A website is like a home; it should make a good first impression whenever you have guests coming over. What would your guests feel when they are welcomed with an ungodly sight of clutter and mess? Do you think they would be willing to stay for food, as you must also feed them right?
The same can be said about your website; if an online visitor finds it unappealing or rather complicated, they’d be running off to another website. This becomes detrimental to your web traffic and conversions.
Just like your home, your website needs some fixing from time to time to ensure better service for your online visitors. This may sound like a nightmare but to improve your site and attract more visitors, it’s time to give it a thorough once-over and start implementing tried and tested website fixes.
What does your website say about your business? Do you have a clear value proposition intended for your audience that tells exactly what you do and why do it?
If you’re not so sure about this, you have to construct a value proposition or a mission statement that includes your products and services, the benefits, and what sets you apart from your competitors.
It can be a simple group of texts provoking enough to capture your reader’s interest. Few tips on how to craft an effective value proposition:
Keep it simple and easy to understand.
Avoid using jargons and hype words such as ‘the only one in the world’.
It should be able to convey your message in no more than 5 seconds.
Do better than your rivals; put in a few more texts on your value proposition as online users locate VP with more texts faster.
CTAs are critical to your site; they prompt your users to take their desired actions whether they would subscribe, register for membership, or download an e-book.
With that said, the appearance of your CTA – font, colours, shape, and design matter immensely. It should make your online visitors or readers feel a certain way that will trigger them to take their experience further.
Here’s what you can do to make your CTA button text and colours look more compelling:
Make your CTA button easily noticeable.
Choose colours that pop out and triggers emotions.
Make sure your CTA button text is relevant to the content included in the copy.
Maintain visual hierarchy for CTAs in proximity.
Try animation effects and other elements such as an arrow to make it look more enticing.
When an online visitor goes to your website, they would want to know what you’re offering. That’s where your website navigation serves its purpose – to help them find what they’re looking for and help your search engine rankings.
To give your visitors and users exactly what they need, use descriptive navigation that uses words people normally use when they search for you.
When designing your site navigation, remember that your visitors should come first before search engines.
While stock photos are clearly convenient these days and provide a polished look to your website, some users may not find it relatable to them.
Invest some time and money to make your site look more personal by using real images of what you’re offering. Not only does it offer a fresh look but it gives off an authentic vibe which is highly effective in attracting more visitors to your site.
If you have newsletters and e-books as part of your marketing offers, having a social proof present in your website will entice people to sign up and download.
When they see that other people have been delighted to avail your offers, it builds trust and confidence in your name, thus making your conversions better.
The same goes to your testimonial page; if your previous customers and clients are writing good reviews about you, you need to bring it to the forefront so that your visitors can easily see them.
Hyperlinks make your content on your website appear rich in information. It makes people think that you have done your research and is serious in delivering reliable content.
However, when a hyperlink goes unnoticed, it’s less likely to be clicked on. For your website, it means you’re not able to generate the desired traffic to your intended pages.
To make your hyperlinks distinguishable for your users, follow these simple tips:
Choose an anchor text that arouses curiosity. (An anchor text refers to the text a user will click on)
Avoid stuffing your text body with too much hyperlinks.
Put your hyperlinks in strategic places; for example, a hyperlink in a sentence with statistical data is likely to cause a distraction.
Let people know who’s running your business and share your culture to them to gain their loyalty and trust.
If you have several individual teams in your company, a dedicated individual team page will help you rank in search engines whenever people search for their specific names.
Even a 1-second delay in your website loading speed could mean lost leads and revenue. To improve your site loading speed, you have to determine the factors that are causing the delay. Here are ways to make your site load faster:
Enable compression of all the images
Minify JavaScript, CSS and HTML codes
Improve your server response time
Take out all unnecessary elements
Reduce your homepage slides
Reduce your HTTP requests
Do you think you can make your online users and visitors stay longer in your website with these website fixes? Hopefully so!
Improving your website’s overall design from value proposition, navigation, and CTA to using real images, building social proof and testimonial page, creating a team page and improving loading speed are great website fixes to entice users to stick around not only for the main course but also for desserts.
Make your websites as welcoming as your homes should be. At Elephant, we can make this happen. We don’t simply take care of web development and web hosting aspect, but more importantly, we take the time to understand your business.