How to Optimize Your Website to Increase Lead Generation
Why You Must Optimize Your Website
Most of our clients are super excited about designing or redesigning their websites. But unfortunately, that excitement diminishes after the website goes live. Of course, there are always good intentions. But all those blog posts, podcasts, and video testimonials never get added. Yes, I know you are busy running your business. But if you don’t optimize your website, how do you expect it to generate the leads your business needs?
Neglecting your most powerful tool
Fundamentally a website is your most powerful tool because it’s capable of evolving as your business grows and because it’s a tireless worker. Nobody works harder than a website because a website is available 365 days a year, 24/7. It doesn’t need to sleep, never gets sick, and won’t burn out or require time off.
Yet, the website is the most significant missed opportunity for most businesses because they don’t work most of the time. So when someone says their website “doesn’t do anything,” it pretty much comes down to one thing: their website doesn’t generate sales.
Your Website is Your Salesperson
Imagine this scenario: You’re trying to talk to a salesperson, except this particular person only awkwardly stares at you. Whenever you try to ask a question, you only get an automated response repeating the same couple of sentences with extremely vague information and a list of words. You don’t need to be an oracle to predict the future on this one: Nobody in their right mind is buying from this person.
Communication is the most basic requirement for sales to happen. Your website is a tool to communicate digitally. Unfortunately, most sites communicate like a creepy salesperson who can only repeat the same vague information. Fundamentally, it’s why most businesses have websites that fail.
Most businesses don’t know what to focus on, so they spend money in random directions hoping that it’ll “fix the website.” Would 10,000 more people talking to the creepy salesperson eventually result in a sale? They’d probably get a couple, but with a terrible close ratio and an expensive cost to get that many people in front of them.
So how can you optimize your website?
There are many ways to optimize a website. First, you can optimize your website for conversion. You can improve your page speed. Finally, if you have an e-commerce site, you need to optimize your checkout process. In this post, I want to outline how you can optimize your website to increase lead generation.
How to Optimize Your Website
Realize that website optimization is ongoing
Websites have infinite possibilities for what they can do. The problem is that people often try to overcomplicate and overthink their websites from the get-go. They’ll look at other competitors’ websites, assume it’s working for them, and want to copy or duplicate everything. This strategy leads to people agonizing over small details, often for months, instead of focusing on the minimum viable version to launch.
Don’t put that much pressure on yourself. Your website is a perpetual work in progress, growing and evolving with your business. No design is perfect, and there will always be flaws. So stop striving for perfection and instead adopt a mindset of testing and improving.
Highly experienced web design companies will give you a fantastic head start and let you start the race halfway to the finish line at a fraction of the cost it would take to figure out how to get there otherwise. But, of course, even with the head start, you still need to run the race to win. Too often, people hire designers thinking that that’ll solve everything on its own, so they never actually “run the race.”
Make design and content work together
Most websites overcomplicate design, making communication ineffective and development costly and time-consuming. Start very simple. The core web pages you need are a minimal set: home page, about page, product/services, and contact.
Keep design clean and clear. Way too many websites add way too many things on a single page. The resulting visual mess tends to turn visitors away, and the few that dare to venture further quickly get bogged down in overwhelming content.
Simpler designs also make your content creation needs easier to digest and tackle. Remember, the website is always a work in progress, and you can always add more pages.
Even in today’s media-rich world, content writing is the guaranteed way businesses can increase their brand equity and reputation. Writing is the primary way people consume content online. Writing is how your website “talks” to a customer. Bland and generic content makes your customers think you’re also bland and generic.
Here’s an example: Rather than listing services and products with industry jargon that your average customer doesn’t understand, illustrate the problems you solve and the process you implement.
People buy based on whether or not the product or service can solve their problem. Consumers only use features to compare one service to another. By going through the journey of conversion, your customers will learn how you can solve their problems so that they can understand. In addition, you give your customer a lot more confidence in your company because you “get them.”
Learn how to use website analytics
Websites are ever-evolving and constantly changing. Once we’ve got our design out there, we need to see how effective the communication is. We do this by knowing what our visitors are doing when they get to the website.
There are plenty of free analytics tools available, with Google Analytics being the most popular. You can also track analytics with an SEO app like Rank Math. While there are tons of valuable stats, most of our analysis comes down to average time on page (also called average engagement time) and users.
When optimizing a website, you base most decisions on those two stats. Fortunately, you don’t need to be a tech wiz to know them. Once you log into analytics, they display on a first-page graph.
Average time on the page tells you how effective your website is at communicating. More time means you’re more effective. Situations vary, but generally, people spending less than 30 seconds means you need to improve. People spending 1.5-2 minutes+ means you’re doing pretty good.
If you don’t know these stats, you have no idea the problem with your website. Unfortunately, making random guesses at what you need to change doesn’t often work out, and it’s why the vast majority of businesses spend money on website improvements that don’t solve their problem or provide measurable results.
For example, if you use paid search or ads to send leads to your site, but people visit for less than 10 seconds, it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at those services. The reason is that search engines include the amount of time people spend on your site to determine search rankings.
The reverse is also true. If you spend money on a redesign, and people spend on average five minutes on the site but only have two people visiting the site, then the redesign won’t help you solve your problem. What you need is more people seeing your site.
Keep Optimizing Your Website
Optimizing your website is not a one-time effort. There are no shortcuts, no matter what you may hear or see online. But website optimization does not need to be an overwhelming burden for busy business owners.
All you need is perseverance and an hour or two of your time each week to optimize your website. Take it one page or post at a time. By writing a blog post, updating content, or adding new images, you optimize your website and provide your audience with fresh content. Fresh content is a surefire way to increase engagement and keep your visitors coming back. And search engines love updated content as well.
Remember: Your website doesn’t need to be perfect from the get-go. You can change anything you want at any time you want. When you work on your website, the goal needs to be steady and consistent improvement based on known shortcomings. All you need to do to optimize your website is make frequent small and simple changes based on customer stats.
Do You Need to Optimize Your Website?
Do you want to improve your website to increase engagement and conversions? Our team of professional designers will be happy to help you with this. But, first, look at our portfolio and read our case studies.
Then, if you believe we are a good fit for your website optimization needs, let’s talk! We offer a full range of consulting and design solutions for businesses and product brands.
Let’s talk if you are unsure how optimizing your website supports your business objectives! Our team will listen to your concerns, evaluate your needs, and develop a list of things you need to optimize your website or e-commerce store.
Does your Website Support Your Business?
Is your website your best salesperson? Or does it turn off your visitors? Do you have any other tips for optimizing your website?
Please leave your comments below so our audience can benefit and grab our feed, so you don’t miss our next post! And help other business owners provide a better user experience by sharing this post with them!
Thank you! We appreciate your help to end bad business websites, one pixel at a time!
By Gregor Saita
Co-Founder / CXO
@gregorsaita
