You probably hear a lot about optimizing your website, but what does this really mean? Website optimization is a technical approach to improving the performance of your website. When your site is optimized, it provides a better user experience that makes visitors more likely to convert. To be effective at optimization, you need data to make the right decisions.
Let’s learn more about why optimization is important and the elements you should optimize.
Why Website Optimization Matters
When you push traffic to your website, you want it to be qualified traffic that is more likely to convert. Otherwise, you’re just getting traffic that doesn’t do anything to grow your business. In fact, you might see certain metrics like bounce rate go up. If your website is optimized, it will attract the right people and move them through the funnel so they are more likely to convert.
The benefits of optimizing your website are:
- Move your site up in the search listings
- Increase brand exposure and awareness
- Increase qualified traffic and leads
- Get a greater return on investment
- Make it easier for the search engines to crawl and index your web pages
What Elements Should be Optimized
You can optimize almost anything on your website, but you probably don’t have the time to go through every element. So, it’s best to focus on the most influential parts of your site, such as:
- Headline
- Visual media
- Length of forms
- Style, text or placement of CTAs
- Website navigation
- Social sharing functionality
Know Your Target Customer
Before you can optimize your site, it’s important that you understand your target customer. To do this, create a buyer persona that will make it easier to envision your ideal customer. Some basic things to know about your target customer are:
- Age
- Gender
- Needs
- Budget
- Goals
- Selling points
- Pain points
Define Your Marketing Goals
Before running tests, you also need to define your marketing goals. If your goal is to increase sales, how will you achieve it – email subscriptions, purchases, phone calls? Will your ideal customer make one large purchase or several small purchases over a period of time?
By clarifying your goals, you can optimize your site accordingly and test the results to make sure you are on the right track. You can never test too much – the more you run tests, the more you can learn about your site’s performance and continue optimizing key elements.
Optimization is necessary, but it can be a complex topic to understand. Let Magna Technology focus on what we do best – optimizing websites – while you focus on what you do best. Contact us today for a free consultation and let’s talk about getting your site fully optimized.