Your website is one of your most important selling tools, but how can you measure how successful your website is and improve it?
I recently did a lecture at Nottingham Trent University on ‘Conversion Rate Optimisation’. Now while this is complete marketing speak and could put some people off, in essence it is the way you can measure how effective your website is. So, I’d thought I’d share some of that lecture with you!
It’s really all about how you can get people to take action on your website.
And this may be through a number of ways. For example buying your products and services through your website, or signing up to your membership programme. But it can also be Requesting a quote, joining your email list, creating an account or adding a product to your shopping cart.
After all you’ve probably spent time and money creating your website. You don’t want it to just sit there, you really want it to be able to work for you!
The reasons we want to increase people taking action is because ultimately that will lead to a more successful business. More money on your pocket and greater understanding of how your customers behave.
Now to really understand how successful your website is you’re going to have to look a good look around your google analytics.
Understanding google analytics
Now if you’re like ‘what?’. Google analytics is a tool from google that gives you tons of insight into your website. You may have some analytics in the back end of your WordPress or Squarespace site – but believe me they won’t give you the full story.
So, if you haven’t done already – go and turn on your google analytics!
Google analytics can tell you lots of things like:
· Where do people enter your site?
· Where do they spend time on your site?
· How do they move around?
· How did they get to your site?
· When they leave your site?
· What else they like to look at on the web…
How do I measure whether people take action on my website?
Well if your customer can buy multiple products on your site you simply divide the amount of orders you’ve had in a month with how many sessions (this is a measure of how many times people have been on your site) you’ve had in that month.
And if you only sell one product you would divide the amount of orders you’ve had in a month by the amount of individual users that have been to your site in that month.
What can I do to get people to take action on my website?
There are lots of things you can take a look at to try and make your website work harder for you.
1. You could review the ‘calls to action’ you have your page – these are the buttons that say things like ‘let’s get started’ and ‘find out more about me’. Take a look at my homepage is you’re unsure.
2. Improve the content on your website – could your descriptions do with improving or the images that you use?
3. Could you add some reviews or case studies so your customers have a clearer idea of the value your bring?
4. Could you take a look at the journey people have to buy your products and make this simpler? The more steps that are involved, the less people will get to the end.
5. Have you done the Grunt Test on your website? Do your customer know in 2.4 seconds what your product is, who it is for and how they can buy it?
6. Could you add a search function?
7. Could you add a FAQ page to help them make a decision?
8. Could you add a live chat or messenger bot to improve the customer experience?
9. Could you use heat map tools to find out the ‘hot’ areas on your website? These measure where most people’s cursor ends up on your site, so you can have the most important details in the right places. There are a few you can try for free!
10. Improve the customer experience on your website. Get a piece of paper and draw your website out like a map. Learn from google the journey that people currently take around your site and work out how you can alter the steps they take to get them where you want them to go!
The more knowledge you have around your website, the better equipped you are to grow your business and get people to take action on your website!
Does all this blow you away a little? I’m offering 1-hour zoom sessions on how to improve your website for £95. Contact me for more information!
