Sure a website is there to give people information and let them know what you do, but the doors of your business will not stay open on rainbows and sunshine. When you get down to it, your website has one function …..to convert more website visitors.
Whether it is to convert them into a lead, get the phone ringing or to make a sale, if your website has a high bounce rate or is not converting then it’s time to look at why not.
With that in mind here are 6 ways to revamp your website, keep people engaged and ultimately increase conversions (without necessarily needing a new website).
1. Make your main message clear
Your home page or any landing page needs to instantly tell people they are in the right place. If people truely have a shorter attention span than a goldfish (yes, there is Microsoft funded research that indicates this) then you need to make sure people know what your unique buyer’s advantage is – your elevator pitch.
People want to be able to easily scan your content to establish the value you have to offer and jump to the information they find most relevant, so don’t bury everything in big blocks of unformatted text
2. Create a call-to-action
After you show visitors your value and have highlighted the solutions you offer, the next thing is to let them know what the next step is. Whether it’s make a call, complete a form or click for more information, your objective is to make it clear….don’t assume the visitor knows what they should do next.
Different pages on your website may have different call-to-actions. Your home page’s primary call-to-action may be to call or complete a form, with secondary call-to-actions being to click through for more information or to view samples of work, whereas expecting someone to call you from a blog post may be a stretch so linking to more detailed information or your services page may be more appropriate.
Taking the time for mapping out the pages on your site and how they relate to visitor flow through your site is an important part of deciding on the call-to-actions you use throughout your website.
3. Generate fresh content
Will visitors convert on their first visit to your website? Unfortunately, in most cases, no. However, the more times they come back to your website the more likely they are to convert. When you are generating fresh content that is valuable to your target market, they are more likely to come back….and even subscribe to your email list if you can demonstrate sufficient value.
So take the time to plan out a content strategy that includes building an editorial calendar and how you will promote each piece of content when it is produced. A well planned content strategy will also have the added benefit of attracting the attention of the search engines, too.
4. Retarget website visitors
So getting people to your website will take an investment of time and/or money and you know that if someone has visited your website they are a potential prospect for your product or service. As long as your website does not give a negative experience, it then follows that this person is more likely to convert than any other individual that has not visited your website.
Retargeting (Google calls it remarketing) gives you the opportunity to advertise to people that have previously visited your website. You can run a general campaign or a campaign specifically to people that have visited certain pages on your website. The two main platforms this is done through is Facebook Ads and Google Adwords and their partner network.
All it takes is to make sure the code is added from the third party advertising platforms and you are set to get a second chance at converting people that have left your website.
5. Address specific needs with dedicated relevant pages
If you ask someone a question, you don’t want a 10 minute answer to something that could have been given in 30 seconds. Considering that Google is only one click away, you want to make sure that you are making it easy for visitors to get the information they are after.
This is particularly relevant when you are generating traffic through paid advertising or social media. When someone clicks on something you have struck a chord and if they don’t see a direct correlation between what they clicked on and the page they land on, then the majority of visitors will quickly leave.
The fact is that if you know the source of traffic, you should be able to give the right answers.
Take Google Adwords, for example. When setting up a Google Adwords campaign you will break the keywords you are targeting into tightly themed keyword ad groups that have their own ads. If your campaign is set up properly, when someone clicks on your Google Adwords ad you know exactly what they are looking for. So if you are paying for the click, does it not make sense to send them to a page that exactly matches what they were searching for rather than to a generic page you hope covers everything?
6. Check your site on mobile
And of course there is the case of whether the pages on your site give the best mobile experience to visitors. Just because you have a mobile responsive website (mobile-friendly has been talked to death by now, so doesn’t everyone these days?) does not mean you can’t do something that will “break” your website.
Adding an image or video the wrong way, even on a responsive website can cause issues on mobile. So even if it is something as simple as publishing a blog post always check a preview of the draft and also how it looks after publishing.
There are any number of things that are out of your hands when marketing your business online, but your website is something you can control. Invest the time to identify any potential leaks. Treat your website like a sales person that is having trouble closing sales…sometimes it is not their fault, it is just that you have not put the time in to make sure they can succeed.