Your website is one of the first impressions your business will make on a potential customer. So it better be a good one!
With 73% of Americans going online daily and 21% saying they’re online “almost constantly,” periodic reviews of your website effectiveness are essential.
So let’s make sure your website is doing its job by looking at what makes a website effective overall.
Clear Communication
First and foremost, your website communication needs to be clear and optimized for your target audience. That means using simple language to convey the following:
- What your company does: Try to explain your services in a brief, Twitter-friendly description of 140 characters or less. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a great exercise to keep your communication clear and succinct.
- The purpose of the website: Is it to provide menu details for your restaurant or tech support for a product? Make your objective clear from the get-go.
- A simple call-to-action: Whether you want people to subscribe to your newsletter or call for custom pricing options, make sure they know what to do after viewing your site.
It’s tough to strike the perfect balance between including too much information and too little on your website. But your best bet is to focus on using concise language with quick, catchy descriptions that get your main points across.
Also be sure to check for silly spelling and grammatical errors that can undermine your website’s trustworthiness. Every detail counts when it comes to keeping users engaged.
User-Friendliness & Functionality
The modern attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish. That means your website needs to be quick and easy to use, or your customers may just swim away.
Check that all important sections are clearly labeled and easy to navigate to. Ideally, nothing should be more than three clicks away from your homepage. Also, spend time clicking through your links to make sure they all actually work.
That includes ensuring that your web design functions as well on mobile as it does on desktop. Keep in mind that if a page takes longer than three seconds to load, you could lose up to 40% of your visitors!
So make sure your pages are responsive and your web experience is fluid by trying it out yourself.
Smooth Transactions & Analytics
The best way to measure your website effectiveness is analytics. Page view data, where your visitors navigated from, and where they spent the most time can offer clues about what’s working and what’s not.
If a certain page has far more bounces–people visiting and quickly clicking away–than other pages, that’s a flag that something’s not quite right about the page.
Likewise, e-commerce vendors should focus on keeping their shopping experience as seamless as possible. Visitors should be able to edit their carts, apply promotional codes, and make secure purchases all without having to contact support.
Website Effectiveness Made Simple
If you make your website more effective, you’ll boost your web traffic, up your mobile views, and increase the amount of time spent on your page. All things that factor into that all-important SEO ranking!
But ensuring your website effectiveness is an ongoing process. If you have any questions on how to increase your site views, give us a shout or request a free quote today.
