Aha! The world of traffic does not only exist on our roads but yes on our websites too, the only difference is that traffic on site is craved and on roads cursed.
Well, this blog post is going to guide you how as a marketer you can optimise the performance of your site/campaign to be on the road of fineness and engagement for your website visitors and how indeed things contribute to let you win!
To begin with,
1. The 2 Variants A and B
Its very important to test, measure results, study, conclude and go live! I am talking about your decisions to be taken based on A/B testing also known as split testing. To understand better lets relate it to our real website episode, A/B testing can be done once you have a visitor on your site, let a popup approach and ask user to register on site, remember let the popup have minimum fields because more fields could lead to customer irritation and thus the customer may run away in very first place! Have a cross button on the popup so that the user can opt out for not giving details and still browse the site.
Test how many opted to register on site with popup and without popup. Also see if it’s affecting average visit time of the user on site.
Example – Screenshot of one of the ecommerce sites that have the popup to drive registrations but user cannot escape this as there is no cross button on the popup, gets a little annoying from user perspective, though may lead to lead generation on site. Final call should be taken after A/B testing.
2. Bounce Rate
Why users are running off from your site pages? Please try and study behaviour and get into details, study which pages have high bounce rate and which have low bounce rate, this check will allow you to understand where the problem area is and you can than take preventive measures.
3. Strong Call-to-Action (CTA)
Have strong CTA so that the purpose of having the audience on site is met for both the user and for you. Users purpose is- sign up for emails to have latest fashion updates, knowledge driven emails etc and for you as a website owner its collecting data of people who are visiting your site and targeting them accordingly for sale if its e-Commerce or for promoting your posts if it’s a blog so as to encourage downloads of research papers etc, thus having strong CTA is necessary. Factors like, the CTA tab size, colour, spacing, format all can affect the action decision so study various options carefully.
Try giving free uses/ downloads to encourage signups, a lot of white papers or ebooks are allowed to be download for free to get the first actions from the target audience.
4. You Win
A conversion happens when your site visitor completes the goal that you wished for and so you are happy as you have won. The goal can be any, signing up or making a purchase. Remember, CTA play a significant role in making you win which is driving your conversions. Please use them correctly, rather wisely!
5. Path that makes things happen
This is the flow by which the conversion happens, so keep it simple and quick don’t let the site behave like a pushy sales man or like a boring old school class.
Quick tip – Try having FB connect in place so that it becomes a super quick process for customers and you get lot of other customer data that you can use to communicate and study your audience.
6. The first minutes
Once the user is on your homepage/ landing page the initial few minutes will define if he wants to stay on your website, visit more often, make a purchase, refer to friends, subscribe to your site or to even share it on social. So let the home page convey the correct message. Avoid elements that can be distracting and do opt for the A-B testing to let you decide on crucial elements as first few minutes can create lasting impressions.
7. Mobile presentation a strong decision maker
Always an advantage if you keep convenience in mind for your users. So go Mobile!
Opportunity and penetration of mobile is increasing day by day and you cannot ignore its presence. Let your website be mobile friendly as it helps to drive good traffic, more readership, influence buying decisions and very often Sales. In ecommerce it is interesting to see the time users spent on site from mobile and the transactions that the portal gets from mobile and tablet devices.
8. Property Study
Try studying user behaviour on the site and understand which is the hot property on the site where as a marketer you can have all your promotions up for showcasing or also for displaying some affiliate banners if you are a part of any affiliate marketing campaign.
9. Data Study
Based on the user behaviour on site, help them find stuff related to their likes and interests.
For Example- someone visits your site and reads social media posts show them similar post on social media to keep them engaged on the site. Ecommerce sites have features like, recently viewed items, you may also like these products etc. All these efforts help in creating value and engagement for the user/ customer when they are spending those critical 5 minutes on your site.
So here I would like to conclude with these 9 recommendations for effective optimisation of your site/campaign performance hope this reading gets you in action for the ones you have missed! Well do let me know your views in the comment section below.