If you are a small online business owner then the chances are that you don’t know all of the small things that will play a big factor on your conversion rates. Now, I understand that a good web design company will help you with all of these issues and make sure that you are successful but how do you know if your web design company is doing their job if you don’t know what it is that they should be doing? These small mistakes that some web design companies make will impact your conversion rates which will in turn affect your bottom line. That is why it is so important that you know what to look for when testing your new website. Let’s take a look at some common issues we find on websites that impact the success of a small online business’s website.
- The 5 Second Rule – It is important to understand that studies have shown that a visitor to your website will make up their minds in the 5 seconds if they are going to use your website or go to one of your competitor’s sites. This means that you need to get your message out on the first page in an appealing way. When deciding what put on the top of your home page you need to keep your business’s target audience in mind.
- Concise Content – Many business owners want to place a ton of text in paragraph format on their websites. This is a major mistake. I realize that you have a lot to say about your business and I don’t doubt that if read it would educate your visitors. However, most visitors that come to your website will not take the time to read the paragraph format text. If you are lucky they will attempt to browse it. That is why you need to layout the text on your website in a more user friendly manner. To do that you must first understand that people would much rather skim text on a website to find exactly what it is they are looking for. Once you understand that then you will do things like using bullet points, proper line breaks and images.
- Call To Action – Using call to action words are key properly can make a huge difference in your conversion rate. You would be surprised how many websites that are out there that don’t use call to action words. I know it seems simple but trust me when I tell you that it does make a difference.
- Building Trust – I cannot stress the importance of this enough. In today’s world the one thing that will keep somebody from buying your product and or services online is the trust factor. We live in a world where identity theft and scams are happening on a daily basis. That is why it is so important that when people go to your website they trust that you are legit.
- Keep Your Website Updated – One of your goals as a small online business owner is to gain repeat visitors to your website and one way to do this is by keeping your content up to date. Nobody will continue to go to your website if your latest update is from 2 years ago. You need to try and post updated content on a weekly basis. The other benefit that you will gain from this is through the search engines because content is still king when it comes to search engine optimization.
- Incorporate Social Media – Many small business owners do not like social media because they don’t understand how to use it to grow your business. It starts with making sure that every page on your website has social share buttons. What are social share buttons you may ask? Social share buttons allow a visitor to your website to share a page on any of their social media pages in just a couple clicks. This makes it easy for people to share your website and content with their friends. This could work as free marketing depending upon how many people you get to share your website.
- Video – Using videos on your website is becoming more and more popular. Like I had mentioned earlier, people don’t want to read a book when the are viewing your website but you still may have a lot of information that you feel that your visitors should know. That is where videos come into play. It is proven that people are much more likely to watch a video than they are to read a bunch of content on your website. A side benefit of this is that it will keep people on your website for much longer.
- Using A CMS – Many web design companies try to re invent the wheel and talk small business owners into using a custom built content management system. In many cases this is not needed. Their are some great platforms such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal among others. These platforms are user friendly and don’t take much to learn.
- Start With Search Engine Optimization in Mind – When you are in designing stage you need to already be thinking about search engine optimization. There have been numerous times when a new client would come to us to help them with SEO and their website was not optimized for SEO. That is why you need to make sure that when your website is designed that it is optimized for SEO.
- Mobile – This next one is a MUST! You must make sure that your website is mobile compatible. There is a large portion of internet users are using mobile devices and this number is continuing to grow. Whether you decide to go with a responsive web design or a mobile website it is up to you. Even though we would suggest a responsive web design. Don’t leave out your customers that are using a mobile device whether it be a smart phone or a tablet.
These are all things you should look at if you own any type of website. By simply improving the 10 tips above it will end up making a huge difference on your bottom line. Remember you still need to get visitors to your website for this to even matter.