How Smart is Your Website?
You spend so much time, money and attention on your website; it’s often the flagship of a company’s marketing mix. And while we often read and write about optimizing for search engines, sometimes optimizing for web visitors is overlooked.
Here are 7 questions to ask about your business website. If your site already shows your digital marketing genius, good for you! If not, what can you do to improve your website’s intelligence?
1. Do You Use Active Commands?
Create your website content so that your visitor never has to figure out what you want them to do. For example, if one of your primary goals is to build your social profiles and connect there with your potential and existing clients, don’t just stick your social icons in the sidebar. And don’t just type a line above the icons saying “Follow Us.” If you really want people to follow you, add a linked prompt which says explicitly “Click HERE and follow us on Twitter!”
2. Is the Most Important Content Easily Accessible?
If the single biggest goal of your site is to sell Platform Boots, you don’t want your site visitors to have to drill down through the “Footwear” page to “Boots”, and then to “Platform Boots”. Make it a bit part of the Home page. Put it in the top navigation. Make a banner displaying your awesome kicks and put it high (above the fold) in the sidebar or make it “sticky” content that rides at the top of every page. And don’t forget to employ your online copywriting chops and use keyword-rich page names, headers, images, and content.
3. Are You Cross-Linking?
When adding new articles or pages you should link the content to other related content on your site. This not only is a smart way to give your articles and content supporting evidence, it engages a viewer’s curiosity, and encourages visitors to stay on your site longer.
4. Do You Have Only One Goal Per Page?
Sometimes there’s so much content on a page that viewers may feel overwhelmed by it all. When this is the case they may fail to make the decision to take action. If you want them to take a specific action, make sure you are not only actively telling your prospect what you want them to do, but also “chunk” your content to support only one goal per page. Don’t let a potential client catch “paralysis of analysis” from your site! Make it easy for them to convert.
5. Do Your Visitors Have Instant Access?
On the internet, people just won’t wait. We are used to Google returning 8 million results for our query in less than a second. Don’t bloat your site with huge image files or movies that have to load before your visitor can access your content. If you were in a brick-and-mortar store, you wouldn’t want people to have to wait while you unjammed the front door every time they wanted to come in, would you? Search engines will also penalize sites with lengthy load times, and your search engine page results will drop if you don’t eliminate this problem.
7. Are You Highlighting Engagement and Offering Social Proof?
This can be anything from showcasing your “Recent Comments” with a widget in the sidebar to using customer testimonial quotes within a page or paragraph. Studies show that when encountering a new situation, people tend to make sure others are engaged before they risk their own engagement. Do everything you can to show visitors that your site is active and other people are already interacting or satisfied with your services or products. For example, if you have a good subscriber base, consider saying “Join the 783 already receiving our weekly newsletter!” by the email box in your subscription form.
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