If your eCommerce website is hard to navigate, looking dated or otherwise unwelcoming, this will affect your bottom line. By creating a method to gather and assess your site data, you can create an actionable plan that produces results.
All eCommerce sites need to be assessed at different times using quantifiable site data to inform site decisions. Whether you are ready to grow your business or if your sales are in decline, an evaluation can help. A site evaluation of 8 key areas can help you understand how to improve your website for users, drive traffic, and secure sales.
The Design Experience
A minimalistic or simplistic website is appealing. A lack of distractions and clutter makes it easy for traffic to navigate your site. People want fast, convenient, and clear sites when online. Your design should make it clear to visitors what your product or service is, who your target audience is, and how interested customers can make a purchase.
One of the best ways to determine the best site design and details is simple A/B testing. These tests are simple indicators that give a yes or no answer to questions such as CTA location or background color.
Copy Review
Content and copy are vital to selling on your website. Without clear communication of your products and services, traffic will not engage. Your content needs to always add value to the customer experience. It should highlight your USP and encourage customer engagement.
If your business has stagnated or isn’t growing the way you’d expect, refreshing or even rewriting your content is a way to connect and drive new traffic. Blogs, emails, and other supplementary content should also be assessed to connect with potential leads.
Rethink Your Call-to-Action
You likely know your conversion rate or how effective sales are per website visitor. While many of these steps will help you improve it, CTA placement and wording are often overlooked.
Simply moving the position of the CTA on the page and its relationship to content can transform the performance of a website. Call-to-action buttons do best when the main button is placed at the top of the screen, under the title or subheading. The button should be visible without scrolling, eliminating barriers to taking action. Make it easy for customers connects with your brand and shop on your website, and drive sales.
Evaluate Organic Traffic
Using Google Analytics, it is easy to track your traffic. While ads and promotions increase short-term gains, organic marketing has ROI longevity. One of the main methods used to achieve this goal is SEO. With effective content such as blogs, videos, images, metadata, and emails, organic traffic is easily promoted.
Conducting a review of your current traffic is essential. If you aren’t actively creating content and promoting your brand on social media channels, your marketing will fall short of expectations. If you already have a strong portfolio of content but see no improvement, review your most popular pieces and refresh those topics. Encourage your audience to like and share your content to help improve organic reach and continue to produce the content that attracts the highest traffic numbers.
Review Your Style
Styles change. Prior to 2017, industrial-chic minimalism dominated everything from websites to foodcourts in shopping malls. In 2023, this style is dated. If your brand is stuck in this style, your audience is likely moving on. Research what’s in style right now and make sure your design reflects and represents your customers.
Make sure you are appealing to the right target audience. Things as simple as a color update can refresh your brand and website. You can make very tiny adjustments that keep your brand contemporary. Some of the world’s biggest brands do an update almost every year without customers noticing; with a little more or less flourish to a font or a slight elongation of the brand name, you can change the style without changing your image.
Check Your Checkout
Too many eCommerce stores do not evaluate their checkout process. It’s essential to know how many people click checkout, how many abandon it, and how many fully convert. Small improvements can result in double percentage gains.
Launching abandoned checkout tools to identify who leaves your site and doesn’t follow through on their purchase can change your business. You can also add targeted ads, incentives, and automatic email reminders to motivate purchasing. These tools are highly effective and cost very little. They can simplify your checkout process and secure sales with simple APIs and gateways that work flawlessly and are trusted by customers.
Review Your Website Brand
For some businesses that have brick-and-mortar as well as eCommerce operations, branding might be inconsistent. Consider if your website is well-branded, uniform, and representative of your company.
Your brand should be memorable, consistent, and always on target. Your site brand should look professional and original with a unique design. This helps you create a memorable brand that links with your physical site.
Conclusion
Doing an annual review of your website is necessary to ensure it remains fresh in a fast-paced environment. New tools and updates are made available every day that help to drive your eCommerce towards success. There is no shortage of marketing, sales, and back-end tools that can help transform your business. However, it all starts with strategy, and an in-house audit of your site is a great way to determine what you need to fix, address and improve to reach your business goals.
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