Hubstaff optimized its homepage and witnessed a 49% rise in visitor-to-trial conversion.
That’s the power of website optimization!
49% increase in visitor-to-trial conversion
Your website forms the first impression for your potential customers. To make a website popular or high-converting, it must be more than a good-looking one.A user-friendly and optimized website compels visitors to engage with your content and convert.
A well-optimized website offers intuitive navigation, is mobile friendly, optimized for search engines, offers voice search, and more.
In this blog, we’ll explore the importance of website optimization and how experimentation can help you achieve a well-optimized website that converts.
What is website optimization?
Website optimization involves leveraging tools, strategies, tests, and experiments to improve a website’s performance, increase website traffic, boost conversions, and ultimately grow revenue.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the many techniques website owners use to optimize their websites for increasing visibility and growing organic traffic.
SEO majorly focuses on boosting SERPs for the targetted keywords.
Why is website optimization important?
Website optimization is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of your online presence, improving user experience, increasing traffic and conversions, and staying ahead of the competition.
It plays a crucial role in enhancing the user experience, increasing engagement, and ultimately driving desired outcomes, whether making a sale, gaining a new client, or raising awareness for a cause.
Website optimization offers numerous benefits across various aspects of your online presence. Some of the key benefits include:
1. Improved user experience
Focusing on improving your website’s user experience is critical, as it helps your visitors navigate the website and eventually find what they’re looking for.
Optimizing your website will help visitors seamlessly find the information and accomplish their goals (which could be anything from purchasing to signing up for a newsletter). A positive user experience will translate into increased engagement, higher retention, and conversion rates.
For instance, say you’re a content writer and publish insightful articles and engaging blogs on your website. However, visitors who land on your website find it super difficult to navigate, making it hard for readers to find what they want.
With proper optimization, you can structure your website to guide visitors from one piece of content to another seamlessly. It’s like organizing a library, where each book is placed in its proper section, and clear signs point readers to their next great read.
2. Increased conversions
A well-optimized website is the starting point for conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Website optimization strategies such as optimizing calls-to-action (CTAs), experimenting with different navigation options, and streamlining the checkout process can further drive conversions by making it easier for website visitors to discover your website and take the desired conversion action.
Melbourne Innovation Centre (MIC), a business incubator, observed a reduction in the conversion rate for the lead form. They created two home page versions by running a heatmap analysis. Just by tweaking the H1 text and CTA, MIC generated an impressive 8.56% improvement in application submissions – and this was validated via an A/B test.
Book your free trial with VWO now and start testing changes quickly and easily.
3. Better search engine rankings & growth in website traffic
Search engines reward websites that offer searchers a superior user experience, load fast, and provide relevant, high-quality content optimized for the web. Optimizing the website content, structure, and performance can get you on page one of search engines.
Higher ranking on search engine results pages and improved UX lead to more people discovering your website and spending more time on it. Increased website traffic gives you more opportunities to convert website visitors into customers.
Continuously tracking website metrics, such as page visits, bounce rate, conversion rate, etc., and doing keyword research can help you identify which keywords and pages drive the most traffic and which pages can be further optimized to increase organic traffic.
Thus, website optimization becomes an essential strategy for boosting search engine rankings and driving organic traffic to your website.
Let’s take an example.
Imagine you sell the highest-quality mobile covers and accessories in the US. You recently launched an offline store in Vegas, but foot traffic has been slow since your website doesn’t appear in local searches.
Local SEO website optimization can attract more customers from your community who are searching for mobile accessories nearby. It’s like putting up a sign outside your shop that tells people where you are and entices them with the latest mobile covers in town.
4. Reduced bounce rates
Slow-loading websites or those with poor navigation often experience high bounce rates, where visitors leave the site without engaging further. A higher bounce rate can also impact your website ranking. A study found that bounce rate is correlated to ranking on the first page of Google.
Website optimization helps reduce bounce rates by providing a smoother, more engaging user experience that encourages visitors to explore your website further.
5. Cost savings
Website optimization helps provide a superior customer experience for your website visitors and leads to cost savings in various areas.
For instance, a faster website load time can reduce server costs, leading to dollar savings from the website architecture bills.
Moreover, an optimized website will automatically rank for relevant keywords (including high-intent keywords), organically bringing buyers and prospects to your website, thereby reducing the need for paid advertising.
Make sure that even when creating paid landing pages, they are fully optimized for conversions, which will help you get a positive ROI for your ad spending. Improving conversion rates means getting more value from your existing traffic and marketing efforts.
6. Enhance your brand visibility
Having a well-optimized website will help you get that edge over your competitors and reflect positively on your brand.
A highly optimized website that loads quickly and has an excellent user experience will attract and retain more customers than a poorly optimized one. This ensures that your visitors have a great experience browsing your website.
This will raise your chances of your brand being recommended to others, helping enhance your brand reputation and credibility in the eyes of both users and search engines.
7. Faster page load speed
Optimizing website performance, mainly site speed, is essential. We all get frustrated with slow-loading websites, which leads to high bounce rates. Page speed is also a ranking factor; hence, faster websites will consistently rank higher in search results.
Even if you have invested considerable effort into sourcing quality products and creating captivating product descriptions, your website’s slow load times drive potential customers away before they can see what you offer.
By optimizing website speed, you not only prevent visitors from bouncing but also increase the chances of turning those visits into sales. It’s like ensuring your storefront is clean, well-lit, and inviting so people feel inclined to step inside and browse.
Wrapping up
Website optimization is not a one-time fix; it’s an evolving and ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring, adaptation, and refinement. As user behavior and search engine algorithms change, so should your website optimization tools and strategies.
You can unlock benefits to boost your online presence by utilizing the right resources and dedicating time to your website optimization efforts.
Don’t forget to run data-backed experiments to drive higher engagement and conversions.
With the right tool, you can play around with all the elements of your website page to discover what works best.
Mareen Cherian I'm a cult branding enthusiast, marketer, and B2B content professional with over 20 years of experience. Author of 'Managing Modern Brands: Cult Theory and Psychology', I've written three more books in diverse genres. I generally write on marketing trends, optimization, brand strategy, consumer psychology, CRO, cult theory, data, personalization, and content strategy. With a strong expertise in building and leading teams and cross-functional collaboration, I have driven demand through content creation, data, digital media, content marketing, and technology.
