You are probably well aware by now that your website is the single most crucial aspect of your business’s online presence. After all, it is the place that all traffic is directed to, and where sales are conducted. However, if your website isn’t as good as your leading competitors’, you may well have a problem, a problem that can be resolved with the suggestions below.
UX
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One way that your competition may be beating you is that they provide a better user experience (UX) on their site. In fact, UX is hugely important to your business because if visitors don’t have a positive experience when accessing your website, they are likely to navigate away. Something that can lose you a lot of sales, and even returning customers.
To that end, it’s crucial that you ensure you have the best UX possible which should include robust design and an informational hierarchy that guides visitors to the right place, and provides them with the information best suited to their personalized needs.
Also, good site UX must include well-tested pages and flows to ensure that users reach the right locations. In a nutshell, good UX is all about ensuring that your website is optimized for pleasing and straightforward human interaction while minimizing frustration. Something that you will absolutely need if your site is going to be more effective than your competitors’.
UI
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Of course, we can’t discuss UX without also mentioning UI or user interactions, something that an effective business website will also need to get right.
UI is less about the analytical side of things and more about the visual experience that you provide to visitors on your site. This means that even things as simple as the base color, and font size you use needs to be considered carefully to create the right impression.
That is why UI is best dealt with by an experienced graphic designer because they understand the visual principles that will be able to make your site both pleasing to your visitors and indicative of your brand.
Sales funnel
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Next, if you want your business’s website to outperform your closest competitors it crucial that you nail the art of conversion. Conversion is when you turn a site visitor into someone that actually buys a product, and so it’s critical to the success of your business.
One of the most effective ways of doing this is to implement a sales funnel within the design of your website. Such a funnel should be designed to meet site visitors precisely at the stage of conversion they are currently at.
What this means is that you don’t try and convert someone that is merely browsing and searching options, because they aren’t ready and will probably be put off by aggressive sales techniques. Instead, the idea is that you find a way of collecting contact information from them, something that you can then leverage as a warm lead later on and make a conversion from.
Conversely, a good sales funnel will also be able to meet someone ready to buy and offer them options that help to close the deal, as well as provide a range of actions valuable to your company and the client in between.
Of course, creating such a complex and nuanced system can be tough, although investing in landing page editing software like clickfunnels can undoubtedly help demystify the process. Something that can help you create a funnel for your own website that is effective at converting as many customers as possible.
Interactivity
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It may be that your competitors’ website is outdoing you in the area of interactivity. After all, today’s consumers are used to not only being involved in a simple financial transaction of money for goods, but also a more emotional one that touches on issues of identity, community, and being heard.
To that end, another valuable way of improving your business’s site is to include plenty of option for customers to interact with your brand as possible. One such option is to embed social media buttons on your page that take visitors straight to your pages when they can comment, like, share, and get involved in the community that you build around your product.
Another super simple option is to include a contact number and email address on every page of your site, so customers feel that it is easy to get hold of you if they have any problems or questions.
In fact, it’s pretty crucial to include an email address rather than a contact form here, not only because contact form can be frustrating, but also because an email seems way more personal, and they have a chance of a real human checking out their query and replying. Extra points here if you humanize things by putting a name within the email instead of info@ or customer services@!
Humanize
In fact, talking about humanizing your company, this something else that can give you the edge over your competitors when it comes to your website. Luckily, it not such a difficult thing to achieve.
A straightforward way to do this is to include pictures of all of your employees, as this will provide a visual reference that reinforces the humanity of your company.
Another way to humanize your website is to include things like testimonials from previous customers, in either written or a video from, as this provides you with a human focal point as well as some great PR.
Lastly, don’t forget to use a central persona for your site that is as relatable as possible. Such a character is often based on a business’s typical demographic and can be used to explain things to their point of view without coming across and patronizing or silly. In fact, videos doing this are hugely popular when explaining things such as a product key benefits, and even the process in which it is made.
Calls to action
Guess what? Sometimes it’s not enough to have a great product and a great website. In fact, occasionally to close the required number of sales to blow your competitors out the water you need to use some gentle psychological techniques as well.
One of these that can be particularly effective is clear calls to action. To achieve this, such calls always need to begin with a verb or doing word that shows the customer or potential customer exactly what they need to do.
Of course, ultimately you will want this to be “buy now.” Although, when putting in the context of a sale funnel as mentioned above, other useful calls to action may include download, click here, or go to instead.
Security
Maybe you are matching your competitors step for step on your website, and they are still doing better than you? If this is the case, it may be down to something as simple as the security you provide. After all, people care a great deal about their personal information, especially their bank details and if you cannot guarantee the safety of this they are likely to go elsewhere.
Luckily, this is something that can be improved relatively simple. The first stage of which should be making the move to https://. Something that will display the padlock in your address bar and demonstrate to potential customers that your site is secure.
Mobile friendly
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Lastly, your website may be being beaten by your competitors because it’s not easily accessible on mobile devices. In today’s internet connected world this really is a foolish mistake to make as well, because we all know that people checkout out company websites and potential purchases on their tablets and smartphone.
Therefore it essential that you invest in getting your business’s website optimized for mobile, as soon as possible. If you want to knock the competition into a cocked hat, that is!