Slow as you go

Sites that load quickly make customers happy and keeps Google happy: fast sites get higher page ranks than slow ones. Pages that take 1-2 seconds to load convert nearly 10 times as many customers as ones that take 20+ seconds to load!

Consider a speed boost

Have a look at your hosting. Cheap hosting isn’t worth it. If you are paying £5 a month for hosting, your site will be sharing space on a server with thousands of others. This means slow.

Form faux pas

Poorly designed, frustrating form filling one of the main reasons customers drop out of sales before checkout - but it’s an easy fix. Do you have a guest checkout, does your site have a postcode lookup to speed address entry, do you ask for unecessary info? Streamlining the checkout process can double your sales. Simple.

Ignore analytics

Ignore analytics at your peril. Turning a blind eye to what’s happening on your site, where customers are dropping out and what’s happening at the checkout kills sales. Analytics show you what your customers like and hate about your shop. By choosing to ignore your analytics you’re effectively ignoring your customers.

Slippery slider

Many marketing bods love sliders (the big slideshow-type-thing on the homepage) and it’s easy to see why. They can quickly make a website appear ‘dynamic’, ‘content focused’, ‘exciting’, and ‘real time’. The thing is, customers tend to either click the first slide or ignore it: wasting valuable home page real estate. Home page, above the ‘fold’ is the most viewed part of your site. Don’t waste it.

Being a stranger

You talk to your friends as often as you can: it should be the same with your customers. If you don’t talk to your customers, you lose their attention and they wander off. Keep in touch with email marketing. Put thought into your subject line, use established delivery platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, give split testing a try and track conversions from mail to sale.

Moving targets

Mobile users are starting to buy using their phones. Typing in address details is bad enough (see above), but if they have to enter 16 digit credit card numbers then it’s a deal-breaker. Adding Paypal or other checkout methods that reduces data entry increased mobile conversion rates by 34% for one of our customers.

 

By Frank Fenten, Managing Director of WeLovetheWeb.

PrivSec Conferences will bring together leading speakers and experts from privacy and security to deliver compelling content via solo presentations, panel discussions, debates, roundtables and workshops.
For more information on upcoming events, visit the website.

comments powered by Disqus