While the URL’s on each page help clarify the destination of any inbound links, they also tell search engines what content can be found on each page.
Images and videos (unreadable by search engines) must contain relevant information in their titles and alt attributes to increase the relevancy of your website to what users are looking for.
The effectiveness of your site is a result of factors that must be evaluated and updated over time. Making your content clear, while answering the most important questions in your readers’ minds increases the level of engagement and conversion. Over time, this increases your site’s visibility and long-term success.
