When it comes to optimising your website, you can focus on several things: gaining traffic (and thus market share), gaining the notice of search engines, ranking high for keywords. But it’s not simply enough to get people to come to your website; in order to make a profit you must entice them to stay and make a purchase. The key to doing this is providing not only an experience that exceeds customers’ expectations but also a fast and easy way to find and get what they want.

Start With Your Website Design

The first thing to consider is the user friendliness of your site. Is the design pleasing to the eye? Is the font readable? Are there obvious links to the information most customers are seeking? If you aren’t sure that your website design does a good job of engaging visitors right away, ask someone in the web design industry  to assess it.  Also ask trusted friends and colleagues to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 on such factors as ease of use, readability, accessibility, questions answered, concerns addressed, etc.

Placing an Order

Assuming that the primary goal of your website is e-commerce, assess how easy it is to place an order. Do your products take centre stage on the website? Does each one include a complete description and pricing information? Are customers able to select variables such as size, colour, etc.? Does your shopping cart software provide related sales (such as Amazon’s “Customers who bought X also bought Y”)? If a visitor to your site must hunt for a way to find the product they wish to purchase and then place a call to order exactly what they want or find answers to questions, you are making conversion unnecessarily difficult.

Information Timing

Another factor that affects conversion rate is what information is offered when. For instance, if a visitor is spending time scrolling back and forth between two products, an automated pop-up that allows them to contact a customer service representative immediately could mean the difference between making or losing a sale at that point.

Your customers also want to know that their credit card information is secure (add an SSL certificate logo next to the payment options area of the sales page), the shipping cost added to the product price (make sure it is revealed before the order is processed), and that their privacy will be respected (privacy policy text should accompany an opt-in box asking for name and email address). You could put all of that information on an FAQ page but it just makes more sense to ensure it comes up at the right time, dependent on action and/or behaviour.

Sometimes it is the simplest things that prevent your website’s conversion rate from being optimised. Be sure that you pay attention to the design of your site, that customers find it easy to place an order, and that they are presented with the right information at the right time. You can increase your company’s profit opportunities by increasing its conversion rate.

How often do you analyse your conversion rate? Having it analysed on an ongoing basis can help you continually improve it. If you need help, please don’t hesitate to talk to us at Market Ease, an SEO company in Adelaide. SEO, web design, and online marketing are our specialties.