In this digital world, every aspect of your business must flow seamlessly, including your website. For this reason, both conversion rate optimization, known as CRO, and user experience, typically referred to as UX, should be focal points when building out your website.
Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done. If you’ve ever gone to a company’s website and bounced away after a few fruitless moments, you know how frustrating it can be when a site is not properly optimized.
A crucial part of improving conversion rates on your website is giving your target audience the experience they’re looking for. However, these needs aren’t always at the forefront of business owners’ minds when they design their websites.
Website Optimization Basics
To help you avoid these pitfalls, we’ve curated a list of 7 things you can quickly and easily do to boost user experience on your website and thereby increase conversion rates.
1. Streamline Navigation
Your website should be easy for all visitors to use, no matter their comfort level with technology. This requires some careful layout design and strategic placement of significant details. It’s also important to remember that you may not be the best indicator of how user-friendly your website is. Reaching out for help in this area can make a real difference in your understanding of how users interact with your site.
2. Keep a Mobile-First Mindset
Smartphones are the primary vehicle consumers use for just about everything, including browsing business websites. If your site isn’t set up to be easily navigable on mobile, this could make or break the user experience and hinder SEO.
3. Understand the Consequences of Loading Time
If your page takes longer than 5 seconds to load on any device, users simply aren’t going to wait around. Instead, they’ll click away from the page, and your bounce rate will skyrocket as a result.
Page speed is an often overlooked element of CRO and UE, but it shouldn’t be. Whether unnecessary pop-ups, bloated images, or videos are slowing down page load speeds, you’re losing out on conversions for as long as the problem goes unresolved.
4. Acquire Honest Feedback
As surveys can be filled out anonymously, they’re an excellent way to gather usable feedback from your customers about the user experience. Feedback in the form of reviews and testimonials is also helpful, as these can be displayed to build trust.
5. Conduct Page Optimization
Optimizing website content makes it easier for current and potential customers to find your business, boosting both UE and CRO. Page optimization includes reviewing each page’s title tag and meta description, as well as ensuring your content is readable, engaging, and unique.
6. Find What Users are Searching For
Do you wish you could know exactly what visitors are looking for when they visit your site? Google Search Console makes this possible. This reliable online tool enables you to discover the terms people search for on Google. For additional data you can use to boost CRO, UE, and even SEO, check out Google Analytics and Google Service Provider.
7. Adjust Your CTA Strategy
The call to action (CTA) is an important part of your website and should follow a specific set of guidelines. First, avoid sounding too generic by making your CTA personal. Next, keep it above the fold.
The CTA should be easy to recognize rather than being blended into the rest of the content on a page. Finally, avoid scattering CTAs across every page. Instead, use these strategically to boost your conversion rate and support a positive UX.
With these tips, you can ensure user experience, conversion rate optimization, and SEO go hand-in-hand, creating a site that gives customers precisely what they want while also increasing the effectiveness of your message as a brand.