Are you looking to develop a killer digital marketing program? This four-part series will help you with some tips for getting started. In part one, we’re talking about optimizing your website for greater conversion rates.
Although social media gets a lot of buzz for its marketing capacity, your website is the true hub of your online presence, the central property that you own and control. It’s important, therefore, to make the best use you can of any opportunities to show your website visitors exactly how you can help them, and convert them into customers in the process. These are the basic steps to creating a web experience that will lead to greater conversions and more engaged website visitors.
Define your objective. A conversion is just an action you want your website visitors to take, but you need to be specific about what you’re trying to accomplish. Do you want people to join your email list? Would you prefer they download your ebook or sign up for your webinar? Knowing exactly what results you expect from the features on your site, and how you want visitors to behave while they’re there, can help you pinpoint what you need to do to fine-tune your approach when you’re making any website changes.
Use your analytics tools. Extensive testing is the key to finding out what works and what doesn’t, and your analytics tools will be able to help you see if your ideas are hitting your target audience the way you hope they are. You can find out if the traffic you’re getting is even the right kind of traffic, how often visitors are getting distracted or bored, and which aspects of your site are getting the most attention. With this information, you can make adjustments to your content, reorganize your site navigation so that the right content is front-and-center, and even redesign sections of your site so that visitors are more readily prompted to action.
Make your website customer-friendly, not just pretty. It’s so tempting to focus only on how your website looks and feels, and although aesthetics are important, it’s essential to remember that your visitors are there primarily to find information, products, or services. Nothing drives people away faster than a website that looks nice but is confusing to navigate, or has important information buried deep in places that are hard to find. Getting the balance right between looks and usability is something that your testing can help you with, and that testing can key you in to the places where your website design could be improved.
Next time, in part two, we’ll talk about creating content that will help increase your search engine rankings.
Cogo Interactive is an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in online marketing strategy, web design, SEO and social media marketing. We work with clients in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and nationally.
