Want better lead/sales conversion rates? Want to know how to make little adjustments that have a grand impact on your website’s performance? Let’s optimize!
Optimization improves how search engines, crawl, index, and rank your website, but you also want to optimize for the user. A better user experience will lead to more sales. Read about optimizing for 2012 for a brief discussion on search engine optimization (SEO) and optimizing for conversions.
1. Don’t Flash
Say “so long” to flash. More and more searches are done on mobile devices, where flash can’t be seen; get rid of it. Flash may take too long to load on desktops. And all that animation is just passé; you don’t want to look “behind in the times.”
2. Title Tags
Title tags are a fundamental SEO element. They represent the content of a specific page. Found in the <head> of an HTML document, they play an important role in click through rates and organic ranking. Make sure your title tags are short (70 characters or less), use keyword phrases, are not duplicates, and provide action words. Title tag keywords should be used in the meta description as well.
3. Getting Around
Simplify your navigation to make it easier for visitors to find their way around your site. I often recommend that my clients pick the top three reasons people visit their site and make big, easy to understand buttons on their homepage that link to interior pages. The header navigation also needs to be intuitive and not overwhelming. Most websites should have a homepage, about us page, products/services page, and a contact page.
4. Contact and Convert
People like to communicate in different ways. You should have multiple means in which your prospects can contact you. Each page should end in a call to action and contain one or two ways to reach you. Your contact page should include every way in which someone can reach you. This includes phone, email (list address and have a contact form where possible), snail mail, and social media.
5. Clean House
Use Google Webmaster Tools to identify code errors. This is a FREE tool from Google telling you how to get better result for your website. Why would you NOT use it? Let Google check your site. Then clean it up.
