Business Blog

If your website is receiving traffic but gaining very few conversions it doesn’t make much sense to focus on getting more traffic, you need to take a step back and look at why the existing traffic isn’t calling or putting in an order.

By looking at your website through the eyes of one of your customers you may discover something that is putting customers off, i.e delivery time, price, terms and conditions. However one of the frequent reasons that websites lack conversions is due to “Navigation”.

By “Navigation” we refer to the story your website presents to your customer. Try to think of your business as a PowerPoint presentation trying to sell your business to a room of people, you often have an Introduction, a Middle and an End. It’s a good idea to write an orderly list of the titles you would use for each page in your presentation.

Easy tips to hear that phone start ringing

The Introduction needs to capture the reader or in your websites case, the visitor. This is often the Home Page, outlining and selling what you offer. Not only will a good introduction keep visitors reading on into the “middle”, making good use of your keywords will greatly help your rank on the search engines.

The Middle tends to be a series of pages outlining the details of your business, your service and your products. It’s at this point that many websites become confusing. Refer to the list of titles for your presentation to see what structure is probably best for your business. If your history page isn’t important to “sell” yourself to a customer then demote it from your main row of links to sitting nicely in the footer for further information. It could be that you want to mention your history if you see it as a reliable selling point, in which case possibly merge it to a “Why Choose Us” page. Most readers will follow a line of links one by one, so ensure that you order the links into a progressive storyline, and don’t be scared to throw some page links into the footer or a column.

The End. This is what you want the reader to do now! Most people end their pages with a contact page or form, this is fine, however pushing people to contact you through an order form or enquiry form is more likely to convert than a simple “contact us please” form. If they have read through your site and are still interested in that point, you really need to try and get them to convert into a sale!

Many visitors to your site may decide half way through reading that they want to go ahead and put an order in, so make sure that you have “Calls to action” frequently within the site. These are best placed in the “hmmm… I think I will put an order in…” points within your site – you might not know where these points are at first, which is why tracking is important.

Google Analytics is a very useful tool and FREE! It will tell you which pages most visitors choose to leave your website on which will in turn tell you where you’re going wrong. Check those pages to see what is turning people away, or maybe they simply aren’t interesting enough to keep the visitor and need to be moved or deleted.

With a well laid out navigation bar, story, tracking and calls to action you will see a positive impact in the number of conversions on your website.

Good luck!

Jenny Coppock
Follow me on Twitter  - JenCoppock