The other day, I was working with a client and I suggested we go and look at the website of a company that I knew had a service he could use. However, upon arriving at the site we were so confused by what it was offering that after about two minutes of fruitless searching we left. Their website lost them a sale. Unfortunately, this is all too common. Unfriendly and confusing navigation is arguably the major reason why many websites fail. It doesn”™t matter if your website looks great or has terrific graphics. If it drives away business, it fails.
When we do a social media campaign, one of the first things we look at is a client”™s website. Since a successful campaign will drive traffic to a landing page and/or a website, it must be able to entice this traffic to take some type of action such as signing up for a product or service. The greatest social media campaign in the world will fail if interested prospects land on a confusing website and leave (or bounce) several seconds later.
Although many analytics are available, three are particularly important: the number of people who land on your website (particularly the home page), the amount of time they remain on your website and the percentage who take some type of action (such as supplying you with their email address and name).
Here are some website considerations:
The Three Rules of Web Awareness (courtesy of Tim Ash)
1. If your visitor can”™t find something easily, it does not exist.
2. If you emphasize too many items, all of them lose importance.
3. Any delay increases frustration.
Questions you should consider for your website:
Ӣ Who is your target market? Is your content directed toward them?
Ӣ What are the goals of your website?
Ӣ Do you know your visitors pain points? Have you addressed them?
Ӣ Does your copy focus on your customer or on you?
Ӣ Is your navigation simple? Can people easily find what they want?
Ӣ Can people understand what you do in less than 5 seconds?
Ӣ Have you evaluated your competitorsӪ sites? What do they emphasize?
Ӣ Do you have search engine optimization (SEO) and analytics? Do you use keywords?
Ӣ Do you have a blog?
Ӣ Do you have social media links? Are you social?
Ӣ Is your website optimized for mobile?
Ӣ Do you update your site (and blog) content regularly? Is it concise and informative? Are your headlines (and sub-headlines) effective? Is your most important information at the top?
Ӣ Do you use any video?
Ӣ Does your site load quickly?
Ӣ If appropriate, do you have any testimonials?
It is also important to determine what motivates your viewers. This includes what drives them to your website and once there, where they go and what they access. Many companies employ an A/B strategy in which they test different variations of text against each other to see the level of response each strategy achieves. Once they see which one works better, they can tweak it to see if they can further improve their results. Incidentally, A/B testing is the basis for many email-marketing campaigns.
Your website can be a terrific tool that can help generate business and brand your company as an industry leader. The ability of social media to drive traffic to your site further increases its importance and the need for it to be able to meet its goals.
Bruce Newman is the vice president at The Productivity Institute L.L.C. in Carmel, N.Y. He is also a social media strategist and the designer of a new service, wwWebevents.com. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. He can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.
