Do people visit your website just to leave right away? Are you enticing them to look around further or to buy, or are you just turning them away and killing sales?
Look at your site – like it’s some other site you do not know. Does it grab your attention? Is it too flashy and not focused? Does it tell you why you want to be there? Will you learn something, or benefit in some way? Is there a banner or other type of ad that directs people away from your site to another? Do you think you would buy from your site if you just discovered it?
Is it easy to order from you? Is the ordering information clearly presented and easily found? Do you have the price stated so people don’t have to waste time to hunt it down? It is best to “pre-qualify” buyers prior to minimize either party’s time to be wasted. Do you clearly state other bonuses and offers you will throw in with the order?
Are there too many choices given? Can people make up their minds easily or do the choices confuse them? Do you offer added value products that compliment yours?
Does your site have annoying colors or fonts? Can people read what is written or do they have to strain because of background and color choices?
Do you spend the entire top of the page showing your picture and putting the text below, where visitors need to scroll in order to find out what you offer? Does your site take a long time to load up because of graphics and background choices?
Do you use enough text with your important keywords in it? Do you write your text clearly and without errors – no misspellings, no grammatical mistakes?
Now that you have these thoughts to ponder, do a reality check on your site. Fix the problems that were flagged from the above analysis. If it’s too much to fix easily – then it’s best to scrap the site and start from scratch, trying to make it better on the above points. After all – why do you have a website? Don’t you want traffic? Don’t you want buyers?
P. Roe does website optimization work, and is working on her sites all the time – many are in number 1-10 ranking on Google and Yahoo! Subscribe to “Wise Little Tidbits” for more optimization tips. mailto:ezineshere@aol.com?WLT http://doubleii.com/webservices.htm
