What is the most important thing I can do to get my website to perform better? | Varn

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20 March 2019

What is the most important thing I can do to get my website to perform better?

There are so many aspects of digital marketing that you could ask this one question to 100 people and get 100 different answers. But if you are responsible for revenue and/or enquiry levels being driven by your website then we recommend you set aside a few hours a month to the following task…

Interact with your website pretending to be a typical customer

You don’t need to be proficient at data analysis in Google Analytics to find out where the usability issues are on your site. Just have a go yourself and see what happens to you.

Typical website problems are being directed to pages that don’t exist, a page takes ages to download, the add to cart button doesn’t work, you can’t find delivery or detailed product information, where do you go if your chosen product is out of stock… these are all issues that can seriously put off a potential customer but are so often missed because web owners are not testing the site themselves.

Set a list of objectives and outcomes that a typical web user would be looking to achieve on you site and then test these out yourself rigorously on the site. By rigorously we mean that you follow all the outcomes through to their natural end – right through to the confirmation page at the end of a purchase for example. And you vary your testing on type of device and screen size as much as possible. We often find that websites just don’t work well on a particular browser or device but have been tested on chrome desktop so web owners are unaware of any problems. Recently, a well-known e-commerce clients’ ‘checkout’ button wasn’t working on IOS so every user using an Apple device couldn’t complete a purchase – and the client had no idea this was happening.

When setting your list of objectives keep in mind the following 5 biggest reasons why visitors leave your site:

  • Users don’t get what they immediately expect to see
  • It takes too long to load a page – any page in the journey
  • It takes too long or looks too complicated to find what they are looking for
  • There are no security or trust signals for the company or product – like https, testimonials, review ratings, about us pages, contact details
  • It doesn’t have a clear USP or the ‘wow’ factor – you need to answer the question ‘Why should I carry on looking at this site’

 

You know who your potential customers are and what actions they might take on your site better than an external agency, web developer or even Google Analytics so don’t leave it to strangers to decide if your website is performing at the best levels it can.

If you would like any more advice about setting visitor profiles and testing user journeys, browsers and screen resolutions just get touch via our website or call us for a quick chat on 01225 560660.

Article by: Tom, Managing Director of Varn Digital Marketing More articles by Tom

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