Last month, I shared five of my Top Ten Tips for improving your website. This week I will share five more plus a bonus tip. My hope is that you implement any one or two of these tips within the next 14 days and in doing so, help your business grow and succeed.
Tip #6 – The first thing that 50% of referred website visitors pay attention to is the site menu.
Your navigational menu must do a great job of helping new visitors orient themselves. A cumbersome navigational menu can be highly frustrating and cause visitors to leave. Make sure your navigation bar is clear, direct, minimal and easy to use. Many sites use horizontal navigation bars but vertical navigation bars and hamburger menus are becoming more and more popular. Check out your navigation bar today – are there ways to improve it for user-friendliness?
Tip #7 – On a daily basis, 2.9 billion Google searches are executed.
If you want to be found amongst all the other sites, SEO must be one of the primary concerns when creating content and building your website. Keyword research is…well, key…to figuring out what phrases people are searching for in your niche. With so many daily searches, the traffic potential is huge. At the same time, though, your content should not be based purely on keywords, it must be relevant, educational and informative.
Tip #8 – Demographics plays a huge role in user behavior.
One-size-fits-all websites will end up providing a non-optimized experience for a majority of your users. You must study your visitor demographics and create a website that they will respond to positively. One of the first and most critical steps in building a successful website is creating a customer avatar. There are many critical insights to be gained from creating a customer avatar and the benefits are endless. They include building a website that attracts and wins over your clients as well as gearing all your digital marketing strategies towards the right audience, thereby saving time, money and energy!
Tip #9 – Only 0.5 seconds is required to form an opinion.
It only takes a moment to make a first impression and first impressions matter! Especially, when there is so much competition out there and clicking “X” on a website is so easy to do. Websites need to load quickly, especially on mobile devices. Once the website has loaded, the average user will take half a second to make a judgment on your company. Therefore, you must make an excellent first impression! The use of images, background theme, color, content and layout must be in line with the expectations of your average user to quickly grab their attention and their interest!
Tip #10 – Call to action buttons are missing on 70% of homepages!
You can get an advantage over your competition by using CTA’s on your homepage and throughout your site. It will increase your user’s conversion rate and reduce the hesitation of pulling the trigger on a purchase or action such as setting up a consultation call. Some CTA’s include “Sign Up Now, Get Started, Learn More, Join Now” and many more!
BONUS Tip #11 – Research shows that off-white text fields lead to higher conversion.
Almost all websites these days have a form for customers to fill in with their name and email. Forms are used to share contact information, sign up for newsletter subscriptions, or receive offers or specials. Research shows that when the fields in your form are white, there are less people who actually type their information into the fields. Forms that are off-white are more successful at capturing potential client data. This is such a small and easy change to implement and can have a huge impact on your business.
Well ladies, there you have it. My current top ten tips for improving your website. We work hard on our websites so it’s critical our websites work for us! Again, don’t just read this article. Learn from it and please choose at least two tips from this list to implement on your website sometime in the next 14 days. Any of these tips will help you and your business achieve more success even if you’re already successful or at the pre-revenue stage.
If you are interested in a site audit, speed test or need any other kind of web design or development help, feel free to reach out through my website or via email at aimee@cleanforest.co. As Canadian Small Business Women, we must support each other. Message me today to set up your free consultation and learn how to best optimize your site!
Aimee Eppel runs CleanForest Consulting, a web design and development agency based in Mississauga, Ontario. Along with a highly experienced team, she creates high quality and affordable web solutions for huge organizations such as MIT, Mount Sinai Hospital and BMO as well as local start ups such as hockey schools, law firms and home organizers. Aimee is a mother of two beautiful children, both still in diapers!
For any sort of web related help, please email her at aimee@cleanforest.co or through her website at https://cleanforest.co/.