Saturday, September 27, 2008

10 Tips to Start Optimizing Your Website

Optimizing a website doesn’t have to be a complex task and, in fact, is more of a continual improvement process. You will never be “done” improving your website.

You can start with just a few of your site’s pain points and begin helping your visitors convert. The following is a list of 10 common problems we find everyday when analyzing websites and some tips on how to solve them. Enjoy!

1. Find Trigger Words That Excite Your Visitors

People navigate the web by “scent.” Scent was first described by Xerox Parc to describe the parallels between human’s information-gathering techniques on the web and animal’s food-gathering techniques in the wild.

People seek information through the “scent” given offby their trigger words. According to research performed by usability guru Jared Spool, when a visitor found the trigger word on the landing page, they were successful at completing their task 72% of the time; if the trigger word wasn’t on the page, they were only successful 6% of the time. The scent of the key words kept them on the right path; lacking that scent, they stopped searching that particular “trail.”

This means your visitors are on a mission, they are goal oriented, and if they don’t see the trigger words they came to the site with, they are likely to move on to a site that has the right scent.

The solution is not that difficult. If a prospect arrives at a landing page having used a term like “buy baseball cap”, they must see “buy baseball cap” on the page.

Now Take Action

Make sure you have your visitors’ triggers words are visible, even use the scent for copy on each major button or link:
  1. Complete this sentence: “I want to _____.”
  2. Includes trigger words / strong scent
I hope you enjoyed this valuable piece of marketing information. Watch for the second tip to start optimizing your website called "Call Your Traffic to Action ".

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