Do You Have a Call to Action on Each Page?
A call to action (CTA) is the copy on your site that urges visitors to do something, whether that subscribes to your newsletter, click to learn more, or buy a product. I’m not saying your website visitors don’t know what to do on your site, but studies show that having a clear call to action on each web page will increase the number of visitors that take that particular action.
The trick here is having just one CTA per page, otherwise, you’re throwing so many commands at your visitors, they won’t know which to do, so they might not do anything. Consider the focus of each page, and what you want people to do. On the homepage, your mission might be to increase email subscribers, but on your Products page, you might want people to buy.
Keep the wording of your call to action simple and urgent. Use words like “now” or “limited time” to make people feel like if they don’t take action immediately, they’ll miss out. And put those CTAs in bold and color (red is great) or on top of a big button in the header of your website.
Is Your Navigation Simple?
We’ve all visited websites that looked like a hoarder’s house: too much junk jumbled onto a single page. This is as big a turnoff online as it is in person, and you’re likely to see a high bounce rate (the number of visitors who leave immediately after landing on your homepage because they don’t see what they’re looking for).
You also have to factor in the people who are viewing your website from a mobile device. A crowded website and complicated navigation simply don’t work, and mobile shoppers will quickly go to another site to find what they’re looking for. Minimize the number of pages you have, and streamline your navigation bar at the top or on the left side of your webpage.
How Easy is it to Buy?
Now let’s look at the checkout process on your site. Ideally, it should be as simple as possible, with minimum pages of information to fill out. Limit the required fields to just what you need to make a purchase (contact info, address, credit card details), and you’ll see a boost in the number of visitors who actually make a purchase.
You can test out the ease of your checkout process by asking a few friends to go through it and provide you feedback. Anywhere they note a problem or bottleneck, you need to address to ensure smoother purchases.
Is Your Customer the Focus of Your Web Copy?
It’s easy to slide into talking about how “we” are great on your website, but your true aim should be to show your customers — the benefits of your brand. Speak to their problems, then explain how your products can solve them. Stay away from writing about product features and instead center copy around benefits. Will this product make their lives easier? How? Will it improve productivity? Save money? Make customers smarter? Say so.
Have You Tested Out Different Versions?
It can be difficult to know what visitors will respond to unless you try out different versions of your web copy or design elements. Try A/B testing — essentially having two versions of your landing page — and see which gets better conversion. That’s the one you want to use going forward to turn visitors into fans of your brand.
A few of the things you can test out include:
- Web copy
- Calls to action
- Offers
- Images
- Layout
- Button colors
Is Your Important Stuff Above the Fold?
You may not be a web designer, but I’m going to teach you an important phrase you need to know: “above the fold.” This refers to what a visitor sees on your homepage without having to scroll down. Now, while what’s visible will depend in part on the size of the person’s screen, you know that the top third or so should always be visible, no matter the device.
With that in mind, make sure the convertible elements like email subscription box and buttons are above that digital fold. While people may not bother to scroll down, you know you can capture them while they’re at the top of your website. And people look for those elements up top, so give them easy access to what they want.
Paying attention to the details of your website is what will ensure that not only people visit your site but that they also stick around and buy from you again and again. It doesn’t take much effort to ensure your site is welcoming and easy to use, so make sure you check in on it regularly.