Tough Love Your Website

When someone visits your website, how would you like them do feel? What would you like them to do? Who are they and where did they come from? What problem are you going to solve for them?

I could go on, but you get the point. Websites are a tricky business.

Because you’re not just dealing with products and services. There’s much more at play when someone chooses to interact with you.

And no matter how diverse your visitors are, in that moment of opening your home page or reaching a landing page they share a common purpose: they’re looking to see what you can do for them.

Can you supply the information they need?

Do you have the product or service they need?

Whatever problem they have in that moment they’re looking to see if you can solve it.

Getting into the mind of your visitors is the first step towards optimising your site. If you can genuinely strip away any emotion and bias, and really try to see your site from their perspective, you’re way ahead of the game. Too often (and I’ve been guilty of this in the past) we fall back on guesswork, or on what competitors are doing, or on marketing phrases which we think will work.

‘You’ve tried the rest, now try the best’ is a pet hate of mine and ‘the UK’s leading provider of …” is another. If you Google that phrase it comes up with 84,000,000 hits. Bonkers.

We’re such experienced web users now that phrases like these don’t ring true anymore.

The same goes for the design of your site and its individual components. A visitor to your site will make a split-second judgement on whether they like it or not, and that’s assuming they even reach it.

Because we’re an impatient lot. Most people won’t wait more than 5 to 7 seconds for a site to load.

Once they land, your site needs to work hard to keep them there. Most site owners know this and some throw every trick, tool, colour, flash bang graphic and jazzy font on their website in the hope of keeping a visitor’s attention. A visually over-the-top home page is the diamante trimmed, PVC cupped, sparkly-strapped push-up bra of the online world. But desperation is a huge turn off.

Plus, the visitor has the most powerful rejection tool of all; the ‘back’ button.

But the good news is all of this can be fixed.

It might be tough, your web designer might hate you, but there are simple and effective ways to make your site a more attractive and enjoyable place to be.

Here are 5 tips to get you started:

1. Have clear goals for your site which support your overall marketing strategy and don’t put unnecessary pressure on you, your team or your site. If it’s there purely as a brochure or portfolio, you’ll have different goals to someone with an inventory of 3000 products. Your goal might be for your site to generate leads for your sales business which can be converted into sales. Once you’ve crunched the numbers, how will you drive traffic and what mechanics will you use to capture visitor details? It’s unrealistic to expect your site to bring in new customers if you don’t do anything to support it. If it exists as a brochure site only – great. Fill it with beautiful images and update them regularly. Maybe your goal then is to increase the number of returning visitors by refreshing your images and emailing your list when new updates are uploaded.
2. Know your customers. No matter how well you track your users and dig into analytics you’ll never know each segment of your audience 100%. There will always be anomalies you haven’t planned for, surprises you didn’t predict. But if you take the time to investigate and use the tools available, you’ll get pretty damn close. Plus, your own research will enrich the stats. Talk to your existing customers, get feedback or survey them. It’s a great way to build your relationship and it shows that you care and have their needs in mind. When you know your customers, you understand the problems they face, which puts you in the best position to solve them.  
3. Be clear on what you want people to do. Lead your visitors through the route you want them to take and try not to distract them too much along the way. Too many options, too many things to click on can be confusing. If you want people to join your mailing list so you can keep in touch, make your signup the most prominent and appealing part of your page. Explain what they’ll get, and the benefits. Reassure them that their details won’t be shared, and they won’t be spammed. If your goal for your site is to build a mailing list, be subtly seductive. Offer them an instant download to entice them, something of value to them which is worth the perceived cost of handing over their details – also known as a lead magnet. This could be a tip sheet, checklist, a trial subscription, free consultation or sample product.
4. Strip it back. Create a calm and relaxing site which is free of clutter. For some people the internet is a stressful place. Is this company genuine? Will I get what I’ve ordered? Are my payment details going to be safe? Use badges to show your site is secure, if you have them. In terms of look and feel, clear white space works better than blocks of colour, plain fonts rather than decorative ones. Make sure your action buttons are distinct and labelled correctly. Does ‘submit’ mean anything or can you describe instead what will happen when they click. Ditch any text which isn’t necessary. It might be well crafted, but the chances are it won’t be read. Visitors want to get to their goal quickly and will skim read the page, bouncing off headlines and areas of visual focus. Concentrate on making those shine.
5. Check your tech. The simplest issues can cause a user to leave your website or even worse abandon their cart. Missing or broken links are key culprits, but loading speed is perhaps the most important. If you have lots of images on your site, check the size of them and reduce them where you can. A free account with a web app like Canva is perfect for this kind of job and it could make a significant difference. Large PNGs slow down your site when a much smaller jpeg will be fine. Animated gifs can also affect speed. Having an optimised mobile site is crucial too, and most website builders now give you the option of changing your site for mobile users. On mobile, site speed is even more important as your visitors are more likely to have time pressure. And above all make sure your site is fully scrollable vertically.

These are just a few areas where you can tighten up your site or landing page and keep visitors on there for as long as possible. You’ve done most of the hard work already by getting them to click through.

When you’ve poured your time and energy into building your website it can feel challenging to go back to the drawing board. You might love the design and feel a bit precious about it (I’ve done this in the past too). But who did you build it for? What’s its purpose?

Ultimately, your site is a business asset, there to work for you as part of your team. And like any team member it needs to learn and grow, be developed and nurtured. It needs to be the best it can be.

The tough love will pay off.

If you’d like some help with your website please get in touch:

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