Are you looking for ways to make your website stand out while also making potential customers happy? A good website focuses on a few key features like website speed and the user experience. But people tend to gloss over the fact that they need image descriptions and the fact that they need to optimize their mobile website.
Here are 10 tips for creating the best websites for your customers.
Website Speed
Skipping out on your website speed is an excellent way to increase your bounce rate. Sites that take too long to load run the risk of someone becoming disinterested in your website and will go to one that is faster.
Items that can impact your site speed are problems with images, hosting service, or poor coding problems. Always ensure that your image is of the highest quality with the smallest file size possible. If you notice more traffic to your website, contact your hosting provider to see if they can help increase your site speed on their end.
Image Descriptions
Skipping out on image descriptions not only destroys image ranking opportunities but also doesn’t help those that rely on text-to-speech.
Certain users on your website will not have the ability to see the picture clearly. The image description can help them identify that they’re looking for the right product or service.
Even if the keyword you’re targeting has a higher difficulty ranking, you have a separate ranking opportunity with images that may sway people in your direction.
Mobile Optimized
You may have the best website ever on a desktop, but the fact of the matter is that more people use the internet on their phones. For many, it is easier to order something directly from their phone rather than needing to get to a computer first.
When you mobile-optimize your website, you’re ensuring that photos load correctly, text rearranges to fit their device’s screen, and buttons and other menus are still easy to use.
Easy-To-Navigate Menus
Speaking of menus, you need an easy-to-navigate menu for your customers to have a pleasant digital experience on your website. You should break up your sections into their main categories and then go into subcategories from there.
This saves the customer frustration when looking through your catalog for a specific piece. Include a search bar on your website, so they have an even easier time finding the right product.
Have Landing Pages With More Information
Only relying on product pages or content pages may hurt your chances of ranking for your product or service. To give your company the best chance, start utilizing landing pages.
Landing pages go into further detail on a specific product or service that you offer. Think about them as the home page of what you offer.
Because of landing pages focusing on a single aspect, they tend to have more pictures, reviews, and web copy than a blog post would. The constant use of a specific keyword will always make this page a little more likely to rank. So long as you’re not keyword stuffing.
Don’t Make Content Hard To Read
When it comes to your normal content on blogs, don’t make users want to skim over the text. Ensure that you’re breaking up the content into one to three sentences per paragraph. Don’t forget to include headers to help break up sections.
Also, incorporating accessibility overlays can significantly improve readability for users with visual impairments. These overlays offer options like text magnification, contrast adjustment, and text-to-speech functionality, making your content more accessible and engaging for everyone. If you never heard about these useful widgets you can find all overlay information in one place.
Never forget to include images and videos in your content. With YouTube being the second biggest search engine after Google, skipping out on video content is an easy way to miss out on potential customers.
Make Sure There Are Plenty of CTAs
Always find a way to make sure the customer knows how to contact you, buy a product, or subscribe to a newsletter. The more call-to-actions (CTAs) you make easy to spot, the more likely a potential customer is to convert.
Don’t go overboard and get intrusive with your CTAs, though. People might find them annoying, decrease their chances to convert, and even cause them to leave the website.
Don’t Let Items Sit In the Cart
A good digital customer experience is giving the potential customer a reason to convert. As of 2019, the cart abandonment rate for online retail is around 69%.
Sometimes customers do this because they forgot about the products in their cart. Others may have had something come up, and they can no longer afford it.
If you see customers hold products in their cart for more than 12 to 24 hours, consider sending them a coupon as an incentive to go through with their purchase.
To find more tips that are specific to retail, Decibel does a great job of breaking down the key components of a great digital experience.
Highlight Positive Reviews and Testimonials
Highlight positive reviews is a win for both you and your customers. For you, you’re showing other potential customers that real people enjoy your products, and people left a review to prove that.
The highlighted customer takes satisfaction in knowing that you cared about their review. This makes them more likely to return and tell others about your website.
Make the Checkout Process Easy
Give your customers multiple different ways to checkout. Having more ways to pay decreases the chance of the customer having to abandon their cart because their payment method wasn’t available.
Many companies are going beyond only offering major card options like Visa and Mastercard. Their websites include items like Apple Pay, PayPal, and even loan payments like Sezzle.
The Best Websites Will Include All of These Tips
The best websites go above and beyond to help their customers out. To get the best possible conversion rate, sometimes you need to take the customer by the hand and lead them to where you want them to go. It makes their life and your life easier.
If you want to learn more about website optimization, then be sure to check out the rest of the blog. Know someone that needs help with their website? Share this article with them so they can address those issues.
