10 Ways to Improve Your Business Website - Part 2

In the previous article, we looked at 5 ways to get visitors to stay on your site for longer and generate more online sales and enquiries? Here's 5 more ways to improve your bounce rate so that visitors look at multiple pages on your website when they visit, not just one, before they leave your site.

6. Site Search Is Easy to Access 

When you have more than 20 pages, it’s a good idea to add a search facility. If you have a site search, make sure it's prominent. Usability guidelines tend to prefer the upper-right corner of the page.  Keep the button label simple and clear - "Search" still works best for most sites. Don’t get creative and use things like “Retrieve”. Keep it simple

Few people read online; the vast majority skim-read to get a sense of the page before they read any of it in detail. Make it easy for visitors to skim-read your content. Always use headings and bullets to break up text.

Think about it. If a heading is not relevant for your visitor, they can easily skim down to the next heading, making it straightforward for them to get directly to the information they need.

Breaking up the text into “manageable chunks”, rather than large unbroken blocks of text, makes it easier for the customer to look up what they want to know right away and with confidence – which is critical if they are making a buying decision.

Make sure people know they're still on your site by being consistent - confuse them and you'll lose them. Don’t have big changes in style across different sections of your website. Visitors can get confused and think they have left your site accidentally.

Layout, headings, and styles should be consistent site-wide, and colours should usually have the same meaning.

For example, don't use red for headers on one page, red for hyperlinks on another, and red as standard text somewhere else.

To Do: Check all your web pages appear to be part of the main site and that they are consistent with each other. Are there any “nasty surprises” depending on the part of the site you’re in? 

9. Emphasis (bold, etc.) Is Used Sparingly

It's a fact of human psychology: try to draw attention to everything and you'll effectively draw attention to nothing. We've all seen that site, the one with a red, blinking, underlined "NEW!" next to everything. Don't be that guy or gal.

Remember, if your site’s graphic design is counter-intuitive and doesn’t help visitors get something done quickly, it’s going to make your site much slower and difficult to work with.

Slow, awkward sites never, ever, ever, delight your customer or create a good rapport online.

 When visitors find your site “busy” and “complicated”, they head back to the search engine within seconds.

To Do: Check your website is only highlighting critical factors you absolutely need your visitors to gaze at or click on order to meet your online business goals. Menus, buy buttons, opt-in boxes and so on

10. Keep Your Ads & Pop-ups Unobtrusive

Ads are a fact of life, but integrate them nicely into your site. Don't try to force ads and pop-ups down peoples' throats; you’ll end up creating frustration for your visitors. Also, do people a favour and make your ads clear. If you blur the line between ads and content too much, your content may suffer, since many people have developed “banner blindness” when it comes to surfing, and might overlook some important content by mistake. 

Final Word

 Always make sure you view your website through the eyes of the customer and not through your eyes, the website owner.

Make sure there are no red-flags on your site that are going to frustrate, confuse or bore customers. Keep everything nice and simple to make sure your visitors enjoy spending time (and money) on your site