Website optimization is the next step after website analytics have been installed. You can’t improve on something when you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to improve from. The goal of optimizing your website is to have more of your website visitors take your desired action (usually, to turn into customers).

What parts of a website can be optimized?

Website optimization looks at all of the variables of your website and tests each one. By splitting your website up and testing for specific variables, we can see what works best for your website and improve the percentage of visitors that turn into customers or leads (the conversion rate). We test what is included and the positioning of:

• Content
• Images
• Calls to action
• Form fields
• Navigation
• Credibility indicators
• and many more…

What factors does website optimization consider?

After splitting the website into different variables, we consider the following factors for each.

1. Friction: are there items on your site that get in the way and stop a visitor from taking the desired action? The biggest cause of this is too many fields in a lead form, or a difficult online ordering process. By removing the elements that add friction, you can improve your conversion rate.
2. Clarity: Is your website easy to understand and do visitors know what to do when they’re at your site? Looking at the pages they visit and their behavior on each page can tell you where you need spend some time clarifying your message. By testing your message, you can find the one that buyers react to the best.
3. Clutter: Do you have too much going on in your site? Too much clutter on a site can confuse buyers and distract them from taking the desired action. Reviewing your site and testing which elements are necessary to a visitor experience and which elements distract, can improve conversion rates dramatically. Just moving some variables to another place in your site can dramatically improve conversion rates.
4. Usability: Can your visitor make the desired action? Many times how to make the desired action is very easy for the people who own the website, but it is difficult for a visitor to find. By testing different areas for navigation and where and how to place an order, you can improve conversion rates because it’s intuitive for the visitor.
5. Trust: If you ask for credit card information or a social security number right off the bat, a person may leave your site without taking the desired action. There are many ways you can instill trust in a buyer – you just need to test out the options available to you and see which ones work the best. If a visitor doesn’t trust you, they will never turn into a customer – no matter how great your site is.

Visitor and Channel Optimization

The people at Envision have years of experience working on the optimization techniques. Not only do we test the above factors, we have found that testing those factors for both the stage of the buyer and the marketing channel provides the best optimization results. Not all visitors will have the same desire when they come upon your website.

• Optimizing for Buyer Stage: We look at where the visitor is in the buying process when they come to your website. If someone searches for “Apple iPod Touch 32 GB” they know they want a 32 GB Apple iPod Touch. If they search for “iPod”, they may want one of 30 different iPod products – you would have to qualify them more and then sell them on why they should use you. You can’t sell these two people the same way, so you shouldn’t send them to the same page on your website and optimize for both.
• Optimizing for Marketing Channel: Each marketing channel can bring in a different visitor. For example, if you’re using social media branding and Google search engine marketing, one person may come in on a recommendation about your company and another may come in because your ad intrigued them. You would need to approach each visitor in a different way – optimizing one page for both would hold back your conversion rate. By optimizing two different pages, you can maximize your conversion rate for each channel.