5 top tips to optimise your website for sales
The below article was written by Kim of Kim Scotland Web Design. She’s got a wealth of website knowledge, and has managed to condense years of industry experience into these 5 tips, so make sure you read to the end.
Anyone can build a website.
There is a wealth of information and tutorials on how to create a website freely available online. What most people struggle with is how to optimise a website for sales.
Most people think that 'a website's just a website, right?' The answer is, in fact, no. There's a lot of strategy involved from how to make sure people actually find the site, to making sure they do the thing you want them to do when they get there.
Here are my 5 top tips on how to create a website that sells.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
You can have the world's most optimised website for sales but if no one can find it, you're shouting into the void.
Google processes over 8.5 billion searches PER DAY. That's more than the world's population. Every day!
What I'm trying to say is if you're not trying to get a slice of that pie you could be missing out on A LOT of sales.
If you want to make sales while you sleep, search engine optimisation is critical in making sure you have a steady stream of buyers no matter the time of day.
In a nutshell, SEO is the process of optimising your website so that the people you're targeting find it with their relevant searches. No one (apart from the Google developers) knows exactly how they rank websites but we do know that your website needs certain things.
Keywords
Keywords are how Google knows what your content is about. It will look for words and phrases repeated throughout your page or blog post and use that to determine the topic.
User experience
Google does not want to serve up websites that have a poor user experience because people will stop using it. This includes things like how quickly the site loads, how easy visitors find it to use, and how relevant the content is to visitors.
Backlinks
This is about getting other websites to link to yours. If your website has lots of links from other high authority websites like the New York Times, Forbes, The BBC are linking back to yours then this tells search engines that your site has authority too.
Clear goal
If you want to optimise your website for sales, you need to work out what you want to sell.
Sales of what specifically?
If you only have one offer or product then obviously it's going to be that. But what if you have a 1:1 service, a group programme and an online course?
You can and should have the details of each one of those offerings on your website, but one has to take precedence, otherwise you're throwing spaghetti at the wall. Your visitors will end up with decision fatigue which usually leads to no action.
This is probably a good time to say that your website is never a one and done thing. It's not something that you tick off a list to then gather dust until you launch a new offer or update your brand aesthetic.
Your website should change and evolve with you and the seasons of your business. Think about it. There's no point having your website set up with the goal to sign 1:1 clients if you're fully booked for 1:1 clients.
At that point you should be switching your goal to your next most profitable offer and when that sells out you switch again.
This doesn't mean that you need to manually update each page from scratch every time you sell out of something. You could have different versions of each page that you switch on and off as you need them. Or that you have predefined content that you switch in and out as you need to.
Design
Design ties into both the first 2 points. Good design leads to a good user experience which is good for SEO and your design needs to support your website goals.
The most important thing to remember with your design is that you don't have to to be really innovative or have fancy graphics and logos for a website to sell. Most people get caught up in having a beautiful website over one that converts. You can have both, but you need to keep your eye on the prize. You need a website that sells first, and a beautiful one second.
Here are my top design tips to optimise your website for sales:
Clear message above the fold (the part of the screen first visible when the screen loads) - visitors take 3 seconds to decide to stay on your website. Make it clear who you are, what you do and who you serve.
Make sure the site loads in 3 seconds or less - or people will lost patience and leave before the page has even loaded
Clear navigation - so visitors can find their way around easily.
Repeated calls to action - so visitors are left in no doubt as to what the next step is in buying from or working with you. These should always be buttons (links are easily missed) in a contrasting colour to the background.
Testimonials / reviews - make sure they're on every single page backing up the benefits of your offer. Visitors need to know that you've helped people just like them achieve the results that they want. Don't relegate them to a single page and then not mention them anywhere else, they need to be part of the conversation when you're talking about your offers.
Test and tweak
Not every business is the same. Not every audience is the same. We can make a best guess at what's going to get a website to convert but you never really know how until you put something out there and look at the data.
You can't make informed decisions unless you have information to base them on.
This is one of my pet peeves with the 'my website didn't sell so I'm sticking to social media' brigade. All they know is that their websites aren't doing what they'd hoped. But they don't bother to take the time to work out why that is.
Google Analytics
The most obvious method of collecting data is to hook your site up to Google Analytics. Here you'll find a wealth of information including how people get to your site, where in the world they are, what they do when they get there and more.
Heatmapping
If you want to know what really happens on your site beyond who visits, which pages they view and how long for, heatmapping really useful.
As users visit and interact with your site a heatmapping tool will record their mouse clicks and movements and use it to generate heatmaps. The hottest place being the place where most mouse clicks happen.
Once you've got data to analyse you can use it to identify any weaknesses.
Then you can use that information to make changes elsewhere.
For example, if you see that one area of a page gets more attention than others, you can begin to work out why that might be. Is it the background colour? Text size? Button size? Button colour? The wording?
Maybe you have a really popular page on your site. Most of your website visitors end up there. How can you capitalise on that? Can you add an email list sign up form? Do you have a related product or service you can link to?
Once you've given it at least 90 days you can check back in and see whether the change was positive or negative.
Email list
I can't talk about websites that sell without talking about email lists.
'The money's in the list' is how the saying goes in the online space. If you take nothing else away from reading this, it's that you need to start an email list. Yesterday. Even if you think you have nothing to say.
I would argue that if you're regularly pumping content out to socials then you have something to send to your list.
Building an email list should be a secondary goal on your website. Because if someone lands on your site and doesn't buy but signs up to your email list, you'll have plenty more chances to sell to them.
If you have 'get a website' and 'start an email list' on your to-do list, start with the email list. Growing an email list takes time, so make it a priority.
How to optimise a website to make sales
The 3 main elements of a website that sells are visibility and having a clear goal, and having your design back up those first 2 points. Your website can't sell if no-one can find it. It also won't sell if your visitors are overwhelmed with too many choices. Great web design gives your visitors a good user experience, this will help with visibility and nudging visitors to buy.
Email lists are incredibly important for any business. They can be a great way to get visitors to your website and therefore increasing your visibility.
Testing and tweaking is something that should be done over time as you collect more information about how visitors use your site. You'll find that the impact of this will compound over time as you work out more of what makes your website sell and what doesn't.
About the author
Kim is a web designer with over 10 years experience in the industry including 8 years spent writing software for the NHS and 4 years running her web design business Kim Scotland Web Design.
She now helps service based small businesses amplify their message through epic web design so they can reach more people and make more impact.
You can find more of her web design and WordPress hints tips and tricks over at kimscotland.com or on Instagram @kim_scotland
