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Are you generating consistent traffic, leads and sales from your website? If you’re not, it’s probably because your website strategy is broken. Fortunately, there’s a way to solve your problem.
Investing in building a website and then neglecting to monitor, analyse and improve your website over time is a bit like throwing a lavish party to unveil your new home, only to neglect the upkeep as the months roll by.
A successful website strategy isn’t a one-and-done deal; it’s an ongoing commitment. Without regular check-ups and updates, even the most robust strategy can start to show cracks.
So, how do you know if your website strategy is veering off course? And more importantly, how can you steer it back to success?
In this article, you’ll discover four tell-tale signs that your website strategy might be broken, and you’ll learn exactly how to get back on track.
Sign #1: Your Website Is Self-Centred
Have you ever visited a website and felt bombarded by messages screaming, “Look at us! We’re the best!”?
It’s off-putting, isn’t it?
Many businesses, bursting with pride over their achievements and offerings, inadvertently slip into a ‘me-centric’ narrative. While it’s essential to showcase your strengths, a website that constantly toots its own horn can fail to resonate with potential customers.
Recognising Self-Centred Content
A quick scan through your website might reveal an abundance of “We” statements:
- “We are the leading provider of…”
- “Our award-winning services include…”
- “We have years of experience in…”
These statements, while informative, don’t directly address the visitor’s needs or challenges.
Here is an example of a strong “you” value statement from Infermedica:
So, what should you do?
The secret sauce to effective communication on your website? Changing the narrative from ‘we’ to ‘you.’ This shift places the spotlight on the visitor, acknowledging their needs, pains, and aspirations.
Here’s some steps you can take right away:
- Evaluate Your Value Proposition: Start with your homepage. Does your main message speak about you or to your visitor? Transform “We deliver top-notch solutions” into “Discover how you can achieve [specific outcome] with our solutions.”
- Revisit Your Content: Go through your web pages and identify opportunities to rephrase content to be more customer centric. Instead of “We offer comprehensive support,” try “Get the support you need, whenever you need it.”
- Engage Through Benefits: People are interested in how your service or product can improve their lives or solve their problems. Highlight benefits over features. For instance, instead of listing the technical specs of a product, explain how it simplifies the user’s life or enhances their productivity.
- Use Testimonials Wisely: Let your customers do the talking. Testimonials and case studies where clients share their success stories can be more persuasive than any self-praise.
- Call to Action (CTA) Revamp: Ensure your CTAs are inviting and focused on offering value. “Learn how you can benefit” is more engaging than “Learn more about our services.”
By turning the focus outward and addressing your visitors’ needs and how they can benefit, you create a more inviting and effective website.
Remember, your website isn’t a billboard for your achievements; it’s a platform to show your visitors how you can help them succeed.
To full master this process, you can implement a framework called ‘Storybrand.’
Read: What is Storybrand and How Telling Your Story Clearer Can Generate More Revenue
Sign #2: Your Website Is No Longer Attracting or Converting Qualified Leads
Attracting visitors is one thing but drawing in the right crowd — those who are genuinely interested and likely to convert — is a whole different ball game.
A qualified lead is someone who’s not only interested in your offerings but is also likely to take the next step towards making a purchase or engaging with your business. These are the visitors who find real value in what you provide, aligning their needs with your solutions.
To attract the right leads, your website must speak their language, answer their questions, and address their specific concerns. It’s about creating a resonance that says, “We understand what you’re looking for, and we have the solutions.”
Here are some things you can do to attract the right audience:
- Audit Your Content: Take a comprehensive look at your website’s content. Does it address the common questions and pain points of your target audience? Is it informative, helpful, and engaging?
- Create Meaningful Content: Shift your content strategy to focus on providing value. This includes creating articles, blog posts, guides, and videos that answer real questions and offer insights and solutions
- Improve Findability: It’s not just about creating content but also about making sure it’s easily discoverable. Optimise your content for search engines, ensuring that your target audience finds you when they’re searching for solutions you offer
- Implement Self-Selection Tools: Help visitors find the content that’s most relevant to them by incorporating tools that guide their journey. Whether it’s interactive quizzes, filters, or personalised paths, these tools can help users find the information they need, making them more likely to convert
- Engage Through Storytelling: Use real stories and case studies to show how your products or services have helped others. This not only provides proof of your effectiveness but also helps potential leads see themselves benefiting in similar ways
Here is an example of Airbnb’s self-selection tool:
By refining your content and ensuring it’s aligned with the needs and interests of your target audience, you can improve the quality of your leads. This approach not only attracts visitors who are more likely to convert but also establishes your website as a valuable resource in your industry.
Sign #3: Low Engagement Indicators
Engagement metrics are like the pulse of your website, indicating how visitors interact with your content.
If analytics reveal that most visitors are only skimming one or two pages before bouncing, it’s a wake-up call. Low pages per session and high bounce rates can signify that your content isn’t resonating, or visitors aren’t finding what they need.
Interpreting Pages per Session and Bounce Rates
- Pages per Session: This metric shows the average number of pages a visitor views during a session. A low number could indicate that your content isn’t engaging enough or visitors are having difficulty navigating your site.
- Bounce Rate: A high bounce rate suggests that many visitors leave your site after viewing just one page, which can imply that they didn’t find what they were looking for or were not sufficiently intrigued to explore further.
What Can You Do About It?
Here are a few things you can do:
- Content Hierarchy: Ensure that your most compelling and relevant content is easy to find. Use clear headings, a logical structure, and compelling calls to action to guide visitors through your site
- Internal Linking: Use internal links to guide visitors to related content or deeper insights on your site. This not only improves SEO but also encourages users to explore further
- Engagement Hooks: Incorporate elements that capture attention and encourage interaction, such as interactive infographics, videos, or quizzes
- Clear Navigation: Simplify your website’s navigation to make it intuitive and user-friendly. Users should effortlessly find what they’re looking for
- Content Offers: Provide valuable content offers that entice users to visit additional pages, like downloadable guides, free trials, or product demos
- Feedback Channels: Implement feedback mechanisms to understand why users might be leaving your site prematurely and address those areas. Here’s an article that shows you the best customer feedback tools
By closely monitoring engagement indicators and implementing these strategies, you can create a more captivating and user-friendly website.
The goal is to make every visitor’s journey informative, engaging, and conducive to exploring what you have to offer, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Sign #4: Broken Conversion Paths
When the path from visitor to lead to customer becomes obstructed, it’s a major red flag for your website strategy. Maybe you’ve noticed a drop in form submissions, a decline in account sign-ups, or a decrease in downloads.
These are symptoms of broken conversion paths. It’s crucial to identify where users are dropping off and why they’re disengaging.
Recognising and Diagnosing Conversion Path Issues
To understand where your conversion paths are breaking down, you need to dive into the user journey. Analyse where visitors are leaving and which steps in the conversion process are not performing as expected.
Tools like heatmaps and user session recordings can offer invaluable insights into user behaviour on your site. Hotjar is a software which allows you to track session recordings and heatmaps.
Here’s what you specifically should do to diagnose and fix conversion paths:
- Heatmap Analysis: Use heatmaps to see where users are clicking, what they’re ignoring, and how far they’re scrolling. This visual data can highlight elements that are attracting attention or causing confusion
- Session Replays: Watching how real users navigate your site can reveal unexpected hurdles or points of friction in the user experience
- Conversion Funnel Analysis: Review your analytics to identify where in the funnel users are dropping off. Is it at the initial contact form, during the sign-up process, or at another step?
- A/B Testing: Experiment with different versions of your web pages or elements within pages to see which variations perform better in terms of conversions
- Simplify Processes: Ensure that the path to conversion is as simple and straightforward as possible. Reduce the number of steps needed to complete a conversion, and make sure each step is intuitive
- Clear CTAs: Ensure that your calls to action are clear, compelling, and guide the user towards the desired action. Test different CTA placements, wording, and designs to find the most effective approach
By methodically analysing and adjusting your conversion paths, you can remove barriers and create a smoother, more intuitive journey for your users. This not only enhances the user experience but also boosts your conversion rates, ultimately contributing to your site’s success.
So, What’s Next?
Remember, your website reflects your business in the online world. It’s the first point of contact for many potential customers, and its effectiveness can significantly impact your company’s success. By staying vigilant for these four signs – a self-centered narrative, a decline in attracting or converting qualified leads, low engagement indicators, and broken conversion paths – you can ensure that your website remains a powerful asset in your marketing arsenal.
But remember, a website strategy that’s set in stone is likely to become obsolete.
That’s why you need to regularly evaluate and adjust your strategy, based on the data that’s coming through.
Once you’ve got this process down pat, you should aim to produce videos for your website that convert more visitors.
Read: Create a Video for Your Website that Converts More Traffic
