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30 QUICK TIPS TO MAKE SURE YOUR WEBSITE IS EFFECTIVE September 05, 2012 (0 comments)
Merrick, NY—Luxury jewelers know how important it is to have a robust digital presence. Whether customers want to buy online, do research before shopping in person, or just find a phone number, they expect you to have a quality website that’s easy to use.
But how do you know if the presence you have online is hitting the mark with customers? As The Centurion has reported previously, there are a number of ways to use analytics to gauge how well your website attracts and keeps customers.
Another article in Small Business Trends highlights five more ways that analytics can help grow your business:
1. Understanding your keywords better. Analytics will tell you which phrases (for example, “diamond engagement rings”) are most powerful in driving people to your website, the rate at which people search a term, and how people searching for a particular keyword perform on your site; i.e. how long are they there, how many pages do they view, etc.
2. Understanding your customers better. Analytics can help you see patterns in behavior and segment them. For example, says the article, you might find customers coming to your site after reading reviews on Yelp may visit fewer pages but are more likely to convert to sales.
3. Understand social activity. Google Social reports is designed to help small business owners better understand the social activity on their websites, find conversations online to participate in, and convert social activity to sales dollars. Click here for tips on using it.
4. Analytics can help you identify which pages on your website are most useful in helping visitors complete their goals—and which are sending them off track. Highlighting potential problem areas helps the business owner fix them; such as rewriting pages that are not sending users toward conversion.
5. Web analytics can even measure the offline things you’re doing to promote your business. For example, if your ads direct users to search for a specific term, you can measure the search results online. Even without an ad, you can compare search results to recent offline activity and see what spikes. You can set up separate URLs for radio and print ads to compare which is driving customers to your site better, and so forth. Click here for the entire article.
Next, just like getting customers into the store is the first step to selling them, once customers are on your site, it has to perform optimally if you're expecting it to convert lookers into buyers. Another article in Small Business Trends highlights the 25 Questions Your Site Must Answer.
When customers come to your site, they are full of questions—though often subconsciously, says the article. But the way your site answers those questions will either reassure them or discourage them.
Here are just some of those silent customer questions:
- Where is your search box? How usable is the navigation?
- Is there an “About” page? Are your employees visible? Do you give them a voice?
- Are there product or service reviews? What’s everyone else saying? Am I making a good choice to commit to this?
- If I’m not ready to buy yet, how can I stay in touch?
- What’s your return policy? If I don’t like this product, am I stuck with it?
- How does one product differ from another on your site, and which is better for me?
- Are you on Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Where do I go to scope you out better?
- Where is your store? Is there a map? What are your hours?
- Is your site secure? How will you protect my payment information?
- Why should I shop with you over someone else? What’s your point of difference?
These questions, and 15 additional ones, are what customers most want to know when they log onto your site. To read more, click here.