How Strong is Your Website?
Here’s a scenario to consider: you’re having a dinner party Saturday night. You’ve invited some close friends along with your new neighbors and some colleagues from work. What do you spend the week prior doing? Planning your menu, maybe preparing a map so your guests can easily find your home, making sure you have everything your guests will want and of course, cleaning up your house, right? And why do you do these things? Because you want to make a good first impression, and you want your guests to enjoy their time at your home so they will come back.
Some Useful Tips and Tricks to Make Your Website Perform For You
Your organization’s website is very similar to a dinner party in your home. And just like the first time you invite people to your home, you only have one chance to make a good initial impression. In fact, according to the Nielsen Norman Group, people typically leave a website after 10-20 seconds if they haven’t been engaged, and will typically only look at the first page of search engine results to find what they’re looking for. To get people to notice you and keep them paying attention, you need a strong website that draws people, keeps them involved, and makes them want to return.
Is your website giving you maximum web traffic? Here’s some tips on how to optimize your site to ensure it’s ready for the party.
“Make Sure You’re Mobile”
More than 70% of people now access the web from a mobile device, so having a site that works and looks good on mobile devices is crucial. If you haven’t optimized your site for mobile devices, that needs to be one of your first steps to making your site stronger.
Add a Value Proposition. The value proposition, or mission statement, tells the visitor what you do and why you do it. Put your value proposition on your home page, in your headline if possible. Add it to your blog or about page. Let the visitors know exactly what they will be getting if they hire you, buy your product, subscribe to your newsletter or read your blog.
Testimonials. Let’s face it, no one is going to go to your “Testimonials” page. When was the last time you clicked on someone else’s? Exactly. If you have great clients that say great things about you, that’s amazing and it should be seen. The best way to do this is to scatter it throughout your site. If you use case studies or video testimonials, find a way to tuck them in there, or on product pages.
“Tell them what to do”
Call to Action Messaging. The call to action messaging, or CTA, is a huge component of driving people on your site. You’ve got your users on the site, they’re interested, and you need to tell them what they need to do. Using buttons with specifics like “Download the White Paper Here” and “Contact Us for a Free Quote” let visitors to your site know exactly what to expect and what they’re getting in return, and will have a higher CTR than ones that are more vague like “Contact Us” or “Find Out More”, so try to add specific actions to your CTA messages as often as possible.
Email Sign-Up Forms. Your sign up forms should contain the 3 P’s: visually prominent, offer proof and promise something. Make it obvious and clear what they are signing up for. It’s better to have a smaller amount of engaged users who are there because they want to be than a large pool of folks who were baited.
Tagging. When it comes to doing SEO right, you want to make sure you are utilizing metatags and alt tags for your images whenever possible. Tagging tells search engines what the page is about, and allows for the search engine to match up your website with the query typed in by the searcher. If you haven’t made sure your site pages are properly tagged, it’s essential to make this a “must do” for your website to perform at it’s optimized best.
“No one goes to the second page of Google”
Ah, that pesky google algorithm you’ve heard so much about is a fickle thing, and can be very hard to know and predict. One thing that has remained consistent is its’ love of fresh, keyword influenced content. If you haven’t done any keyword research, invest in doing some or find an agency like Cazarin Interactive to do it for you. Once you’ve done that, utilize those keywords by creating regularly updated content on your site. A regularly updated blog article is a great way to do this. Not only will it help your SEO rankings organically, it positions you as experts in your field and gives highly shareable content for your site, which will continue to drive new visitors.
If it’s been awhile since you really took a look at the strength of your website or updated your page with some fresh, modern ideas, give us a call for sign up for our FREE Comprehensive Website Report. The experts at Cazarin Interactive will help you make sure that your site is performing at optimum levels!
