Imagine that you own a beautifully designed yacht. It looks great on the surface
of the water, with superb lines, gleaming decks, a well-appointed galley . . .
but you're having real trouble getting out of the harbor and you can't figure
out why!
You investigate, and you find that beneath the surface your
beautiful boat has a number of slow, silent, leaks. None of them are big enough
to sink you on their own, so there's no obvious immediate crisis - just a
constant drain on your efficiency and your speed.
I've been reviewing
Web traffic reports for over 10 years, and I believe that this analogy applies
very well to almost all business websites. Very few sites are so terrible or
have something so wrong with them that they're clearly a disaster. Yet just
about every site has some area where it's quietly losing traffic, losing
potential business or the opportunity to create relationships - or failing to
attract visitors in the first place.
If you're not regularly reviewing
your traffic analysis, you can't know for sure if your site is leak proof. In
this article, I'll show you a few of the most common areas where you can look
for - and fix - those silent leaks.
1. Leaks in your Brand &
Positioning
The excellent folks at MarketingExperiments online research
laboratories have shown that clearly articulated and differentiating value
propositions have a critical effect on Website conversion rates.
(The
conversion rate is the measurement of visitors fulfilling your desired outcomes
- which might include calling you, buying a product at your site, signing up for
your newsletter or blog feed, etc.)
Your value proposition should be
front and center on your home page. It should answer the classic question: "Why
should we do business with you instead of your competition?"
Although
this question isn't a Web strategy issue in itself, it is one that many people
struggle to answer. But the lack of a compelling opening message can be a major
impediment to your online success.
How to check for this leak: Even if
they don't enter your site at the home page, most visitors who don't know you
will go there as the second page they look at to find out more about you and
your business.
If visitors are taking a quick look at your home page and
then immediately leaving, something is wrong. Your copy is failing to pique
their curiosity or to answer their questions: "Can this company meet my needs?"
and "Should I explore further?" You have a leak!
2. Leaks in Visitor
Engagement
Popular theory says that you have 10 seconds to engage a
visitor - i.e. convince them to stay on your site before they click away in
search of something more interesting.
While I don't believe that it's
quite that simple, there are some definite ways to get rid of visitors fast
before they've had a chance to really check you out.
The best of these
is probably the infamous splash page - the entry page to your site that your Web
designer persuaded you to have because it "does cool stuff". Hopefully there's a
"Skip Intro" button somewhere on the page!
In all my reviews of traffic
reports I've seen a consistent leak of up to 30% of visitors leaving from this
page alone - before they've ever seen who you are or what you offer.
How
to check for this leak: Easy - look for the splash page in your traffic reports
and see how many visitors exit at that point. If it's more than a small
percentage, you have a leak - take the page out today!
The other major
area where you should watch for leaks in visitor engagement is in what are
called "landing pages". These are inside pages of your Website which turn out to
be the first page that a visitor sees, usually because you have some
well-indexed content that they've found in a search engine.
Here it's
absolutely critical to understand the visitor's mindset. Each visitor is at your
site looking for something specific, they may well have found you by accident,
so they may have no idea who you are - and worse, no interest in you.
The first page that they see on your Website must engage them
immediately in accordance with their needs, and it must have enough context to
draw them into other areas, and to want to find out more about you. It's not
enough to give great information on this page - they'll soak that up, and then
leave.
How to check for this leak: Hopefully your traffic reports are
sophisticated enough to show you which keywords bring visitors to each specific
page of your site. This shows you each visitor's "mindset".
If visitors
are leaving a page very quickly, then it probably isn't satisfying their
informational needs, so you should review the content.
If visitors are
reading the page (your traffic reports should show the time spent at each page)
and then leaving, you've given them what they wanted but failed to draw them
into the rest of your site. This can be fixed with more compelling navigation
and calls to action.
Either way, you have a leak!
3. Leaks in
Directions & Outcomes
I'm constantly amazed by the number of Web
pages that give great information and content - and then just end abruptly -
perhaps with some navigation tabs if you're lucky!
Steve Krug in his
excellent book "Don't Make Me Think!" describes how crucial it is to direct
visitors to the next step that you want them to take. If you don't do this, and
rely on your visitors to figure this out for themselves, there's a strong chance
that they'll make a different choice than the one you want - or they'll leave
your site altogether, creating leaks in your potential revenue stream.
Every page of your site needs strong calls to action that stand out
visually and click directly to where the visitor can fulfill the outcome that
you want (e.g. "buy now!", "sign up for our newsletter / RSS feed".) Pages can
have more than one call to action, and there's nothing wrong with repeating them
on longer pages so that they're always within eyeshot.
And by the way,
"Back to top" is not a call to action!
How to check for this leak: If
your traffic reports show this information, look at the paths that visitors take
through your site - where do visitors go next from each page? If many of them
are exiting the site and / or they fan out across many pages with no clear
pattern or direction, you have a possible leak.
4. Leaks in your
Credibility Building
MarketingExperiments research has also shown that
powerful, specific, and authoritative testimonials can have a major impact on
your site's conversion rates.
Consider this statement: "Documented
results show that just a few hours with [ expert ] can increase lead generation
by 125%". Imagine how much stronger that assertion would be if there were some
examples of the "documented results" and some customer quotes to that effect.
However, including a page on your site called "What Customers Say"
doesn't do it - I can safely say that visitors don't go to those pages. And it's
not just traffic reports that tell me this - whenever I ask a live audience
"Would you click this link?" there's always a resounding "No!"
How to
check for this leak: This is a much more subtle leak to detect, but it's an
important one. The question here is whether you are potentially losing business
because your site fails adequately to establish your value and credibility.
My recommended approach is to review your site for credibility-building
content such as client lists, testimonials and case studies. You need to spread
your testimonials through your site, using short one or two line excerpts that
are relevant to the content of each page - whether it's about a product or a
service, or the value of subscribing to your newsletter or blog.
Make
sure that all of this material is linked to from other pages so that it's easily
found by visitors. If you then experience an increase in calls, or in the
quality of your leads, then you might have just fixed a leak!
© Philippa
Gamse. All rights reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and
byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.