Ideally, your website is your greatest tool for marketing and sales. It is the face of your company and typically the first thing your viewers/future customers will see. It is essential that your website’s performance is professional and top-notch, as sub-par performance can easy frustrate today’s tech-savvy audience and cause them to move on to the next option.
A landing page cuts out the middle man. That way when a viewer reaches your site through a second party ad or a search for a specific phrase, instead of being directed to your site’s main page, they will instead end up on the page with the topic they were searching for. The landing page goes the extra step in customer convenience.
Make sure your homepage is clear and concise. Its job is to convey the intrinsic message of your site and then direct the viewers to the appropriate pages. Either an overload of information or too little information will result in a confused viewer. Let them know what your site it about and then designate clear pathways to more specific pages.
Social media is, without question, an excellent way to boost performance. But this is more involved than merely including links to your Facebook or Twitter pages. If you have interactive content, blogs, or newsletters, include the option to share the content on those social media platforms. This is an easy way to interact with your viewer and let them share their interest.
Along the same lines as interactive content, give your viewers a reason to return. A regularly updated blog, user-generated content, or several pages that change on a weekly basis (at least) will keep your viewers returning to check out new information.
It is important for you to stay up-to-date on your traffic, the average amount of time spent on your website, the last page visited before leaving, your conversation rate etc. SmarterStats monitors traffic habits and helps you locate areas to adjust or improve on.
Speed is another intrinsic part of maintaining reader interest. Some general tips for speeding up your performance: reduce image size, use a content delivery network, take advantage of caching, and minimize HTTP requests. For this last tip (minimize HTTP requests), you will need to download every file (CSS, JavaScript, and images) your site uses to the browser. Condensing all CSS files into one single spreadsheet will also have great benefits for the speed of your website’s performance.
