Do you want more conversions from your website? Try these five tips

Websites are never set and done – there are always opportunities for improvement. Learn about the five crucial aspects to focus on when attempting to improve your conversion rate.

It can be easy to come to the conclusion that once your business website is up and running, that your work there is complete. That you can tick it off your ‘to do’ list and move on to the next thing.

Yet often, that initial version of your website is really just the beginning.

It can take months to develop a high-converting, high-performing website.

And much of this can take a fair amount of trial and error – plus significant testing and tweaking.

Because, quite frankly, your website is never really finished. It needs to grow with you and will inevitably evolve – both in content and design – as you and your brand does.

If you’re concerned however that your website isn’t converting the sales or bringing in the leads you were hoping for – and you’re a little bit lost as to how or what to fix – there are a few main elements that you can focus on, to start improving your results.

Start with these five elements

1. Simplicity
2. Customer-Focused Copy
3. Clever Search Engine Optimisation
4. Page Layout
5. Overall Design

1. Simplicity

The first Golden Rule for your website is quite simply – simplicity.

It’s important to know that ‘simple’ really does rule the world.

Trouble is, our complicated, busy business brains tend to overcomplicate everything. Including, our website.

Here are some ideas on how you might simplify yours:

• Decide on ONE clear, call to action (or next step) – and include it on every page.
• Tighten up your copy, to use ‘Active voice’ and cut out unnecessary words. Get straight to the point!
• Utilise, introduce and explain ONE idea, per page.
• Break up your services from one long page, into several separate pages.
• Strip back your services to a few main offerings.
• Strip back your colour palette to just two or three main colours – and use them consistently.

2. Customer-Focused Copy

Often, business owners tend to focus on themselves.

So, their website copy or content tends to be a mere description of what they do.

Trouble is, your customers or potential clients, don’t necessarily care about what you do.

They care more about HOW what you do can help them – and what it can help them achieve.

See the difference?

Successful website copywriting focuses in on the target customer’s needs, wants and desires.

It’s all about the OUTCOMES they’re looking for – and not so much about your processes or products.

3. Clever Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

If you’ve been in business for more than a few weeks(!) then you’ll probably have heard about the magical dark art of SEO.

But in case you’re not sure, SEO or Search Engine Optimisation, is all about making your website appear on Google as high up as possible in the search listings, when your target customer types in a particular keyword or phrase.

SEO takes advantage of the organic or FREE traffic from Google. And generally, the more traffic you can get from Google organically, the more likely you are to make sales.

Trouble is, there are a lot of outdated and somewhat ‘spammy’ practices out there, that no longer work and it can be tricky to know where to start or what to do.

The SEO tactics you really need to know about include (in order):

1. Keyword Research – to determine the best keywords to target.
2. Optimising your copy or content with the right number of keywords, naturally weaved into the copy.
3. Technical optimisation – site load speed, internal and external links, etc.
4. Creating QUALITY backlinks.
5. Creating QUALITY, regular content (blogs or extra page content).

4. Page Layout

Once you have great COPY you need that copy to be displayed nicely.

Here, white space, bullet points, lots of paragraph spaces are key for your copy (although that stuff should already be taken care of when writing said copy!).

Other elements to think about include:

• Clear call to action buttons – in a colour that stands out.
• Images that complement the copy and work within your overall branding.
• Icons that help separate content.
• Heading styles that stand out yet are easily read.
• Making sure all text is easily readable on the background – no yellow writing on white backgrounds please!

 

5. Overall Design

Finally, we come to the overall design.

None of the above factors will work well (nor, are you likely to sell anything!), if the overall design, look and feel of the website is unprofessional, disjointed, or just horrible to look at.

Pay attention to choosing between 1 and 3 brand colours – and stick to those colours consistently throughout the site.

Styling of buttons (such as whether they use rounded corners, their size etc.) should also be consistent.

Photography should be of high quality, and preferably professionally taken. Fuzzy, out of focus imagery will make you look rather amateurish.

The style of design you choose will also help to portray the style of your business. So, if you have a fun, relaxed brand – you may choose bright, fun colours. If you’re going for a more professional look, keep it simpler.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these tips might spark some ideas as to how you can adjust your website for better results.

Some of these aspects might seem obvious, but it’s amazing how we tend to overlook the simplest of things.

Don’t be too tempted by fancy features or glossy ‘bells and whistles’ unless they serve a very clear purpose. Simplicity will always win the day.

Now read this

//corestage-cdn.flyingsolo.com.au/spotlight/in-the-spotlight-sarah-walkerden-the-rural-copywriter/