Your website serves as the digital storefront for your visitors to explore your business. When a visitor clicks on a page, one of two things will happen: they’ll want to explore more of your website and possibly become a lead or they’ll become confused and leave your site entirely (we’ll take a wild guess and assume you don’t want the latter to happen).
From the web content to the page’s layout, there are a lot of factors that can determine the success of your web pages. To test your website’s effectiveness, ask yourself these questions when reviewing your web pages to help sharpen your website’s focus, clarity, and connection with your visitors.
1. Where are your visitors in their lives right now?
In marketing, empathy and understanding a visitor’s perspective are key. They came to your website for a reason, so it’s your job to make sure you can explain how you can be the clear winner in solving their problems or satisfying their needs.
Once you know how your business can fit into their lives at this present moment, your pages’ flow can be tailored toward that.
2. Can your visitors tell what kind of business you are?
Whether your business is as simple as a candy shop or complex as a third-party consulting business specifically for a small niche, the visitors should know who you are within seconds of entering your website (no matter which page they enter through).
Your homepage’s headline and subhead will probably serve as the best opportunity to spell out what you do, so make sure it communicates what you do.
3. Is the information efficiently organized?
Not all of your information is going to be equally relevant to each of your visitors, so prioritize your web page’s elements to “mimic” a conversation with your sales team. The content should anticipate visitors’ thoughts and provide answers in the realistic order in which the questions would be asked.
For example, if you’re a bakery some questions may be:
- Do you only bake cakes, cupcakes, bread, or all of the above?
- What are the typical prices of your baked goods?
- How soon do I need to place an order?
More than likely, a visitor will not ask how soon they will order their cake before finding out if you offer cakes or not. Utilize this type of conversation to organize the page’s flow properly.
4. Do 100% of your visitors understand the website copy?
Industry jargon may be thrown around all day at the office, but your customers do not live in your world. That’s why it’s essential to use simple, short phrases to describe your services or products. Go through your content and determine if every visitor would understand every word that’s on your page.
There are exceptions to this rule. If you are speaking to other industry professionals who would need to hear this jargon or if you want to rank higher on Google for these jargon phrases, it’s alright to use industry slang. Just keep in mind that there may be some visitors who will not understand the phrases.
5. Is the content scannable?
The fact about the Internet is that people are more than likely scanning your content, not reading it. That’s why your page’s text cannot be only solid blocks of text; it needs to be easy to browse through.
Without scannable text, your visitors will become bored with your content and leave the web page. Shorter paragraphs, headers, lists (bulleted and numbered), and buttons are all great ways to create scannable content.
6. Do your pages meet your goals?
Are you trying to grow your email list, contact your office, donate, or educate your audience? There are plenty of goals/objectives your web pages could have, but you’re wasting your effort if the pages don’t drive visitors toward those goals.
Focus your website on the desired actions and make sure its pages support your primary objectives.
7. Is the CTA easy to find?
Don’t let your web pages be a dead end; add a call-to-action at the end of the page and make sure it’s stupidly easy to find. Give it a different color than the rest of the elements and write text that explains the benefit of clicking the button or link.
8. Are there too many top-level pages?
This point may not be related to your web pages, but it’s a question worth asking. When we work with clients of defining their website’s sitemap, sometimes it’s hard for them to separate their top-level pages and the others living under these pages.
- It’s subjective for each industry, but there is such a thing as too many top-level pages.
- Aim to have five to seven to start.
- Implement a heat map to see if any second-level pages are being clicked on more than others.
- Test your theories and see which outcome is the most user-friendly and best for the user experience.
With these questions guiding your website toward a stronger experience for your visitors, you’ll see dramatic results in your favor! If you have any other questions about your web pages, get a hold of GreenMellen today!
