Here are some small changes you can make to produce a big impact on your website. Every business needs customers to buy their product or service. However sometimes getting them to do it can be difficult — and there are many reasons for this.
A big factor that comes into play is that you need to find out where your website visitors have come from, the device they used to get there and what they do once they reach your site. This can help you build your business towards your ideal customers’ needs.
1. Website Objectives
- Most websites fail to bring in sales because their business objectives have been forgotten or ignored when devising the web strategy.
- If the online marketing effort isn’t measured correctly against company targets, then the website will have a hard time making an impact. This is why there should be a strategy in place.
- Organisation is key to running a business and with a plan in place to take your business further, you can do it with some motivation and planning.
2. Website Goals
- There are a number of ways you can meet your website goals. You should make sure you have a good software analyser, this will help you determine whether or not you’re meeting these objectives.
- These apps will reveal which marketing channels are providing the most number of visitors and the parts of your website that are most popular.
- They’ll also show you the pages your visitors actively avoid with bounce rates and individual page analysis.
3. Website Strategy
- With this information, you can then create a marketing strategy and build a website that works for your business.
- There are a huge amount of web built platforms you can use and produce your website cost-effectively.
- The tools for measuring the performance of a website are normally straightforward. For most small businesses, the free Google Analytics platform is known as the best and most approachable web analysis software on the market.
Tracking your visitors
Visitors on your website will normally find you via natural search engine listings, from links on other websites, by pay-per-click advertising, or from links contained within email marketing campaigns and social media posts.
If you have paid for a search engine optimisation (SEO) expert for your website, you can sometimes find your natural search listings aren’t improving as well as you would have hoped. This means your strategy may need to be reviewed. Best practices for being indexed and ranked by Google is to stay on top of the latest Google algorithm updates as it changed regularly.
Google Analytics has a powerful reporting site, you’ll be able to determine which referral sources offer the best influx of visitors and which marketing channels are underperforming.
Website analysis tools reveal geographical location as well as telling you which methods and platforms visitors have used to find you. There has been a massive growth of location-based services so much so half of all search queries are based on location.
Web analysis tools will also show you how many visitors are visiting your site from their smartphones or tablets. It will break down the operating systems and web browsers they use, enabling you to focus on the right strategy for cross-browser and device compatibility.
Monitoring how visitors use your site
The way your visitors use your website will show you the quality of its content and how easy it is to navigate. Evaluating your site enables navigation and content areas in need of improvement and increase its ability to meet your objectives and conversion rates. You can gain data on how your website is being used and turn more enquiries into sales.
Most web analysis tools give you the ability to define objectives. An objective could be a particular route taken to reach the ‘Contact Us’ page or the speed with which a call-to-action is clicked on page entry. Objective monitoring will enable you to see just how many of the visitors to your site end up completing through to check out and it also gives you the chance to see when things don’t appear to be going to plan.
If conversions are low, check how much time visitors spend on particular pages. This is usually referred to as ‘average time on page’ with bounce rates, this provides major insights into the potential obstacles people are encountering.
Quick tip: Visit your website with a new customer in mind and see how natural it is. Are there any obvious roadblocks? High bounce rates and low average times on page usually indicate that you have some work to do.
A page-by-page analysis will show you how to identify old or even content that visitors could quickly abandon. Most web visitors have limited attention spans, but those with more patience may be spending a long time on safe pages because the page is complicated or can’t find the call to action buttons.
Services like Google Analytics show how visitors have reached your website and where they click when they are on your site. They offer data to show the effectiveness of your website and how to move visitors towards what you want and how to make improvements.
The internet has helped level the playing field for smaller companies, putting you in front of a global audience for minimal costs. However just getting people to visit your website is not enough. You need to reassure them you are a safe place to buy from – and that isn’t always easy.
