A high ranking is very important to get high quality targeted traffic to your Web site. The more targeted your visitors are, the more you’ll sell on your site. But it is not enough. Many webmasters have the problem that their visitors don’t buy something on their site even if the way the visitors reached the site indicates that they’re interested in the products.
What you can do to improve the effectiveness of your Website?
PART 1: Make a good first impression, or your visitors will leave immediately
When Web surfers come to your site, it’s very important that you make a good first impression. Before a Web surfer starts reading the copy text on your Web page, your page must pass these three critical points:
1. Your Web page must load quickly. As web surfers won’t wait for slow loading Web pages. If your Web pages don’t load as fast as is possible, a lot of Web surfers will go away before they have had a chance to take a look at your Web pages.
2. Don’t use automatically generated doorway pages. Automatically created doorway pages usually look ugly to human Web surfers. Often, they consist of nothing more than a list of buzz-words or phrase. You won’t get good results with this method because human Web surfers will quickly close such a Web page.
3. Your Website must look good. It’s very important that your Web pages look perfect. Hire a professional Web designer if necessary. A link on your link pages should be something other people want to have. Make your link pages accessible from your other Web pages and use a great layout for your link pages.
If your Web site fails under one of these categories, Web surfers will leave your site before you even have the chance to tell them your marketing message. You also need to pay attention to these categories when you are doing SEO by yourself.
PART 2: How to keep Web surfers on your site
1. Come straight to the point. Your home page is the most important page on your site. It’s important that your home page is interesting for your visitors because it’s the very first page of your site and the page that people see first when they come to your site. On the first paragraph of your home page, you should tell your visitors: what you do; what’s in for your visitors; why people should stay on your site;
2. Respect people’s time. Don’t use large bandwidth-clogging graphics, no single graphic should be larger than 30 KB to 50 KB, and no single page should have more than 200 KB of graphics. If you must include a large, detailed image, provide your visitors a smaller, thumbnail version so they know if seeing the larger image is worth their time.
3. Test with different Web browsers. Not all Web surfers use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in version 7. Some may use firefox or other browser. It’s important to test your Web site with different Web browsers.
4. Don’t annoy your visitors with animations they cannot see. Some people use Flash animations or big pictures with a meaningless text such as “Welcome to the world of tomorrow” as their index page that redirects to their actual first page. Don’t do that if you don’t want to lose a big part of your visitors.
5. Be consistent. Professional Web sites always have their navigational bar at the same side. They use a consistent style for headlines, headers and text. Don’t use more than three different fonts in different sizes and try to avoid colored, textured backgrounds, dancing buttons or blinking text.
Once Web surfers have decided not to go away on their first impulse, you have to keep them with a good sales copy.