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When More Traffic Doesn’t Equal More Sales.

More Traffic Doesn’t Equal More Sales

Are you experiencing more traffic but no sales?

Years ago, when the Internet was in its infancy and businesses were urged to get their very first place in cyberspace, there was a philosophy that ‘if you build it, they will come.’ There was this ‘first on the scene’ mentality that if you could get online first, you could reap all the benefits of the world-wide-web. Suddenly, local businesses could have worldwide audiences. Businesses were dreaming big.

Then came the onset of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. The goal was to utilize the power of search to get more traffic and more sales.

Website traffic used to be a modern-day version of a popularity contest where businesses promoted their page views as a factor in their success. That school of thought is now over because not all traffic is good traffic, especially if you have more traffic but no sales!

What good is having all of that traffic if your visitors are not actually converting – using your services or buying your products? No matter how many people visit your website, or how good your ranking position may be on Google, it’s not helping if your visitors don’t do anything.

Businesses are now demanding so much more from their websites and from their Internet marketing partners because more traffic but no sales won’t sustain a business.

ROI (return-on-investment) has quickly become a very important buzzword. SEO professionals are now elaborating on their reports. It is now necessary to include key metrics that show how ranking results and traffic are also converting and helping the bottom line.

Lead-generation and conversions have since taken over as the new buzzwords. And, rightly so. After all, most websites are built with a goal in mind: to generate more business.

More traffic but no sales could mean you are not attracting the right kind of traffic. It could also mean that you do have the right kind of traffic but your website isn’t helping that traffic to convert.

In either case, it may be time to conduct a conversion and lead audit.

Evaluate Your Website Traffic

What steps do you need to take when you have more traffic but no sales?

First, you need to determine if the traffic you are getting is the right kind of traffic. There are a lot of questions you can ask to help you get to the bottom of what your visitors are doing on your website and what they’re looking for.

  • Are your website visitors looking for what you have to offer?
  • Are they ready to make the next step?
  • Are they purely interested in information?
  • Do they fit in with your target demographic?

You or your Internet marketing professional can dig deep into your website analytics to uncover a lot about the people who are visiting your website. You need to uncover how they got there, what they did once they got there, and even what they might be looking for.

How to Identify Your Target Market?

If you haven’t yet identified your target market, now is the time to do so. By identifying your target audience you are defining your ideal audience for your particular niche. The better you understand your target market, the more you are able to customize your advertising and website content to match.

Some businesses start with a very broad target such as Baby Boomers or Millenials. Others tighten up the demographics slightly such as single professionals ages 30-60. What you need to know is that the more you tighten up your target market and then speak directly to that audience, the higher your conversions will be.

Here’s how you can identify your target market:

  • Compile research and stats on your current best customers including age, location, interests, spending power, spending patterns, language, and stage of life.
  • Analyze your website and social media analytics to determine the types of people who are interacting with your business already. If you have more traffic but no sales and your website isn’t converting, ask yourself if your analytics match your ideal target market.
  • Then, once you’ve uncovered your ideal target market you should create a target market profile. You can even name him/her.
    For example: Meet Jane. She is {gender} aged {age range} who lives in {place or type of place} and enjoys {activity}.

Target Market – Is Your Website Reaching The Right People Based on Their Demographics

Once you’ve identified the type of visitor that is most likely to convert, it’s time to really analyze your website traffic to make sure they are the ones who are visiting your website.

Then, you need to take a look at your website and landing pages with a critical eye for what this target market expects. If your website is soft shades of turquoise and blue but your target market is a business executive, your website probably isn’t attracting their attention.

Location – Are You Reaching The Right People Based on Where They Live?

Use more traffic but no sales to your advantage. By that, we mean analyzing your website data based on city demographics. This can help you determine if you’re falling flat in reaching the right people in the right locations. If you have multiple locations and markets you should determine if there are locations that could use further marketing efforts based on traffic markets.

In some cases, your traffic might be coming from everywhere other than your ideal location. In these cases, you need to set a new strategy to do location-based targeting.

More Traffic But No Sales – Where Are They in the Sales Funnel?

More traffic but no sales could also mean that the traffic is still in the wrong part of your sales funnel. Ideally, your website will be designed to speak to and reach visitors at all the various parts of the sales funnel. But, all too often, many websites fall short at capturing visitors when they’re ready to convert.

If your website has a lot of traffic, it could be because you offer some really valuable information. In fact, providing information, articles, and tips is a great strategy to get people familiar with your brand and your expertise. But, you want to make sure that also offer then the correct calls-to-action – get them to take the next step so you get something from them in return, right?

It’s time to take a critical look at how you move people through the sales funnel on your website and ensure they utilize your services or products when they’re finally ready.

Your Calls to Action – Are Your CTAs Working?

When your visitor is ready to convert, whether it’s buying a product or contacting you, are you making it easy for them to do so? Where are your calls to action (CTA) in relation to your visitors’ movements, habits, and actions? Visitors these days are impatient. They don’t want to have to search for your contact information. They don’t want to have to look for how to make a purchase or get in touch. Your CTAs need to be intuitive. If you can capture them impulsively, that’s even better.

If you are getting a lot of traffic but no sales and you are not seeing the business benefit of all of these people, it’s time to audit your calls to action. What are they? Where are they placed? What do they say? Are they intuitive for the visitor?

Ideally, a call to action that speaks directly to the visitor and asks them to move forward in a specific manner will convert better than a very generic “contact us” button.

Content – Is Your Website Saying The Right Things?

More traffic but no sales will also affect your bounce rate. How’s your bounce rate? Are people hitting your website or landing page and then failing to move further? Are they leaving your website once they’ve arrived? If so, you likely have a problem with your content (text and visuals).

Once you understand your target market, you can identify what it is they will be looking for online. Your content needs to:

  • Match their inquiries
  • Solve their problems
  • Capture their attention
  • And help them on their journey

If it can do this, you’ll stand a much better chance at connecting with and converting your traffic.

Your issue might not be with the people visiting your website, but rather, with the website itself. All too often we’ll get calls from businesses who want to get more website traffic; however, sometimes the best strategy is to really analyze the pages all this traffic will be landing on. You need to build your website and content strategy based on your target demographics and what they will like and be interested in, rather than based on what you like.

If your website is bringing in a lot of visitors but they aren’t converting, it could be an issue with your content, your colour scheme, your page layout, your images, etc.

It’s important that you provide detailed information for SEO; but, it’s also important you don’t give away everything online. Leave the visitor hanging and then follow-up with a strong call to action to get more information. Lead them in. Tease them. Give them good, solid information. But, leave them with a question that only you can answer. And, encourage them, at the right time, at the right place, to reach out to you.

Here’s the thing: many visitors are actually unaware of what they need, where to find it and what to do next. Do this for them. Guide them, lead them and then hook them.

Trust Signals

Items that many pages and websites are missing are what we call trust signals. If you have more traffic but no sales it could be a trust issue. Trust signals include reviews, testimonials, and other elements that prove that your business will do what you’re promising. Portfolio items, case studies, reviews, awards, and certifications are all trust signals that can help your traffic convert.

Mobile vs Desktop

Analyze if your visitors are on a mobile device, a tablet, or a desktop. Does one screen size convert better than the others? Navigating websites on mobile devices must also be intuitive and if it isn’t, it could also lead to more traffic but no sales.

Now, take a look at your website and landing pages on each screen size. If your website is hard to use on a phone and yet 75% of your visitors are browsing from their smartphone, you’ve got yourself a usability problem. There isn’t any amount of traffic that can fix this.

In short, if your website is getting a lot of traffic but is underperforming, there’s a lot you can do to fix these kinds of problems.

Here’s a recap of what we’ve covered.

  1. Identify your ideal target market. Who is your ideal visitor?
  2. Identify your current website visitor.
  3. Are the people visiting your website actually your ideal target market?
    – If yes, it’s time to analyze your website.
    – If no, it’s time to begin to target your ideal visitor with your SEO and marketing efforts.
  4. Identify the steps in your sales funnel. Generally, people are either conducting research, comparison shopping, looking to have a question answered or are ready to make the conversion. Does your website address every stage and then provide a clear call to action or lead-in to the next stage? Are visitors arriving on the right information based on what they’re looking for? For instance, if they’re just at the research page, they shouldn’t be arriving on a page that is designed for purchasing.
  5. Analyze your content. Is it written, created, and designed for your ideal target market?
  6. Analyze your calls to action. Don’t be vague. Don’t use marketing language. Be simple, clear and concise. Tell them, show them, and guide them to what they need to do next.

When it comes to more traffic but no sales, you either have a traffic-type problem or a website usability/target problem…or both.

Target the right people with your traffic-generating tactics. Use your website and content to speak directly to your target audience, answer their questions and provide them with the information they’re looking for. Quickly and easily lead them to the next step and capture their information along the way.

When you look at your lead generation strategy from the perspective of the visitor, rather than from what you like or think the visitor should do, you can begin to look at your strategy and content with all new eyes.

You should then have more traffic and more conversions. Your return-on-investment from your website and marketing efforts will be greater. After all, it isn’t just about getting people to your website. It’s also about getting the right people and then ensuring you’re handling them appropriately based on where they are at in the sales funnel.

And, the number one tip to achieve this? Make it simple for the visitor to understand what they need, what their next step is, and why they need the services/products of your business.

About 1st on the List

1st on the List is one of North America’s leading SEO companies that offers complete SEO services. Please call our SEO experts at 1st on the List toll-free at 1-888-262-6687 to learn more about SEO or if you still have any questions about getting more traffic but no sales.

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How To Create Landing Pages That Convert

When done properly, great landing pages that convert can really add to your ROI.

The object of any landing page is to provide a clear and complete path to a decision, whether that is a download, a purchase, a request for more information, or some other clearly defined call-to-action.

SEO, pay-per-click marketing, and other online forms of generating traffic are designed to direct more visitors to a website. With a good SEO strategy and excellent content based on user-intent, you can grow your targeted traffic. However, getting them to the website is only half the battle. What they do once they arrive is what really counts. Getting traffic to your website is great but if it doesn’t convert, what’s the point?

Whether you call it conversions or lead generation, landing pages that convert are the holy grail of a full SEO or digital marketing strategy.

What is a Landing Page?

By easy definition, a landing page is any page that a visitor lands on from any form of advertising or search engines. So, any page within your website might be the very first page a visitor lands on when they visit your website. This could be your homepage, a sub-page, or even a blog article.

With this in mind, it’s important that you evaluate your entire website to create landing pages that convert. Each page within your site should be a good representation of your brand and should have a clear path for what you want the user to do next.

That being said, many digital marketing companies will encourage you to invest in “landing pages.” These are specific pages designed to match a campaign and user intent.

Some online marketing professionals insist that landing pages that convert must have a form. Others will argue there just needs to be a clear call to action or next step.

Ideally, a landing page is a page with a clearly defined target audience based on a specific topic, usually decided based on a user query. The user is then provided only the information they need to make an informed decision, be it a purchase, a form fill-out, newsletter signup, a content download, or even an offline visit.

Identifying Landing Page Topics

The first step in gaining traffic that converts is to figure out a visitor’s intent and then create content that is a good match. SEO keyword research is a great place to start. You’ll likely narrow down to a variety of keyword queries that will give you a fairly good idea on user intent. From there, you can create landing pages that match the target queries.

  • If you’re a real estate agent in San Diego, you might find you could use landing pages that convert for San Diego ocean view condos.
  • If you run an accounting company, you might find you could use a landing page for 2019 tax deduction tips.

In other words, you are identifying the demand for your product or service and then you’re going to use your landing page to reel them in.

Before you write a sentence of copy, you need to have a clearly defined message for your clearly defined target audience.

Landing Pages that Convert have Clear Calls-to-Action

What do you want your visitor to do? Be clear. Your general website is the backbone of your online presence. It’s where people might go to to learn more about your company and your services. It’s where you can be different things to different people.

Your landing pages? They have one important job to do. They need to capture the attention of the visitor. Since you’ve already identified the target audience and their user intent, you need to clearly articulate the next step.

Common calls to action include Buy Now, Download, Contact Us, Sign Up, Try It, etc. Don’t distract your landing page visitor with a variety of messages. Make it easy for them to take the next step.

Help The Visitor Along

In a perfect world, a person types in a query and clicks on your ad or organic listing and lands on landing pages that convert right away. Well, unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect and this is a rare occurrence.

You have to work a little bit to help the visitor along your path to conversion. This is where content comes in.

Ideally, you will have a combination of three forms of content.

  1. Text
  2. Images
  3. And video

Each piece of content should be able to stand on its own, but also compliment the other forms. In other words, you aren’t going to say the same thing, word-for-word in a video that you have in text on your page. After all, there needs to be a reason for the visitor to watch your video.

Having some social proof can also be an important element in landing page content. This is a testimonial or two depicting how your product or service has helped someone to solve whatever it was they came to your website looking for.

So, in order to help the visitor along so they feel comfortable forging a relationship with you, you need to provide them with the answers to their questions, the information they’re looking for, and a hook they simply cannot resist.

Keep It Simple

It’s important to ensure you do not overcomplicate your landing page. More often than not, landing pages that convert are clean, simple, and easy to understand.

This means you have one clear message. Everything that is on that page must relate to that message and must help lead the visitor further down the path to a conversion. Limit the content that doesn’t serve your main goal: moving the visitor down the conversion funnel.

Don’t complicate the page with a variety of messages and calls to action.

If you can, keep your navigation simple. After all, you don’t really want them leaving the page to get lost within your full website. You don’t need to offer them all the information about your company. Eliminate almost any click that isn’t your call-to-action.

Use your brand guidelines, fonts, logo, etc., so that the visitor starts to establish a relationship with your brand; however, keep it as simple as you can.

Important Elements of Landing Pages that Convert

Landing pages that convert generally have a few important elements in common.

1. A Really Great Headline
The job of your headline is to reinforce the visitor’s query while enticing them to stay on your website. You have a second for the user to decide if your page will help them. Your headline needs to help solve their query, look professional, and be catchy enough that they want to scroll a little bit more, rather than hit the back button. It has to capture their attention, their interest, and compels them to learn more about your offering.

2. A Really Great Subheading

The main headline piqued a visitor’s interest so now it’s up to the sub-heading to go in for the kill. Normally the sub-heading is positioned directly below the headline to act as the two in a one-two punch.

3. Enticing Visuals

Visual storytelling helps to sell. Any images you use on your website need to be clear, beautiful, and help inspire your visitor to action. Do you have a video that can help reinforce your message? Many visitors look to video to help them in their decision making.

4. A Benefit (pleasure) Statement

Articulate the main key benefit the visitor will get for completing whatever it is you are asking them to do. If you can use a feeling of pleasure within the copy, you can best play upon their emotions.

5. A Reinforcement (pain) Statement

Does your product or service solve a pain point? Now is the time to remind them of this pain and reinforce how your product or service will solve their problem.

6. Legitimize Your Business – Part 1 – Contact Details

Landing page visitors will look to ensure you are a real business and they will do this by looking for your contact details. Having your address, phone number and email address on your page’s footer is an easy way to show the world that you are real. You can go even further by having a link to your about page.

7. Legitimize Your Business – Part 2 – Social Proof

By showing satisfied past clients, you are providing social proof that your business, product or service is legitimate. Many web visitors are wise to testimonials, so use legitimate reviews cited from third party websites.

8. The Offer
What are you offering the visitor? What are you offering in exchange for the visitor completing the action? Keep it clear.

9. The Value Proposition

What’s in it for the visitor? Just like the offer, you need to keep the value proposition clear and simple. Outline the benefits. This is where you need to talk directly to your visitors about your visitors’ needs, not about you.  

10. A Guarantee or Way Out

Want to catch a visitor in a moment of spontaneity or weakness? Offer them a way out. A website visitor is more apt to take the plunge when they know there is a safety net to catch them. A guarantee or unsubscribe at any time statement allows them to know they are not locked into their decision.

11. Simple Form

Did you know that the more fields you have in a form the lower your click-through-rate will be? Only ask for the information that you absolutely need at that moment. You can obtain other information at a later time.

12. A Powerful Call To Action
Ok! So you’ve hooked them and reeled them in. Now you need to seal the deal before they get cold feet. This is where your call to action comes in. What is the one thing you most want them to do? Make it big and bold. Make it unmissable. Make sure it stands out.

Let’s Talk About Layout

Many web designers create website pages on very big monitors. They’ve accounted for plenty of ‘white space’ and are able to design very stunning pages. But, did you know that the average screen size is 1024×768? Yes, that’s a typical laptop screen. Plus, more and more Internet users are conducting searches on their mobile phones. So, while a page might look great on the web designer’s screen, how it looks and acts on a laptop and phone is far more important.

Landing pages that convert well are also very responsive. This means the content and images adapt to fit the browser size of the visitor. This allows for the page to look and function great on any device.

How the site responds to the various screen sizes should be planned out. Often, items will simply begin to stack on a mobile device which can account for an awful lot of scrolling. Is the same information necessary to a phone visitor as it might be to a desktop visitor? Is there a visual indication to keep scrolling? These are all important question that needs to be asked. The most important elements of the page should be front and centre regardless of the device!

A/B Testing

It goes without saying that you will test your landing page links and form. What we’re talking about is A/B Testing. This means delivering variations of headlines, copy, images, colours, etc. to different users to determine which combination of elements gets the best click-through rate.

After all, for all the good design rules and how-to’s out there, it can be difficult to predict what will actually resonate with the majority of visitors.

The rule of A/B Testing is to test one element at a time so you can effectively make a determination of the winner. Colour, call-to-action wording, call to action location, etc. are all things that can benefit from A/B testing.

In Conclusion

The best landing pages that convert are the ones that were planned and designed with the user in mind. Once you decide what action you want them to take, you can guide, persuade, and convince them to do it. If you make it clear and simple, most people will do what you ask them to.

1st on the List is one of North America’s leading SEO companies that also offers SEO website design. To speak with one of our SEO experts, please Email or call us at 1-888-262-6687.

 

You might also find Neil Patel’s article interesting entitled, The Definitive Guide to Creating High Converting Landing Pages.

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10 Tips To Increase Conversion Rates on Your Sales Page

Getting visitors to your website is only the start. Once they’ve arrived, it’s important you capture their attention and lead them down the path to purchase/conversion/contact.

It is hard work getting targeted visitors to a website. A combination of SEO, PPC, Social Media, Content Marketing, Offline Marketing, Digital Ads etc. work cohesively to increase your traffic numbers. It’s exciting to see your page views grow. It’s equally as exciting to see your website ranking better and better. You want to celebrate all of this effort; however, the real success lies in the conversion rate.

After all, it’s great to reach people and offer them content and information but ideally, you want them to engage with your business in a manner that means good business for your business. Ultimately, you’re trying to convert your web traffic into results. This can mean mailing list sign ups, increased online sales or additional inquiries.

A well-designed, well marketed website and sales page is key to conversions.

Your Value-Proposition / Offer / Product

Is your value-proposition on your sales page or landing page interesting or right for your target audience. If you’re offering an e-book download, is the information contained in the e-book different than what they can find elsewhere on the Internet (without having to provide their email address).

If you’re selling a product, is your price right? Do you offer a low price guarantee to save your audience form price-checking?

Is your product or service something your target audience needs?

When your visitor lands on the page, are they able to determine your value proposition, product or service at first glance?

Do You Know Your User Sales Path?

Website visitors do not always convert at first reach. In fact, often they will visit your website multiple times before they’ve built enough trust in your authority to get in touch, sign up for a newsletter or make a purchase.

If you can understand a typical visitor’s path to purchase (or conversion) you can help nudge them along.  

By understanding typical user paths and funnels, you can ensure your content, page navigation and usability is such that makes it easy for a visitor to go from landing on your page to learning about your products and services, to trusting your authority to converting.

Layout your ideal conversion funnel, along with pain points and expectations at each stage. Generally, a conversion funnel includes the following stages: awareness, interest, consideration, conversion.

Do You Know Your Sales Page Bounce Rate?

If you have a landing page, sales page or conversion page, it is important to closely monitor more than just the conversion. When you see people leaving, it’s time to figure out why so you can make necessary adjustments.

Are visitors bouncing before they interact with your sales page? Are they abandoning shopping carts? Are they filling out half a form and then leaving?

Website analytics will provide valuable inside information as to what might be motivating people to walk away.

What is A Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate is the percentage of your website visitors who convert on an offer. The offer can be a form, a registration, a sales or anything else you’re trying to get your visitor to complete.

Instead of just tracking the number of people who convert, it is important to track the percentage of the people who have visited the page and then converted. In other words, how many people who visit are not converting and is there something you can do to improve the results.

A low conversion rate is equal to potential lost profits. So not only is it important to know what your conversion rate is, it’s important to know how you can improve this rate, too.

To calculate your conversion rate: Web Visitors/Conversions*100.

Attribution & Conversion Rates

You can also figure out your conversion rate by referring domain/source. This helps you determine what forms of advertising are working best. If you’re running Facebook ads, an SEO campaign and Google PPC, it’s important to know the conversion rate for each platform, and even ads/campaigns within each platform.

You will need to set up conversion tracking on your website (via analytics, adwords etc.). Then, you can look at conversions by traffic source to help determine areas of improvement.

Top Ten Tips to Increase Conversions

In order to improve your conversion rate, you need to analyze what works and what doesn’t with your audience. Your target market has specific expectations about what they want/need when they land on your website. They have pain points your website is trying to solve. So, it’s important to deliver content that matches their expectations, along with an offer they can’t refuse.

Keep in mind, visitors do not always convert upon first visit and that’s okay. Sometimes they need more time to make a decision, maybe they’re only in the research phase, or they’re simply not quite ready to sign up yet.

You don’t buy everything you see in a store, right? You don’t buy from every store you go in. But, think about your impulse purchases, along with your well-intended purchases. You want to play on both of these to capture web visitors’ attention.

Well-written copy, good visuals, a stand-out offer and clever marketing will resonate with your visitors. They may not convert on first visit, but the goal then is to get them back.

1. Your Offer Must Be Right For Your Audience – Analyze why people are coming to your website and what product, service or information they’re hoping to receive. Your offer needs to match their need or they will leave. In other words, if you’re running a restaurant website and your visitors are coming in for a PPC campaign targeting pizza, don’t offer them a coupon for a breakfast discount.

Targeted sales and landing pages allow you to really target your message to match why a website visitor is on your website in the first place.

2. Use Testimonials To Build Trust – Visitors are looking for authorities in the marketplace. Sure, you can say you have years of experience and are the best in the business but your kind words about yourself only go so far. Quotes and testimonials work well because they appear to have more credibility than you saying the same thing yourself. Testimonials and quotes validate your services or products.

3. Do A/B Testing – Sometimes what you think will work, doesn’t always work the way you expect. A/B testing offers valuable insight into what your typical and targeted website visitor really thinks. Are they drawn to a blue button or a red button? What call to action do they respond to better? You can A/B test anything; however, it is wise to be systematic so you can begin to decipher visitor patterns and preferences.
You should probably choose to change one thing at a time. That way, you can easily assess improvements.

4. Ensure Your Page is Optimized For the Right Visitor – A well-designed, clean, fast-loading, easy-to-navigate page is good for everyone. But, it’s important to take this one step further. Since you’ve identified your target audience, it’s important you keep them in mind with your page design. Are they analytical? Offer them charts and stats. Are they looking to be inspired? Offer warm content and images. Your target visitor should determine the size of your font, the typography and the page layout.

This also means, ensure the page is optimized for the right device. A slow-loading website is a quick way to turn-off a potential website visitor. So to is a non-mobile friendly or responsive page. Since many visitors are browsing websites on their smartphones, it’s essential to ensure your site renders well on these devices.

5. Ensure Your Content is Scannable – It’s important to capture a visitor’s attention right from the get go, and then keep them interested. A well-laid out page, with highly digestible content will go a long way in ensuring a visitor wants to stay on your website. It is difficult to read large paragraphs of text on a computer screen or mobile device. Generally, visitors are scanning a page, and they don’t always do it top to bottom, left to write. Use headings. Use bullet lists. Use short sentences. Pop out important text. Make sure your calls-to-action stand out.

Content should be well-written and easy-to-read.

6. Have a Variety of Content Options – Different people learn differently. With this in mind, your page should include a variety of ways for your web visitor to digest your information: video, text, images, graphics/charts etc. Some people like to read, some like to listen and some like to watch.

You need to ensure the content contained within each option is slightly different as there will be people who will devour all types. Consider that the medium is the message.  Your content should work together to give a clear and full picture of whatever it is you’re selling. Each type of content needs to do the job in silo, but also as part of a bigger picture.

7. Choose the Right Images – Do the images on your page help tell your story or sell our product/services? They should. Good quality images that act as a layer off the message will capture a visitor’s attention.

Are there people in the images? What direction are they looking? Ideally, you want your forms/buy now buttons etc. to stand out. When you can use your images as directional cues, you have a greater chance of success.

8. Your Form Should Be Easy To Fill Out – Whether you’re asking your target visitor to sign up, or they’re purchasing online, that experience should be easy. Can you integrate your login system with Facebook or Google so they do not have to type all their personal information? Is the form well-laid out and visually appealing? Are the boxes big enough on a mobile device? Are you only asking for the information that is absolutely necessary? All of these items should be taken into consideration when you’re designing your form or shopping cart.

9. Have Multiple Calls-To-Action – As your visitor scrolls down your page, hopefully they’re warming up to your business, your product or service. It’s important to offer calls to action throughout your content to capture your visitor and make it easy for them to convert, at whatever stage they’re at while they’re scrolling down your page.

10. Lose the Navigation – Well-converting landing pages and sales pages are really clean and are very on target to the product/service. Your website navigation and shell can distract the visitor. Of course, they need a way to get to your main site should they want to, but having all of your navigation on this page is not necessary.

Conclusion

Improving your conversion rate for your sales or landing page isn’t that difficult, but can require some work.

Ideally, you have your analytics set-up so you can track your conversions by source. This will help you determine if your advertising and marketing measures are bringing in the right target audience, right down to which groups bring in the best converting traffic.

Then, you can work on elements of your page to boost conversions. Sometimes it’s simply changing up some content or a message. Sometimes the page layout needs to be tweaked. The great news is that you don’t have to set and forget. In fact, you can be continuously improving your ads and your design to ensure you have a steady flow of qualified leads.

Ultimately, the work you put into improving your sales page conversion rate will help increase revenues and lead numbers. If the task seems daunting, just remember that what you do now, is helping your business gain new, valuable customers. That makes it worth it, right?

If you build it they will come. That’s an old adage that does not ring true in the world wide web. You need to work hard to direct visitors to your site, and then work even harder to keep them there once they arrive and turn them into customers.

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How Search Intent Modifiers Affect Google SERP Features

Did you know that one or two extra words in a search query can affect the type or types of SERP feature Google shows in its results?

The team at getstat.com recently posted an article titled How SERP Features Respond to Search Intent Modifiers which shows that swapping search intent modifiers can result in dramatic changes to Google SERPs features.

Before we take a closer look at STAT’s search intent data, let’s first define what we mean by search intent modifier.

What is Search Intent?

A basic search intent definition (also referred to search query intent) is determining what a searcher is most likely looking for when they type in a “keyword search” into Google. Often, they will use a search intent modifier to indicate their intent. For example, “buy” to indicate they want to make a purchase or “best” to indicate they want to compare products/service.

Some basic types of search engine user intent including:

  • Informational Intent Based Search – the searcher is looking to gain new knowledge on a topic.
    Search Modifier Examples: how to, what is, how big
  • Commercial Intent Based Search – the searcher is looking to gain more information before purchasing an item (ex. reviews, prices, warranties, etc.)
    Search Modifier Examples: best, compare, top
  • Transactional Intent Based Search – the searcher is ready to make a purchase.
    Search Modifier Examples: buy, coupon, price
  • Local Intent Based Search – the searcher is looking for something specific to their neighborhood or city.
    Search Modifier Examples: near me, close by, specific city names

STAT examined the 20 top SERP results (minus organics) for various search modifiers and compiled the numbers into extremely useful percentage points. For the purposes of this article, we have listed the top three types of SERP features based on their percentage in relation to the number of searches analyzed.

Search modifiers categorized by search intent were used to search on mobile devices in the US. The results provide some useful data for pursuing intent based search engine marketing and optimization. Let’s have a look.

1. SERP Features Triggered by Informational Search Intent Modifiers

No modifiers were used for informational searches, but the results are still interesting. News results came in a surprising 3rd, but given the keyword was found in the article title, this isn’t overwhelmingly unusual.

2. SERP Features Triggered by Commercial Search Intent Modifiers

The most common Commercial keyword modifiers for search intent purposes are found in the table below. I’ve selected the top 3 features for each modifier to highlight those with the most beneficial payoff.

Shopping Boxes led the entire Commercial intent category with the exception of the Compare modifier. What I found somewhat interesting is that Shopping snippets has substantial exposure for the modifiers “Deals” at 85.99% and “Used” at 74.92%.

STATS zeroed in on the potential of Featured Snippets (lists) for keyword modifiers “Best” and “Top”. These percentages are comparatively low and either Google is reluctant to present more of them in SERPs or there simply aren’t enough suitable Featured Snippets (lists) to present. This could be a golden opportunity for strategists focussing on such snippets.

3. SERP Features Triggered by Transactional Search Intent Modifiers

The most common Transactional modifiers for search intent purposes can be found in the table below. As with the Commercial modifiers, I’ve selected the top 3 SERP features found in the results using the modifier to highlight those with the best potential yield.

As STAT indicates, people want to quickly determine how much an item is going to cost – and likely search for the most affordable option. Google seems to feel that Featured Snippets (paragraphs) are an effective way to present this information for the Cost and Price modifiers.

What surprised me is that images were presented to such a large degree where the Price modifier was concerned. One would think at this stage of intent that numbers would supersede images.

4. SERP Features Triggered by Local Search Intent Modifiers

Because STAT only used Chicago and Dallas as local modifiers, there were few results. We see that Shopping, Places, and Images are the most popular type of SERP Feature.

We recommend that you do various searches with local intent for your own city. Search for local businesses, upcoming events, organizations, and so on in your area and see what type of results are shown.

Key Takeaways: Search Intent Optimization –  Planning Modifiers for Your SEO

  1. Examine the results of STAT’s research by focussing on Google’s propensity to post some SERP features above others for specific modifiers that were used. For example:
  • What modifiers do you think searchers could use when looking for your business and what SERP features are shown for those?
  • What modifiers show up in your Google Search Console Search Analytics reports and what SERP features are shown for those?
  1. You likely want to target Commercial, Transactional, and Local modifiers in your SEO Strategy. Be sure that you understand How Featured Snippets in Search Can Boost Your Website Traffic and How to Avoid Eliminated Featured Snippets.
  2. If images and videos are popular for search modifiers relevant to your business, be sure to have high quality and unique images loaded and optimized on your website. The same goes for uploading videos to YouTube and embedding on your website.

For more information about Advanced SEO Techniques such as search intent marketing and optimization please contact 1st on the List today by calling 1-888-262-6687 or email us at contact@1stonthelist.ca.

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What’s Important Content for B2B Conversion Optimization?

A recent study by KoMarketing, Huff Industrial Marketing and BuyerZone examined the most important content for B2B buyers and what factors on a website can impact their buying decision, for better or worse.

Here are the key takeaways. Does your B2B website content strategy include these popular elements?

1. Thorough contact information is the most important piece of content on your website.

Contact info is cited as the most important asset on a vendor website. It is a critical element used by your buyers to establish credibility. While this is one of the easiest elements to add a website it is often missing. Not only does missing contact information cause buyers to question your credibility but it also prevents them from being able to move forward with requesting a quote.

Furthermore, 44% of respondents say that absence of contact information is annoying and can cause them to leave the website.

2. Product pricing plays a big role on your website.

This is another top must have on an a B2B website. Unfortunately over half of respondents reported that pricing information is often lacking on websites.

3. Key information buyers want to find on your homepage.

Your website’s homepage is valuable real estate and you must make use of every inch to clearly convey your message and brand while creating a need and desire for your service. here are the most common elements buyers look for on your homepage:

  • Products and services (86%)
  • Contact information (64%)
  • About/ Company Information (52%)
  • Testimonials (27%)
  • Marketing Collateral (23%)
  • Social Media Icons (12%)
  • Blog (8%)
  • Pricing (2%)

3. Other B2B website content buyers will give you their contact info for.

What type of content is so lucrative that buyers will give you their contact information in exchange for?

  • Trial Offers (62%)
  • Product Demos (48%)
  • Product Evaluations (44%)
  • Research (41%)
  • Brochures, datasheets (40%)

4. B2B website content that may not need to be locked behind a contact form.

Interestingly, fewer B2B buyers will give you their information to receive a case study (24%), white paper (28%) or newsletter (23%). While these are still important for establishing your credibility as a vendor perhaps buyers feel they should be able to view this information anonymously, without having to complete a form and tell you their identity. When considering what content to put behind a sign up form think about where in the purchase funnel the buyer likely is. Reading a white paper about how your service works is likely to happen much earlier than requesting a trial. They may read white papers from five to eight other vendors but only request a trial from one or two.

5. Contact forms can be a big stumbling block for RFQ’s.

Don’t ask too many questions – When your content has done its job and the buyer is ready to complete a “Request for Quote” (RFQ) you run the risk of asking too many questions. Nearly 70% of respondents in this study say that excessive form field requirements can keep them from completing the form. Formstack recently determined that lead generation forms average around 11 fields.

Only ask for their phone number and address when necessary – Nearly 60% say they don’t like to share their phone number and 53% their address information. Aren’t we all worried about being solicited after giving out this information? The email address is still a low threat field and only 16% say they prefer not to provide this.

Don’t get too personal – You must also be cautious about asking for too much personal information or requiring the buyer to subscribe to your email newsletter, as these can be two other big deterrents.

6. Other factors that affect a buyers’ experience on your website.

The study also found some other key components that affect the experience and ultimately the outcome of a buyer’s experience on your website:

  • Visitors get most annoyed with a lack of message (46%) and animated ads (42%), which can cause them to leave.
  • B2B Buyers have less and less of a tolerance for slow loading websites. 20% define slow as 5 seconds, 42% as 10 seconds and 34% as 15 seconds. This tolerance is much higher than Google’s suggested 2 second rule of thumb.
  • B2B buyers are searching on their mobile device and tablet – 4/10 mobile device owners will search for a B2B product on their phone.
  • B2B buyers are still mostly neutral towards mobile-friendly websites. Approximately one third are neutral and one third consider it important but not a deal breaker.

Conclusion

This 2015 B2B Web Usability Report draws three excellent conclusions or takeways to developing an effective B2B website content strategy:

  1. Keep buyers on the website at the beginning of the discovery phase.
  2. Educate buyers as they leave a website and return to it multiple times through their research phase.
  3. Give buyers the confidence to establish contact or begin a trial offer with a prospective vendor.

These study results are just the start of Conversion Optimization and getting the most out of your website. For more information about how we can help you get more leads out of your B2B website please call us at 1-888-262-6687 or fill out our quick contact form.

This article has been adapted from MarketingCharts.com.

 

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Don’t Miss the Most Existing Marketing Opportunity in 2015

Recently Econsultancy and Adobe asked over 6,000 marketing, digital and e-commerce professionals around the world the question,

“What is the marketers’ single most exciting opportunity for 2015?”

Over 1 in 5 (22%) responded “Customer Experience”.

What’s so great about customer experience? Many believe that it defines your brand.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer experience is all about the interactions a person has with your brand. There are various ways to measure customer experience including their overall experience with your brand, likelihood to continue to use your products or services or likelihood to recommend you to others.

Online marketing and web design can get caught up in user experience which is just one component of customer experience. We often focus on simple question such as How do people interact with the website and What experience do they receive from that interaction? 

The deeper questions to ask are ones such as how does a user’s experience on your website affect their overall impression of your brand and How does it affect their opinion when they visit one of your offices or receive their product order in the mail?

SEO and “Customer Experience Optimization”

Over the last couple years a large component of SEO has come to focus on customer experience and knowing how to optimize not only your website but to optimize all the online touch points a customer may have with your brand. Easy SEO tactics such as keyword stuffing, buying backlinks or rewriting articles that used to work five years ago are no longer on the table. Successful SEO is all about promoting your brand and building a positive customer experience, through aspects such as content quality and sociability. A successful SEO Strategy focuses on optimizing for the user first while staying within Google’s quality guidelines.

How to Improve Online Customer Experience

Here are some quick ways you can work on improving customer experience through your website:

  • Make your brand interesting and write with personality.
  • Understand the needs of your visitors and why they are on your website. How can you help solve their problem and meet their needs?
  • Make sure your business’ contact information is clearly posted on the site. It is a best practice to have your phone number in the top header and full address in the footer so that it is accessible no matter what page a visitor is on.
  • If you run an e-Commerce website make sure your shopping cart and checkout runs seamlessly.
  • Write interesting email auto-responders, such as when someone completes a contact form on your website or requests a quote. Tell the person when they should expect a response and make sure they understand the next steps in the process.
  • Write informative FAQ pages to give customers immediate answers to their questions.
  • Never underestimate the importance of page speed – your customers want to access your products, services and contact information quickly. Pages or images that take a long time to load slow your visitors down and take up more of their time than necessary.
  • Make your website awesome for all devices. Make sure your website sizes properly on small mobile devices and has links that are easy to click with a finger. Don’t let a non mobile-friendly website upset your visitor before they’ve had a chance to experience all the great things about your brand.
  • Keep contact forms short and simple. Only ask for the information you need and no more. This makes it easy and quick for your customers to fill out.
  • Double check that your business information (including phone number, address and hours) are correctly posted across the Internet including Google Plus. Your Google Plus page, whether you’ve claimed and edited it or not, often shows up when someone searches for your brand. A potential customer who sees wrong hours listed in Google and shows up to your store after you’ve closed for the night could be very upset and may never come back.
  • Take the time to read the online reviews about your business. Learn from any negative truth in the reviews (Is your staff really rude? Do you have unreasonably long wait times?) At the same time, take a minute or two to personally respond to customers who had less than great experiences and offer to make it right.

Ultimately, customer experience is about building a bond with people who visit your website. The customer experience is everything and can determine your future success.
What kind of bond are you forming with your visitors?

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Everything You Need to Know About Bounce Rate

It is one of the most basic metrics used to measure user experience on a website and we’ve been using it for years. Do you know everything you need to about your bounce rate?

In today’s post we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about bounce rates so that you can make sure your website is providing the best user experience possible!

What is Bounce Rate?

An easy to understand bounce rate definition is:

Someone who comes to your website, looks at one page, and leaves the website for whatever reason.

Bounce Rate = Total number of visitors viewing one page only / Total visitors to the page

So What Does Bounce Rate Mean to You?

The bounce rate of each page can tell you the interest people have on your website based on first impressions. If the majority of visitors are leaving without looking at another page you may not be doing a good job of meeting their expectations or catching their interest. You want visitors to come to your website, peruse pages, become familiar with your brand and offerings, build up trust and eventually make a move (ie. conversion) whether it is a sale or give you their lead information.

Does Bounce Rate Affect Rankings?

Google and other Search Engines use bounce rate as a factor when determining how to rank your website. A high bounce rate means people are going to the site, not liking what they see and leave. From the Search Engine’s perspective, these type of pages or websites do not provide a good user experience and in fact agitate the searcher. Essentially a high bounce rate signals your pages aren’t relevant or good enough for visitors and the Search Engines will start showing them less and less in results.

Understanding Bounce Rate vs. Exit Rate

Exit rate measures the percentage of people who leave after viewing the page. The visitor could have viewed three or four pages, found the information they needed and then exited on your contact page. Bounce rate on the other hand is a person who leaves your website on the first page.

How Do Visitors “Bounce”?

There are several ways visitors can bounce or leave your website:

  • Hit the back button
  • Type a different URL into their browser
  • Close the browser
  • Close the tab in the browser
  • Click a link on your website that goes to another website.

What’s a Good Bounce Rate?

There is no single magic number for an acceptable bounce rate. A good bounce rate is specific to your website and a website can always be tweaked to improve its own bounce rate. When looking at your bounce rate, ask yourself:

  • Is it consistent?
  • Has it changed over the last several months?
  • Are there spikes anywhere? Can you attribute these spikes to any major changes on your site?
  • What specific pages have high bounce rates? Should the person be leaving here?

Bounce Rate by Industries

KissMetrics recently published an infographic on Bounce Rate and published the following bounce rates:

Service Websites:            10-30% bounce

Retail Sites:                         20-40% bounce

Content Websites:          40-60% bounce

Lead Generation:             30-50% bounce

Overall Average Bounce Rate:    40.5%

Normal Bounce Rates Differ for Different Functions

Depending on the type of page and its purpose you can expect to have different “normal” bounce rates. For example, pages with news, entertainment, sports and other information should have lower bounce rates because people are in the exploration mode. Pages with specific functions such as weather, contact forms, hours of operation should have higher bounce rates because the visitor is coming to find a single answer.

What Else Affects Bounce Rate?

There are several aspects that can either drive visitors away or help keep them on page. Consider the following factors that can affect bounce rate:

  • Pop-up ads
  • Music
  • Streaming video
  • Type of audience
  • Landing page design
  • Emails and newsletters
  • Load time
  • Links to external sites (more visitors click away)
  • Purpose of the landing

20 Tips on How to Reduce Bounce Rate

Whether your bounce rate  is 70% or 20% you can always make tweaks to lower bounce rate, including:

  • Create clear navigation
  • Have a clear purpose to each page
  • Keep content on topic
  • Make sure you meet visitor expectations
  • Check website speed here (if your site takes too long to load visitors won’t wait)
  • Make sure website has cross-browser compatibility
  • Make content scannable with titles and some images
  • Make sure site is mobile responsive so it looks good regardless of what type of device a visitor is using
  • Look in Analytics and Webmaster Tools to see what types of phrases are bringing traffic to your website – are you attracting the wrong type of traffic?
  • Have a clear Call-To-Action on each page
  • Cut out too many distractions
  • Offer related content based on the page
  • Add an internal search bar to make it easier to find
  • Make sure you have a good 404 page
  • Consider splitting long pages into two shorter pages
  • Consider getting rid of pop-up ads, customer help widgets, music
  • Make external links open in a new tab
  • Improve your brand’s story
  • Keep content up to date and current.
  • Make sure fonts and colors are readable.

Ultimately you need to meet or exceed your visitor’s expectations when it comes to each and every page of your website.

Start Improving Bounce Rate Today

You can start looking at bounce rate by exploring the Landing Page report from Google Analytics. Look at pages that have the highest bounce rates and higher levels of traffic.

Do you have a high bounce rate and have tried everything to lower it? Perhaps it’s time to speak with an expert. Call us at 1-888-262-6687. Our conversion optimization services can be a great place to start.

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Do Rotating Banners Hurt Website Usability and Create Distrust?

Do you use a rotating banner on your website?

Then recent research by Stanford University may be of interest to you.

Stanford University researchers have just released a study showing the effects of rotating banners and website popularity. It is not the glowing report that website designers may have hoped for. What seemed like the perfect answer to grabbing viewer attention and providing information rich content, turns out to be driving away potential customers.

For years psychology studies have told advertisers to maximize white space to allow the viewer time to absorb the message. It has been said that the advertiser has seconds to get the message to the consumer. And the key to getting the message across is to have the most important information above the fold. The rotating banner seemed the perfect solution to share a lot of information in the least amount of time and space. Everything important was delivered in the prime location and allowed for the all-important white space.

Rotating Banners Trigger Motion Sensitivity …
But is That Good or Bad?

When rotating banners on homepages (also known as sliders or carousel banners) were first introduced to the viewing public, all psychological indicators showed that people have “an exquisite sensitivity to motion”. They seemed the perfect answer for reaching the masses, so the developers put together a system where the message is displayed briefly before another messages is delivered in timed intervals. The start and stop pattern was found to be most effective because the human brain notices movement as a protective instinct. The rotating banner became the design trend of trends.

Rotating Banners on Websites Proven To Trigger Fight or Flight

But…and this is the big but of the whole formula … the reason the human brain is instinctually drawn to the motion, is that the motion also sets off the fight or flight reaction. Unknowingly, websites designed with the rotating banner, no matter how cheery or informative, have been creating an environment of instinctive distrust! Eye-tracking research found that visitors were purposefully avoiding the banner even when the information they sought was in the banner. Once this distrust was triggered the user reasoned that the banner must be advertising.

Visitors Need Control Over Rotating Banner Usability

When the Nielsen Norman Group tested the rotating or carousel banner, the majority of their focus group reported that they didn’t have time to finish reading the message; that it was flashing too quickly and was annoying.

Many in the test group would see something of interest but did not have time to link to the information.

Researchers found that people need a sense of control of their environment and that rotating animated banners undermines their sense of control. When the animation in the rotating banner was converted to viewer slide controls, engagement levels increased significantly.

The key take away was that visitors need control over their web experience to develop trust.

Remember, the Banner Occupies Prime Real Estate

Carousel or Sliding Banners are still very popular so this will become a hotly debated design element.

You may find yourself weighing two valid points when it comes to the best rotating banner designs:

  1. The banner occupies prime real estate and  allows for the maximum information distribution
  2. Motion (rotation) draws attention

Rotating Banner Best Practices

So how you can capitalize on this but still adhere to the latest research? Here are a few ideas:

  1. Get rid of auto-advance. Allow the visitor to advance the images at their own pace. The movement in your banner will attract instinctive attention and viewer controls will instill trust by allowing the visitor to advance at their pace and by their choice.
  2. Like a newspaper, create a hierarchy of value on your site. Opt for the long home page with large graphics and short linking text to points or articles of relevance.
  3. Make changes and track conversions. This is all about making your website more user friendly and not about winning design awards for cleverness. At the end of the day, would you rather have a clever website or a website that got you 5 new customers?

The Key Takeaway 

You need to spend your web development budget on elements that bring solid relevance and build trust – a design that allows your user to stay and think about what your have to offer will do just that.

Unsure about your web design and how your visitors are responding to it? Talk to one of our Conversion Optimization consultants today for advice or call us at 1-888-262-6687.

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5 SEO Tweaks You Can Make When Updating Your Website

Every day we work with bloggers, marketing coordinators and receptionists who are all tasked with the job of keeping their company’s website current and updated.

This may involve updating website pages, adding new products, blogging about events and even running social media. While they have an intimate knowledge of their brand and products as well as excellent writing skills and aesthetic prowess there are still some simple SEO tweaks to be made to further improve the website and user experience.

That’s why we’ve put together this quick article with 5 simple tips for better SEO to make your work stand out and get even more visibility. It’s these simple SEO tweaks you can integrate into your work to help you get ahead!

Write Unique and Interesting Titles, Descriptions and URLs

Many website platforms such as WordPress use dashboards that make it easy to add a new page – much like working in a Word Document. However, when you add a new page the Meta Title and Meta Descriptions are often auto-generated based on a template. This is ok but you could do better! What do we mean?

The Title and Description tag is what gets shown in Search Results most of the time. It is crucial to make this unique and interesting in order to get searchers to click on your website rather than a competitor’s website.

Title: Make it interesting, capture the searcher’s attention and make sure it includes the main keyword or topic of the page.

Description: Describe what the page is about and benefits the person will get by visiting the page. You should also take the opportunity to add your brand name, city (if you are local) and your phone number.

URL: Many websites will create a URL for your page based on the Title, especially in WordPress. You can easily override this before you publish the page to make the URL more concise and reflective of what is on the page.

The problem with using auto-generated meta tags is that they don’t give the best first impression to the public and don’t usually give the Search Engine the information to base a query referral on. Based on your experience with using the Internet what type of Search Results do you tend to click on?

In our article on Local Optimization we give tips for writing awesome Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions.

Write Search Engine and Reader Friendly Content

When writing a new page or blog post pick one central theme or idea and make sure you incorporate that theme (or the “keyword”) naturally throughout the text. Try using some of these SEO content writing tips:

  • Use different variations of the keyword in the text and even go to Google Search, start typing your keyword and use their AutoSuggest feature to see what other related topics come up.
  • Try to incorporate the keyword into the heading and at the beginning of the text, as well as your meta title and description, as outlined in #1 above.
  • As you write optimized content don’t forget about your reader. Write for the customer in customer lingo but refer back to proper industry standard for credibility.
  • When writing new content or if using industry references or instructions, write in your own words and check that you have not copied any content. Try using a tool like Copyscape.

For more tips on writing great content check out our Guide to Writing Search Engine Friendly Content and Keyword Insights page.

Don’t upload just any image – take the time to prepare the image.

Image files take up a huge amount of space and time! Bytes slow down your load time. Here’s what we suggest:

  1. Rename each image file to describe what it is. The camera assigned JPG name does no one any good – even you when looking for just the right picture. Search engines can better understand images based on a file name.
  2. Crop and resize images to fit your layout. Avoid any stretching or shrinking that can make your site look unprofessional.
  3. Compress before loading the image to your website. The less bytes the faster your site will load.
  4. Don’t forget to add the Alt Tag, which is what is shown when the image is broken or won’t load. Image alt tags also help Search Engines understand the image.

For a detailed how-to on image file set up, check out our Optimization Image Tips.

Keep your website running fast.

A slow site can annoy your visitors to the point of abandonment! Slow websites also take longer for the Search Engines to crawl, acting as an inhibitor to all of your pages being properly viewed and indexed.

If your site takes more than 2 seconds to load, you are probably losing potential sales! You need to improve your site load time as soon as possible. Check your speed with our helpful tools or find out more about improving site speed here.

There are many factors that can be causing the slow load times. Here are three:

  1. We just mentioned images affect site speed and how you need to decrease image file size for optimization.
  2. Check your site for JavaScript. It does slow down load times. Try to find alternatives.
  3. Sometimes it’s simply an inadequate service provider. Check for a new host provider that can handle your content delivery.

Finally, get trained help when you need it.

1st on the List has a great Resources section on our site that is sure to guide you in many of the areas you need. And there are thousands of other SEO resource sites out there too.

However, sometimes it just takes a bit of coaching to get through the coding and uploading and writing and updating to make a difference. That’s where we come in. If you are having problems larger than you can handle, we can offer you several options:

  1. We can provide SEO training for your staff members responsible for keeping your website updated.
  2. We can perform a SEO Site Audit to determine just what is missing on your site.
  3. We can provide an SEO quote for the cost of ongoing SEO on your website.

For an initial consultation to determine your needs call us at 1-888-262-6687 or just drop us a note at contact@1stonthelist.ca.

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New Limelight Study: The State of the User Experience

Limelight Networks recently published a study called “The State of User Experience” which explored attitudes towards website performance. You may find the key findings interesting.

Visitors aren’t willing to wait for websites to load.

When asked how long are you willing to wait for a website to load before you get frustrated and leave the site, the medium time falls around 3 seconds according to this study.

  • Less than 1 second 1.67%
  • 1-3 seconds 18.92%
  • 3-5 seconds 38.62%
  • 5+ seconds 40.79%

Visitors will buy from a competitor if the page takes too long to load.

Nearly 40% of visitors said they will leave your website and go to your competitor’s website to complete their purchase if your site is too slow.

Tablets, iPhones and Android Phones are among most popular mobile devices.

Combined these three type of devices make up 83% of mobile use. Surprisingly 14% of people say they don’t use a mobile device to access the Internet.

Performance expectations for mobile are on the rise.

Yes, 44% of respondents say they are willing to wait longer for a page to load on a mobile device. However, another 41% say they expect mobile devices to load equally fast.

Visitors are impartial to your website making recommendations based on previous visits.

Nearly 40% of visitors say, “No, I don’t want a website to remember that I’ve come before and make recommendations based on my previous visits.” Another 25% are impartial saying they don’t know or don’t care.

Limelight’s Key Takeaways

  1. Performance is key to a great web experience.
  2. Consumer web use is increasingly mobile.
  3. The value of web experience personalization remains to be seen.

How fast does your website load? How is your mobile experience? You can check both of these factors using our SEO Tools or give us a call at 1-888-262-6687 for a personalized consultation of what your website needs to provide the best visitor experience possible.

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