Your Website Might Not be Performing As Well As You Thought

So you’ve done countless A/B Testing, have adapted countless CRO techniques that were able to generate a significant amount of conversion, and you’ve invested quite a lot of time optimizing and boosting keywords and pages.

But it seems your site hasn’t been performing well.

I’m not going to tell you to change your color scheme or add more CTA’s on your page—pretty sure you’ve already covered that. Have you ever considered going back to the basics; to the elements of your website you usually overlook?

All you really have to do is go back to your website analytics and look closely. It could be as simple as an article that didn’t get as much attention, or a page that didn’t get shared enough. The things I will suggest will sound so simple but it will yield really good results. Here are reasons why your website might not be performing as well you’d think!

 

LOOK AT WHERE THE TRAFFIC IS COMING FROM.

Your website analytics can tell you where your website visitors are coming from. While Twitter and Facebook are effective means to share a post and get the word out, visitors coming from these sites usually don’t stay long enough to get a feel of your website. Visitors raked in through guest posts on other sites usually stay the longest, especially if your content is relevant to their interests.

This doesn’t mean that you should put all your efforts in churning out guest posts to get traffic. My point here is that traffic is not equal across all platforms. Analyze the kind of content that gets read in each digital platform and be able to create content that can cater to most, if not all, of the media networks.

MAKE SURE THAT YOUR BLOG ARTICLES ARE RELEVANT TO YOUR READERS.

But, hold up! Did you just say you don’t have problems with traffic? And people still aren’t subscribing?

Usually when this happens, the problem doesn’t lie in the aesthetic design of your website or the CTA. The problem might be the content itself.

Google is very smart—it knows what kind of content is relevant, and it is how it ranks the quality of websites. The Math is easy: High quality content + Readers find your content relevant = Better web ranking.

Just be careful, though. A lot of people think that better content means longer content. This isn’t always the case; in fact, it never is. The thing is, people have different reading behaviors. You should be able to cater to people who prefer longer reads or shorter reads, and skimmers. One of the ways you can find out is by analyzing your most popular posts, those most shared, and most commented in. Which articles are long? How about those that are short? By doing this, there might be a pattern you can follow.

I would have to emphasize that this pattern might change overtime, so you would have to be ready to adapt to that.

CHECK THE RESPONSIVENESS AND NAVIGATION OF YOUR WEBSITE.

You might have heard of Google’s appropriately named “Mobilegeddon” recently. But for those who are unaware, Google’s new algorithm update will boost the ranking of mobile-friendly websites which in essence means that those that aren’t will be pushed down. To tell you the truth, with smartphone advancements, it was only a matter of time. Make use of Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool to check if your website is mobile responsive.

Also check if your website has an awkward navigation. If it’s too cluttered with EVERY offer that you have, people might get turned off. As much as it’s important to bring attention to all of your offers, distracting and confusing your visitors will not convince them to avail of it. Check website analytics to see the pages that are getting low click-throughs and consider consolidating them into a generalized group.

SEE IF YOUR PROMOTION STRATEGY WORKS.

Don’t be hasty with site changes. Make sure you’re getting the attention of the right people first.

It’s easy to point to site design or landing page quality when our website isn’t performing well. But it might also come down to the kind of people we’re sharing our content to. Your website analytics can tell you sources of your traffic and which ones have low conversion rate. If you see this, it might be time for you to change your promotion strategy.

There are a couple of ways to solve this.

One would be through paid advertisements, which is perfect for businesses that target a specific group of people. However, make sure that you aren’t paying more than what you’re receiving. Another one would be through organic promotion. Find out where your visitors go for information. Make sure you don’t annoy them, though. Use tools like Qeryz to get into the minds of your visitors or prospective visitors without disturbing them. Through this, you’ll be able to share certain kinds of content in the correct platform.

Basically, what I’m saying is there will always be room for improvement. People’s behaviors are unpredictable, and what works today might not work tomorrow. Always check your website analytics, your marketing strategies, and the quality of the service or content your churning out. Innovate new ideas and test them out. You’ll never know—they might be able to help your website perform better.