3 Quick Tips To Improve Your Website Performance
Many business entrepreneurs have this nagging feeling that their website is not working. They cannot say precisely what is not working and what is the evidence of that, but the frustration is there. Especially with different experts giving mixed and sometimes mutually excluding recommendations. In fact, web performance can be a highly complicated or extremely straightforward process if you understand it and follow a simple routine. I will walk you through the major web areas that have a direct impact on business and your client acquisition. What really counts in this game is the correlation of your web efforts with your sales. With time you need to learn how to observe, measure and maximize this relationship to make informed decisions to improve your future sales results. For now, I would like to concentrate on the vital elements of your web that when adequately optimized will bring you spectacular results relatively fast.
Be Customer Centric
The significant difference between contemporary websites and the ones published even 4-5 years ago comes from their purpose. Before the era of smartphones and instant sales processes, web sites were used as a bragging tool for the companies, kind of a business card and as a product/service catalog. The companies kept talking about themselves, about their employees, company history and the number of office locations (with photos!). They were showing production lines, branded vehicles parked nicely in front of the headquarters. But none of this was relevant to the potential clients and their needs, in reality.
Today the web creates an essential center of customer experience created by a company. With this concept in mind, the internet site became a strategic asset of your communication strategy, and it should be treated that way. The web users and your future clients changed their expectations towards companies massively. They are currently on the quest to find the best fix for their pain – quickly. The speed of finding the right solution and the precision of that solution is the key in this process.
Where you might get stuck
Consumers’ behavior became directed towards searching and selecting the solution answering this pain in the best possible way. So the most direct way to their minds and hearts leads through providing the right and precise answers for these problems so they can feel the company really understands their pain. Customer intelligence practices revealing the reasons and nature of customer pain in details can help you with providing the right answers.
How to solve this
There are many ways to listen to your customers and determine their major pain points. The best place to start would be your customer service line and internet scene. Consider sitting for a few hours and listening to the records of the customer conversation, talking to your service people, reviewing customer comments on your Facebook or Twitter account. Listen to your customers on the internet using social intelligence and social listening as described in one of my podcasts “How To Get Customer Insights Using Social Intelligence”. You will learn that there are ways to do that on the tight or even on the zero budget. With these tools and approach, you will determine quickly what is the key pain point and what words are being used to describe it. Speaking your customer language about his/her problems increases sales conversions big time.
“The internet is more crowded and competitive than ever before. If you want your readers to buy from you, it’s critical to bring them with you until the end. This is why it’s critical to speak your customers’ language.
Give A Clarity Not A Puzzle
What happens when people ask you “What do you do for a living?”. Do you find this answer straightforward and easy to pursue or it feels uncomfortable, and you say “Well, uhm…it is complicated.” And then you try to explain, but you feel that the person asking does not really follow. It is relatively easy for people who are lawyers, doctors, teachers or taxi drivers as most us can imagine what they do and what they are being paid for. The things get complicated if you are a financial investor or social media manager or you help entrepreneurs to turn their business into results getting machine J.
On your website, you need to stay crystal clear. Remember it is about time and precision. Your future clients look for their pain points remedies and hope to find them in one place. They do not really aim or have time to search in multiple locations. You need to remain crystal clear in your communication and lead them through the whole process, like holding their hand. If they stop understand, you will lose them, they will go elsewhere and never come back to your web.
“If You Can’t Explain it to a Six Year Old, You Don’t Understand it Yourself.”
So think about your web as the path of your future clients. Where do you want them to start, where would you like them to go next?
Where you might get stuck
Your future clients should be able to find the answer they are looking for in 2-3 steps. It means you need to direct them into the relevant section or subpage of your website. It might be your homepage if it contains the answers for the questions. Be careful with the language used to describe your offer. Technical expressions, category jargon, might build an unnecessary distance and repel prospective clients.
How to solve this
Give your website for review by several people outside of your company and ask for their unbiased feedback. They should be able to spot what is not working optimally and inspire you for quick changes there. See what their comments have in common and address the essential items.
Put Your Offer Above The Fold
Those of you who are paralyzed with any form of selling and believe that even mentioning a product is a hard sell – this paragraph will be tough. In this section, I would like to underline the power of the offer that should be presented to the prospective client – as soon as possible. Remember that your future client is in pain and it is your offer that has the power to remove this pain and change the life of your prospective client.
You’ve got to make it the most obvious thing on the site. Put it in the right-hand corner. Make it a color that pops. Keep it on every page. It will do wonders for your website’s effectiveness.
Try to remember the last headache you had. Did you give yourself half a day or even a day to search for an alternative way to remove the pain – like essential oils, long walk in the fresh air, drinking lots of water? Or did you just go to the first aid kit looking for the relevant pain killer? You are the pain killer for your prospect. Fast, effective and easy to take. You only need to make sure your offer is highly visible and accessible on your website. That is why it needs to be positioned above the fold.
Where you might get stuck
What is the “fold”? What does the term “above the fold” relate to? Try to imagine the good, old newspaper. When it is still in the newsstand, it is being folded in two, with a strong headline and the attention drawing photo positioned above the fold. These two elements decide massively on this particular newspaper sales. The same impact will apply to your offer. The fact that your offer is positioned above the fold increases conversions big time. You need to make sure it has the power to invite your future prospect into your world where you can explain in greater details how you can help.
How to solve this
Explain in 1-2 sentences what you do and how you help people. Be as clear as possible, so that 6-years old can understand what your business is about. Insert a call to action button (CTA) or a simple form asking for sales if you are ready or collect email address to stay in contact with your future client. Make the button prominent and visible and the registration process as simple as possible so that you do not repel people on the way ad you do not create confusion along the process. The same button might be visible on every single subpage of your web to increase your conversions.
