There are reasons why many website optimization initiatives produce less-than-exciting results. Some efforts set the bar too low — keying in on minutia such as A/B testing of button colors or placement. Other efforts lose focus by trying to tackle too many elements at once. The key to website improvement is to leverage data and analytics in your decision-making. This enables you to find and focus on optimization opportunities with the most potential to transform your lead/conversion funnels. A few ideas to consider:
Choose the metrics you really need to improve.
Start by listing and ranking every potential area for optimization, then concentrate on the pages, elements and funnels that directly contribute to increasing traffic flow, based on your chosen metrics and conversion rates.
Determine why dropoffs are high on certain pages.
When a page has a high exit rate or low visit duration, you’ll often find its message/promise isn’t speaking directly to the needs of its visitors or lacks a clear call-to-action. Align the content and calls-to-action with what visitors are expecting.
Make sure you’re attracting the right audience.
Sometime the message and promise are correct for a page, but you’re attracting the wrong visitor. In that case, analyze the sources of the page traffic and optimize — modify your messaging to attract visitors who are attuned to what you’re offering. Perform competitor research to make sure you're using keywords targeted at the appropriate audience for search engine traffic. Check inbound links to make sure they are pointing to the most relevant content or adjust the link text to make-clear what content is on your page.
Streamline the path to the Promised Land.
Site visitors want to get to what they need to know as quickly as possible. How much you can streamline their path to conversion? Can the verbiage be more succinct and impactful? Are there steps, form fields or even pages that can be eliminated? Rethink your conversion flow by working backwards from the user’s desired end-experience. Chances are, you’ll find a number of elements are slowing down, or even derailing, the conversion process.
Other Posts in this Series:
Is your site attracting the right crowd?
Paving the path to deeper engagement
Giving visitors what they really want