Slippery Websites – Do You Have One?

I love the metaphor of ‘slippery’ for a website – I can just imagine the site trying to hold onto visitors that are like egg white … they fall apart in your hands and slip down your wrists. Or the site itself can be like a slide – people arrive at the top, and quickly make their way off at the bottom. If your SEO can get people to your website without a problem, but have trouble making the money you should, we look at some steps to take to slow the journey.

Is this how slippery your website is?

1. Find out who you are selling to

So, so many companies say “We sell to whoever needs our products”. This may be true – but every company finds that a large portion of their customers are derived from a certain demographic segment. They might be mostly women, they might be mostly of childbearing age, and they might be mostly located within your physical area. Demographic analysis of your current customers is the first step to getting rid of that slip.

2. Understand your market

Understand their preferences for colour, their design sensibilities, the way they search for information, etc. Then pander to those sensibilities in your website, whether or not they also appeal to you. Everybody is different … and the only people you need to please are the ones that are keeping you in business.

3. Do usability studies

Jakob Nielsen is the grandfather of usability (often the grumpy old man of usability, actually J), and his blog at www.useit.com has lots of good usability info, hints and tips for where you might currently be going wrong. Of course, there is no substitute for an expert eye in this arena … many web marketing specialists work on usability and web design as well as SEO.

4. Build trust on your website

If you don’t have SSL security certificates, a https: connection for your credit card entry page, security certificates for programs like Verified by Visa, etc, there are few customers now that would entrust you with their money.

5. If you have an ecommerce site, link to other products from many places

If consumers can’t quickly find what they want, or don’t see any indications that you might have what they want, they will often click straight off. Use Top Seller widgets, ‘Also Recommended’ sections, and include ‘Customers who purchased this item also bought’ sections, a la Amazon.

Conversion optimisation is a big topic and you can spend years refining it – but without it, every SEO dollar you spend could be wasted.