When taking a business online, there’s a lot to consider. The way in which visitors interact with your site differs from how they would in store. They typically have less time to make up their mind and are little more impatient so first impressions count. It’s why most visits end at the homepage. You’re also reliant on them to understand your message as you’re not physically present to guide them through your offering. To help businesses navigate the online space, we’ve teamed up with a digital agency in Hertfordshire to share our tips for optimising business websites to increase conversions.
Bounce Rate
Going back to the point that we touched on earlier, to convert your visitors you’ll need to keep them on your site long enough to understand what you’re about and turn them into paying customers. Your bounce rate will give you an indication of how appealing your site is and whether you’re doing this correctly. By definition, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave your site without moving past the homepage. It’s actually quite normal for this to happen, it may be your targeting or another reason. As a rule of thumb, 30-50% is okay and is a low bounce rate. Anything over 75% should ring alarm bells that there is something seriously wrong with your site.
Google Analytics
You can learn about how users are navigating your site by taking a look at your Google Analytics account. If you don’t already have one, we highly recommend setting one up as you will be able to narrow down where you should focus your attention. You could be doing an amazing job with your marketing, getting streams of visitors from all different channels and falling short of sales due to technical issues or poorly written copy best mutual funds.
Copywriting
Following on from the point above, good website copy is essential. It tells your brand story, what you’re all about and convinces users to place a purchase or make an inquiry. If it’s very wordy, they may skim past crucial bits of information on your website without realising. Your copy needs to be concise – to the point and speak in a way which resonates. You will need to help them see how your product or service will help solve their problems and for that you will need to think about your audience carefully. If writing’s not your forte, you might want to think about contracting a skilled copywriting professional.
Auditing
Let’s go back to reporting tools. If you suspect there’s a technical issue with your site, we recommend having it reviewed. There are many tools out there that can scan your site, so you don’t need to spend hours doing investigative work. Tools such as SEMrush, Google Search Console and Screaming Frog. They will perform what is known as a crawl and highlight all pages with issues. For example, you may have a number of 4XX errors on product or service pages which is preventing users from moving forwards in their decision-making process. If you have the budget, a digital agency can help you work through these errors and with little disruption to your site, allowing you to continue as normal whilst the work is underway.
Improve Your CTA’s
CTAs are also known as calls to action. They are the reminders that guide users to take a particular action. That might be to “buy now”, or to “arrange a consultation” depending on the kind of business you run. Hone in on these by making them clear and ensure that all relevant buttons work.
We hope that this post gives some idea as to how you can improve your conversions. Remember, a website is a working project and once you have one, you will need to monitor and continue to invest time and resources, especially with the fast-paced nature of the digital world.
