The standard way to build a website today can be summarized in the following steps:
- Coming up with an idea on what a website should entail
2. Conceptualizing and planning the website
3. Hiring a designer to execute the plan
This is usually the step most individuals and startups take and depending on the experience of the person in charge of building the website, some more advanced steps could be taken. However, more often than not, very important tweaks that can be made to improve overall user experience, double revenue and increase conversions are often ignored. You’ve probably read about some of the tweaks I’ll be sharing and most probably ignored them, but I can tell you from experience that making these tweaks on my website has doubled my revenue, resulted in more leads for me and improved overall user experience. To achieve success online you need to do more than just build a website ; you have to constantly optimize your website to get the results you desire. Of course, these aren’t the only ways to spice up your website but they’re very critical if you want to go from mediocre to successful online.
Always Split Test
I didn’t know the importance of split testing until recently. I launched an offer that is available for only four days and decided to experiment with split testing; I created two variations of my original sales page and decided to split test the 3 pages available. Surprisingly, one of the variations I created – which happened to be just a slight modification of the heading in my original sales page – resulted in double the sales I got from the original sales page. For just changing the heading on my page, I think that is impressive. Funny enough, I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t split test and would have gone for lower sales while thinking that is my best. Split testing isn’t complex math and with tools like Optimizelyyou can split test various elements of your website without touching a single line of code.
Don’t Ignore Website Real Estate
This problem is especially common with startups that run a blog designed to help them drive more leads to their business; in my experience working with various startups, it isn’t uncommon to see a startup with a blog that has various great articles but that puts little effort into benefiting from the exposure the blog gets. If you have a website, there are several important aspects of your blog that you can optimize to drive more leads and revenue for your business; for example, it’s important not to neglect your sidebar, the position below your blog articles as well as your blog header. These are important areas to advertise your service and a simple banner will do a great deal to get people to check out your products or services.
Always Use A Ctr
Most people don’t even consider this as part of having a good website, so they ignore it. Your website isn’t a “tourist attraction”; you don’t just want people to visit your website and be wowed by your design or other elements of your website. Instead, you want them to take action and the only way to get them to take action is by effectively communicating that you want them to take these actions on your website. Instead of having a fancy homepage, let the goal of your homepage be to communicate just one action visitors to your website have to take when they land on your website. This is important not just on your homepage, but on every other pages on your website. To get the best from your website, make sure visitors to your website are encouraged to take at least one action on every single page they visit.
Convert Your Homepage To A Lead Capture Page
This advice is specifically for bloggers. If you have a blog it’s common knowledge that all your articles should be listed on your blog homepage, right? Well, if you’re doing this then you’re making a huge mistake. Converting your blog homepage to a lead page or a sales page can be very phenomenal for your blog; I did this for one of my blogs and the result was that I started to get double the number of people who normally subscribed to my newsletter from my blog. It was a revelation! Of course, you should have a link on your homepage that allows people to go directly to your blog if they don’t want your offer.
Eliminate Distractions
How can there be distractions on a website you carefully planned out? It’s funny, but there probably are several distractions you’re not aware of. The goal of a good website should be to help users accomplish their tasks and nothing more; in other words, links to your social media profiles, Facebook fan box etc. should be removed. They are for the most part distractions. Stick to letting the data tell the story, and leave it at that.
A lot of people have this on their website only because everyone else does; by removing these buttons and Facebook fan box from one of my blogs, I noticed a drastic increase in subscription to my newsletter. Who would have thought that those little buttons could be influencing my subscription rate?
