I might be the only one to draw these parallels, but websites are like weak-willed people in December. They’re thinking, this year hasn’t been so bad, but it’s not what I wanted and things —anything, everything—needs to be better. So what do they do? They take a giant leap on New Year’s Day, after binging on champagne, whiskey sours, and potato chips, and stop everything cold turkey. No drinking. No sugar. Exercising every day. They think, if only I can get a do-over, I’ll get it right this time. But the same problems present down the road and they wonder why they have this issue every year...
And these same thoughts present with a site redesign. If I can just start over, from scratch, everything will be great. I’ll get more traffic, more conversions and more return. But before you jump into that makeover show of a mentality, wouldn’t it be great to take some incremental steps in the right direction and continue to make progress in the interim? Studies have shown that 92% of contestants on the Biggest Loser regain the weight after they’ve completed the show. You don’t want that to be your website after the big reveal.
Optimize based on learnings
Before you go off the deep end and scrap what you’ve got, there are a few things you can do to better understand your users, where your site is falling down, and improve site performance before jumping head-first into a costly redesign. You’ve got the foundation, so let’s just give it an upgrade.
1. Review your analytics
Making decisions based on data is the best way to optimize a site. You have a benchmark and can now attribute measurable results to specific changes in design, content or architecture. And then you can take those learnings and apply them again and again.
So what should you measure? Google Analytics has basic tracking that can give you all the insights you need to better understand your user behavior. You can review top landing pages (where people are coming into your site), top exit pages (where people are leaving your site), pages with top conversions (people who click Contact or Purchase), and top visited pages (the pages people are most interested in). You can also see where people are coming from (are they coming from an email campaign or through organic search?) and what device they are using (are there more mobile users than desktop users?).
These metrics can give you important insights for ways to improve your site performance, whether by investing in SEO because your organic leads are low, or improving your mobile experience because 80% of users are using an iPhone. Data provides actionable insights that you can measure in the future.
2. Identify target keywords for your site
Depending on the age of your site, or whether it was built in your garage, you might not have invested in SEO. Search engine optimization is the effort of optimizing your site for search engines, with keyword targeting, mobile optimization, schema implementation, or other techniques.
A quick win is to ensure that each of your pages on your site is focusing on a target keyword—something your audience would be searching for. Often, marketers think getting listed on page one of Google is the most important part (but studies have shown that’s not always the case). If you’re getting more qualified traffic and conversions on your site by targeting specific keywords—even if you’re on page four or five—then you’re succeeding.
The best approach is to come up with natural titles and themes for your products or services (what would your audience be thinking of when they’re doing research on your industry or product?). Then, take some of those keyword variations and shove them into a keyword research tool, like KWFinder or Moz’s Keyword Explorer. This will show you search volume and competition for each keyword. You’ll want to find low competition and higher search volume. Targeting longtail keywords—keywords that may have low monthly searches but very low competition—is a great way to rank higher and get more qualified leads (who are more likely to convert on your site). Implement these keywords in key locations on your page, like the title (H1), body copy, metadescription and title tag.
3. Cross-links for the win
You might have a decent amount of traffic to your site, but you may be seeing a higher bounce rate because users aren’t finding what they’re looking for, or low engagement because people are dropping off after only two page views. If you want to increase user engagement on the site, make sure you give them an easy way to explore your content.
You might have an intuitive navigation, but if it’s static, and only present at the top of the page, you may be doing a disservice to your visitors. Make that nav sticky, so they have an easy way to jump to the next page, or have a sitemap in your footer, so your users always have somewhere to go next.
If that’s a little obtrusive for you, add contextual calls to action in your content. If you’re selling notebooks on your site, an obvious cross-link would be to the top-rated pen you sell, or a link to a blog post on bullet journaling. Or if you’re a marketing consultant writing a blog post on the best way to optimize a site, you can directly link them to your services page or contact page if they need more assistance. Related content, whether it be products, services or blog posts, can easily set your users on the right path to getting information that’s relevant to them.
While a redesign may be an enticing and creative prospect, if you have the foundation of a good site—relevant and organized content, a modern, responsive site platform, and the ability to market and optimize your site—you don’t need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Some incremental tweaks may get you headed in the right direction and realizing some returns before you wipe the slate clean.
Allison Mellon is an experienced marketing strategist who’s worked with many agencies in San Diego, to provide clients with results-driven marketing. To contact for a free consultation, email allison@allisonmellon.com or submit your information on her contact page.