Last updated on August 13th, 2024 at 12:20 pm
So you have a website…
But how can you make it more attractive to your dream customers?
Today we are going to discuss six ways to do that.
#1: Improve Uptime
Okay, so before we can talk about anything else, we need to make sure that your website is actually up.
Uptime is metric that shows what percentage of time a particular website is available online.
While 100% of uptime is extremely rare, 99% uptime is the standard in the web hosting industry.
To put this in perspective:
A year has 365 days so each percentage point of uptime represents 3.65 days.
If a website has a 99% uptime, it means that it’s available online for 361 days each year.
You want to make sure that your uptime is as high as possible because no one likes clicking a link to a website and then getting an error message.
This can be especially devastating if you go viral and then your website crashes due to a sudden spike in traffic. Those new people are probably not going to come back!
The best way to prevent that from happening is to invest in dedicated hosting where you have an entire server all to yourself.
That way, you won’t have to share resources with other websites, which should result in higher uptime.
Moreover, web hosting companies tend to prioritize their dedicated hosting customers, so when your website goes go down, which it inevitably will at some point, you might be able to get it back up ASAP due to priority customer support.
Another big factor that affects uptime is cybersecurity. For example, Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are commonly used to crash websites by overwhelming servers with requests.
We recommend hiring a security expert to do a threat assessment and asking them how to avoid the most likely scenarios.
You might also want to consider asking that security expert to recommend you someone that you could call in case your website is attacked.
It’s better to prepare for such situations in advance than to scramble when something bad has already happened!
Finally, it’s important to monitor your uptime with uptime monitoring software such as UptimeRobot which will notify you immediately whenever your website goes down.
#2: Improve Website Speed
Once you have ensured that your uptime is as high as possible, it’s time to maximize your website speed.
Website loading speed is a metric that shows how long it takes for your website to fully load. It is measured in seconds.
Page loading speed is a different but related metric that shows how long it takes for an individual page to load.
Typically, the faster the page loads, the better it converts, which is why it’s so important to optimize all pages on your website for speed.
In fact, according to Portent’s study where the company analyzed over 100 million page views across 20 B2B and B2C sites:
A site that loads in 1 second has a conversion rate 3x higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds and 5x higher than a site that loads in 10 seconds.
But it’s not just about conversion rates. If your website is slow, potential customers might simply leave. No one has the patience to sit around waiting for websites to load!
In fact, according to Google’s research from 2017, page loading speed has a significant effect on bounce rates:
Going from 1 second to 3 seconds increased the probability of a bounce by 30%.
Meanwhile, going from 1 second to 10 seconds increased the probability of a bounce by 123%!
This may be one of the reasons why Google is using website speed as one of its search algorithm ranking factors and has been doing so since at least 2010.
But what can you do to improve your website loading speed?
Here are some practical tips:
- Reduce image sizes. Image files, while small individually, can add up over time and slow down your website. Use JPEG as the default image format – it contains less data than the PNG format. You can convert PNG files to JPEG files with ezgif.com. Then use TinyJPG to minimize JPEG files. If you already have an established website, we recommend going through your archives and replacing all images with minimized JPEG files.
- Pick the right software. You need to be mindful of website and page speed when choosing software for your online business. Say, WordPress and Ghost may seem similar at first glance since they are both blogging platforms, but the latter can be up to 1900% faster. Obviously, we are not saying that speed should be the only consideration when choosing a platform, but it’s certainly something that you should take into account.
Here at ClickFunnels, we are fully aware of just how important page speed is, which is why we designed ClickFunnels with it in mind – pages created with our software load blazingly fast!
Take a look at how ClickFunnels compares with some of our major competitors in terms of page loading speed:
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- Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights. There are also various technical tweaks you can make to speed up your website but they tend to vary from one site to another. You can use a free tool called PageSpeed Insights to identify these opportunities. Just keep in mind that it will provide highly technical suggestions, so if you aren’t a technical person yourself, you may want to hire a web developer to help you implement them.
#3: Improve Website Design
You know that saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”?
Let’s be real, we all judge books by their covers, just like we all judge websites by their design.
If you land on a website that looks like it was made in 2004, you’ll probably leave without bothering to check out its content.
Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid this problem because popular website builders all offer website templates that look modern. Squarespace in particular is known for its dedication to aesthetics.
Also, if you don’t want your website to look like all other websites that are using the same template, consider hiring a web designer to tweak the template for you so that it would better represent your brand.
You can find freelance web designers on job boards such as Upwork.
#4: Improve Website Usability
Web design is about how good your website looks, and website usability is about how well your website functions.
If your website structure is confusing, people won’t make an effort to figure out how to navigate it – they will simply leave.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure that using your website is as simple as possible.
You might want to consider using heatmap software like HotJar to learn more about how visitors interact with your website so that you could make adjustments.
Keep in mind that something that seems obvious to you might be confusing to other people!
#5: Get Rid of Ads and Page Elements That Look Like Ads
There’s a web usability phenomenon known as banner blindness where people ignore page elements that they perceive to be ads. It has been observed as early as 1997.
“Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it’s actually an ad,” explains web usability expert Jakob Nielsen in his 2007 article on the topic.
When Nielsen Norman Group looked into it again in 2018, they found that banner blindness was still a thing.
According to Kara Pernice, the Senior Vice President of Nielsen Norman Group:
“Banner blindness has now been documented across 3 decades.
It’s a strong and robust phenomenon and, like advertisements themselves, is not likely to go away any time soon.”
In general, having ads on your website is a bad idea, unless that’s your business model (e.g. you run a media outlet that relies on ad revenue).
Even in that case, we would advise making ads as unobtrusive as possible – they shouldn’t interfere with the user experience.
However, as Jakob Nielsen explained, banner blindness isn’t just about actual ads, it’s also about page elements that look like ads.
You might want to examine your website to see if any page elements might seem like ads at a first glance. These are the elements that the visitors will be likely to ignore. You can use HotJar to see if that is actually happening.
Consider removing these page elements because they are probably making your website look cluttered and less attractive to potential customers.
#6: Be Careful With Pop-Ups
Pop-ups are a tricky subject because everyone hates them but companies use them nevertheless because they work so well.
We recommend testing:
- Welcome pop-ups that appear when the visitor lands on your website.
- Timed pop-ups that appear after the visitor spends a specific amount of time on your website.
- Event-triggered pop-ups appear after the visitor does something specific (e.g. scrolls past the 50% mark of your blog article).
- Exit-intent pop-ups appear when the visitor is about to leave the website.
In general, exit-intent pop-ups are the safest bet because the visitor is going to leave anyway, so you don’t have anything to lose at that point.
But you need to test all pop-ups because otherwise, they might damage your conversion rate without you even realizing it.
It’s also important to make sure that you don’t show pop-ups to people who have already subscribed to your email list.
Hot Take: Ditch Your Website Altogether! 🔥🔥🔥
Implementing the tips that we have shared so far should help you make your website more attractive to your dream customers. But you know what?
We believe that you’d probably be better off ditching your website altogether. Let us explain.
Think about it:
What happens when someone lands on your homepage?
They see a navigation bar with a bunch of links and start clicking around. They click on this link. They click on that link. Maybe they read a few blog articles.
And then they leave. Possibly never come back again.
How does any of this help you grow your business?
It doesn’t!
Meanwhile, by definition, a sales funnel is designed to guide the potential customer toward the sale, one step at a time.
At any given moment, they are presented with a single “Yes or No” decision, so there’s no space for confusion.
Is it any wonder that sales funnels typically convert much better than websites?
In fact, according to our data, on average, sales funnels generate 6x more sales than websites.
So, in all likelihood, not only is having a website not ideal, but it’s also probably costing you a lot of money in terms of lost potential revenue. So why not replace it with a sales funnel?
Of course, we understand that ditching your website just like that might seem a bit drastic, so we suggest conducting an experiment:
- Split your traffic in half. Send 50% to your website and 50% to your sales funnel.
- See which one generates more sales.
- Keep the winner.
We already know what the results are going to be! 😉
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But what if you don’t have a sales funnel?
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So don’t hesitate.