When you build your site right, you may rest assured that visitors are having the best possible experience—and you have ways to know what they like, where they go, and how much you’re converting them into contacts and sales.
- 1. An Engaging Home Page
To encourage visitors to stay awhile
With websites as with people, first impressions matter. Your home page is the first thing that visitors see. It is your prime selling space, and its content can make or break your site, turning visitors on or turning them away. To engage visitors, make your home page attractive and well organized. Put the most important information up front, where it can be easily seen. Put valuable content front and center. Highlight or emphasize clickable items that you want visitors to explore. Inform and guide visitors with the information you want them to have, and the actions you want them to take.
- 2. Email Subscription Opt-in
To encourage return visits
Great!—a visitor finds your site, and takes a few minutes to explore. Is this good enough? Statistically, less than 5% of people who come to your site will make a purchase or call your company. This low action rate is especially true for first-time visitors. And yet, for your site to succeed, it must inspire users to take action. Otherwise, their visit does little good for your business.
One way to get visitors to respond is the email subscription Opt-in. This is a simple, non-threatening way to build a relationship with your site visitors, and turn your prospects into customers. Basically, the Opt-in increases the odds that your site will inspire visitors to take desired actions.
The Opt-In is a form that you display prominently on your home page, and throughout your site. Clearly and simply, it offers visitors something of interest, and explains the benefits of subscribing to your site. Opt-in offers vary. Generally, a successful Opt-in promises useful information, free white papers, membership perks, discounts or other resources in exchange for an email subscription.
What happens when a visitor opts in? That visitor is more likely to visit again. The more someone visits your site, the more likely you’ll make a sale.
- 3. Site Analytics
To improve visitor experience for increased traffic
Behind the scenes, and accessible only to you, there is site analytics. This valuable feature gives you valuable information about the performance of your site and marketing efforts. Some things you can track include:
• How many visitors does my site receive?
• How many are unique visitors?
• What are the times of peak traffic?
• How are people finding my site?
• What search terms lead them to me?
• What web sites link to me?
• What are the most popular pages on my site?
From this invaluable information, you can glean which marketing campaigns are working, and which not. Most important, you can know, rather than guess, what visitors are looking for, buying—and how to improve your site for better results.
For more information on website development, please see Site Development. Or let us take care of it. When you need a business website that does the job, call us at 914-517-2330 or drop us a line.
