Nov
Problem statement
Every modern business has a website that serves as an online business profile, e-commerce or just an information platform. Well, thats just the beginning; you may realize that just having a website doesn’t always cut it or even support your actual business goal.
You realize this when visitors are not using your profile website site to learn about your business and subsequently use the contacts page to inquire, buy or abandon the card before checkout, spend enough time reading through pages of information on your website.
That means something is terribly wrong with your website, and at this stage website optimization becomes a great resort to remedy all your user experience issues. Let’s define what web optimization is and why itâs important to optimize your website.
Definition
Website optimization is the process of creating and continuously improving websites to optimize the visitor experience, resulting in high visitor satisfaction, better user experience, and high repeat visit and conversion rates.
It is worth noting that website optimization strives to improve user experience also known as UX design/user inter-phase sometimes called UI and how the website displays on different screen sizes.
Purpose of web optimization
When you monitor and optimize your website regularly here are the four benefits you can expect:
1. To lead more return visits.
2. To increase eCommerce sales.
3. Increase quality time that the user spends on the website.
4. Arrange page elements in a way that provides best user experience
Typical problems with most websites
Confusing navigation
Using inconsistent or fancy design layouts that are not widely used in the web can be problematic to visitors when they try to navigate your website. The other problem is when a navigation system uses inconsistent wording, it may confuse the visitors and make them get lost on your website; and with so many websites in the internet they will most definitely leave your website.
Slow checkout process
Online visitors primarily use the internet to get things done in the most convenient way possible. The web provides quick, easy, accessible and free services. A poorly developed website takes long to load or requires a lot of information which prolongs the checkout process will make visitors more likely to abundant the cart and leave your website.
Unclear products/ services benefits
It’s a very big decision that customers make to buy a product or service, so it is a great idea to assume that normal pages on a website will do the trick, not really. If you really want to entice your visitors to purchase, then you should give them enough reason to do so by providing product/ service details on a desiccated product page with unique selling points and benefits; now that should to do the trick.
Slow websites
Modern websites use multimedia to enhance user experience and entice the visitors; thatâs really a great trick that makes other websites become more friendly and attractive than others, however; more multimedia on the website could slow down the website performance making webpages load really slow and visitors may assume that the site has crashed; they will by no means wait until the site finish loading all the content.
How to get started with web optimization
In order to establish how your site is performing you need to set smart goals first, then monitor and measure results, that will give you a clear picture of how your website is performing; that will form bases of whether you should perform web optimization or not.
First things first
You need to start by configuring a google analytics account for metrics testing, use Google console for technical optimization and SEO optimization audit tools like SEMRUSH to get started. There are a lots of premium and free tools online available for the same purpose, the choice is yours.
Here are most useful metrics for your website:
1. Conversion rates
2. Return rate
3. Referral rate
4. Cart abandonment rate
5. Time spent onsite
6. Bounce rate
