Your business needs to attract customers through online platforms, and your website plays a very vital role in this process. Having the necessary things on the website ensures that the visitors will not struggle when they are searching on the site.
Because, no matter what your website is offering, you can be sure to face widespread competition. And the difficulty in navigating through your website is often the easiest way to lose your visitors’ interest. Your website should reflect the brand experience you offer. Here are 5 things your website might be missing.
A clean and simple layout
To encourage visitors to stop and explore your website, it needs to be visually attractive and uncluttered. Visitors don’t want to be distracted by pages cluttered by ads and other visual pollution. They want to easily scan your pages or posts, find out the information that is relevant to them and then decide whether to explore further or leave.
The point is that with little time to browse, many visitors will scan your pages, which means that apart from being uncluttered, each page or post needs to be easy to skim-read content in short paragraphs with easy-to-read headings and subheadings, bullet points as appropriate and important points highlighted.
Obvious and clear calls-to-action (CTAs)
When someone comes to your website, will they know what to do? If you can’t say “yes” right away, then it’s safe to say that visitors know where to go next.
Visitors need to know what you expect them to do on your website. If you want them to phone your office, give them a clear call to action. If you want them to sign up for your newsletter, download a free PDF or donate to your charity, every one of these actions needs a CTA.
To further increase conversions and sales, speak to your website developer about the best ways to use CTAs on your website. Differences in button colors, link text, and other variations can massively impact your conversion rate.
A clear description of what you do
Many websites don’t clearly tell visitors what they do. They keep talking about who they are, how much they love what they are doing, and why they are doing it, but forget to clearly state what they offer (and what problems they can solve). This should be front and center on your homepage so that visitors are left with no doubt about whether they have arrived at the right place.
User-friendly navigation and menu system
Your homepage should make it obvious what you do. Your content should be fresh and valuable. And your navigation should be easy to follow.
Don’t make your visitors poke around in sub-menu after sub-menu looking for the information they need. Layout your site navigation logically that presents the most valuable information first.
Users want to find the information they need quickly, so they can be frustrated easily with a navigation and menu system that confuses them. This is where you need a good website developer because if users can’t find what they need quickly, they’ll head for the exit.
At the very least, you need to organize your website content into a simple and logical structure. It doesn’t need to include every page on the site, but gives users a way to drill down to the content they’re interested in. Similarly, your homepage only needs to guide users to what they’re looking for, rather than trying to cover everything.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
You can have the best website possible with all the best details, but if your audience can’t find it, you are at a big loss. As website developers, we know that a lack of visibility in search engines and little to no traffic is often the result of poor SEO. It’s vital that your website has been developed with SEO in mind, meaning it ticks all the boxes for speed, security, content, mobile-friendliness, and other technical considerations.
There’s a lot that goes into SEO, both on the page and off. You need to get your technical SEO in order, but if you’re poking around without experience, you might end up doing more harm than good.
Lucky for you, we have quite a few technical SEO experts here at Scynett who readily available to show you exactly what you need to do.
