It’s important to remember that your website is, in many cases, the first connection between you and your potential customers. For this reason, you need to be conscious of the fact that you need an online presence that you are proud of to represent you and your business online. The objective is to attract new website visitors and, ultimately, convert these visitors into paying customers. You want your website to not only look great from a design perspective, but it must also have ways to convert your visitors to customers or clients. In this blog post, “7 Improvement Tips for a Better Business Website” we want to help you to understand some stand out ways on how to improve your company website for a better visitor user experience in order to maximise engagement. For your existing site, you can use this guide as a basic website improvement ideas checklist as part of your overall website improvement plan:
If a visitor lands on your website, it must be very clear what your site is about and there needs to be a very clear call to action (CTA) for them to take. Far too many business websites out there on the internet are lacking in this respect. A clear CTA means having something like ‘Call Now’ or perhaps a form requesting name and email for a free consultation. The desired action could also be to make a purchase or even download a free report. This all might seem like stating the obvious for the more experienced business website owners reading this blog post, but, in the main, website visitors need to be shown at a glance where to go or what to do next. CTA’s are proven to act as very powerful !
(2) Mobile Friendly
In today’s online environment, having a mobile friendly website is no longer a choice anymore when it comes to getting found on Google. Almost 70% of those searching for products or services online are doing so mostly on their mobile phones. A further 10% will be using some kind of tablet device with the remaining searchers browsing on a desktop computer. Google has made it pretty clear that it has adopted a ‘mobile first’ approach as an important ranking factor when it comes to where websites placed on the search engine results pages (SERP’s). Here’s what Google had to say way back in 2015 in the lead up to this mobile first approach, “We’re boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.”
So, all of this means, if your current site is not mobile friendly, there is a strong likelihood you are losing 80% of your potential customers to your competitors. This is the reality for many existing businesses who are still using outdated websites that were never built for mobile.
(3) Social Media Integration
Another very important factor is the integration of any or all of your social media properties (Facebook, X, Linkedin etc.) into your website. This adds to the trust element of your website and makes it simple for visitors to find your business on these social media platforms. Trust is an important element when it comes to attracting new customers to your business. It also has the added benefit of contributing to your brand’s online profile.
(4) Email List Subscription
If you are looking to have people subscribe to your email list and market to them in the future, lead capture is a feature which you should consider incorporating into your website. This is a great way to keep people engaged with your business who may not be quite ready to purchase your goods or services at the time they initially land on your website. Over time, you can nurture these leads by providing helpful information to them (via email marketing) and you increase your chances of converting them into paying customers at a later stage.
(5) Slider Images
These are really good for engaging visitors more on your site, keeping them interested and staying on your site for longer to find out more about you, your services or products. Google also uses the length of time users stay on your website as a ranking factor. Unique sliders using eye catching images can show at a glance what your business is all about. Visual engagement goes a long way towards making that happen. That said, using too many slider images that slide too fast can have a negative impact on user engagement and can also negatively impact the page loading time of your site. Sometimes less is more, so best not to overdo it with too many sliders!
(6) Improve Website Design With Easy Navigation
This is also ultra important for any website. As people, we don’t have much tolerance for confusing layouts and links to all pages and content on your website need to be very clear. This should be at the forefront in the the design of any website framework. The last thing you need is for your visitors to become confused, frustrated and leave your site just as quickly as they found it! When people do this, it increases what is referred to as the bounce rate of your site. Higher bounce rates equate to lower rankings in Google and other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.
(7) Google Maps Integration
If you have a typical brick and mortar business (e.g. a restaurant), then potential customers need to find you easily especially when they are searching on their mobile phone. We believe Google Maps should be integrated into your website as standard practice.
To sum up this blog post, there are many factors you should consider incorporating for a better business website to allow it stand out from your competitors in the crowded internet space that is the web. In this post we took a look at some of the more important ones. Implement these and you are definitely on the right path to a better website with more user engagement and conversions. We may do a follow up post at some point in the future on how to improve website content because the quality of your content is a big ranking factor and will also have a huge impact on the length of time people actually spend on your site. This, in turn, will determine whether or not they take any of the actions you want them to take (e.g. buy your products,subscribe to your list, enquire about your services or call your business).
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