Your company’s website is probably your most powerful marketing and sales tool, yet many businesses neglect to create an enjoyable digital experience that drives conversions. Factors such as content, loading speed, design, and structure all play an important role in encouraging prospects and existing customers to continue navigating your site. Failing to account for these important factors will lead to lost opportunities and a negative brand reputation.
We live in a digital age where our customers know that the solutions to their pain points are a quick search away and have become accustomed to receiving fast and reliable service from their chosen vendors. That means that companies have to be willing and ready to deliver relevant content, information, and solutions at a moment’s notice to capture their target customer’s attention and generate conversions.
However, when your website is not optimized to match your users’ needs, providing customers with the type of experience they have come to expect becomes much more difficult. If customers have to wait too long to get what they want and need or can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll likely look for solutions elsewhere. But failing to optimize your website to match customer preferences doesn’t just affect bounce rates; it also impacts order size, customer satisfaction, SEO rankings, and your ability to gain conversions.
In other words, if you’re not seeing the results you want, it might not necessarily mean that it’s time to overhaul your marketing strategy. The solution to your demand and lead generation goals could be as simple as taking the steps necessary to make your website faster and create a more enjoyable browsing experience for your customers.
Today, we’re going to walk you through 5 things you should focus on to do just that.
1) Measure the Speed of Your Website and Optimize Accordingly
Your site can have the best content, SEO, and design, but all it takes to make your bounce rates skyrocket is a slow page loading time. Your target customers want quick answers to their most pressing questions, and having to wait around — even if it’s only for a second or two — can motivate them to look for a solution elsewhere.
The good news is that even if your page load time is very slow, there are tools that can help you measure performance and determine the best course of action. To start, you should check out Think with Google’s Test My Site tool. This handy tool will help you evaluate your website and give you pointers on what you can do to optimize it for speed. You can even generate a report so your team can review recommendations and collaborate to develop an appropriate plan of action.