How can you benefit from website optimization services? Website optimization is a process that attempts to use controlled experiments to fully realize the potential of a website to achieve business goals.
To improve the performance of their website, the SEO company implements A/B testing, which allows testing variations of pages on the site to determine which changes ultimately lead to more conversions.
Website optimization for maximum performance
Website optimization is based on the same principles as conversion rate optimization, and it is based on a scientific method.
Think about what goal you want to achieve with your website optimization. Optimization goals vary depending on the type of business.
For example, as an e-commerce website operator, you want to figure out how to boost sales and increase the average order value. To do this, a website operator performs quantitative and qualitative tests on key pages of the site that affect the overall goal of the site.
The home page is often a good place to run A/B tests, as a large portion of website traffic comes in on this page. It’s important that visitors immediately understand what the company offers and are comfortable executing the second step (a click).
Consider appropriate steps to influence your goal. After identifying the most important goal for improvement, identify website elements that need optimization and then hypothesize how to test those elements to improve conversion rates.
Create a list of variables you want to test in your experiment. Changes can be created as variants and tested as experiments in an A/B split testing tool.
Run the experiment. Make sure you collect enough data to draw statistically relevant conclusions when you run the experiment. Business decisions must be made based on meaningful data.
Review the results, assess them, and then repeat the process. The results of an experiment show whether the changes to the website element led to an improvement.
A winning variant can be used as a new baseline and tested iteratively as more improvement ideas are added. Even a test that does not identify a winning variant can provide valuable insight into what you might try next as part of the optimization process.
Properly performed website optimization can generate numerous measurable benefits for businesses. Website optimization begins by identifying the best version of website elements that help visitors achieve a specific goal.
Optimization improves the efficiency with which website visitor traffic converts into email subscribers, readers, or paying customers. Improved efficiency, in turn, leads to higher ROI for customer acquisition as well as traffic-generating campaigns (for example, web searches, Google AdWords, social media, and email marketing).
Website optimization goals
The goals of a website vary depending on the type of company, the company’s target customers, and the action the company hopes the target audience will take, i.e., make a purchase, fill out a form, or read an article. The action desired by a website visitor may also be a conversion. The goal may also be to collect a certain number of members for a target group.
- Newspaper uses website optimization with the conversion goal of increasing the number of articles visitors read.
- Store optimizes the website to drive more purchases and encourage repeat visits.
- Software company optimizes the website to improve the rate at which visitors sign up for a free trial of the product or even purchase it.
- The insurance company optimizes the website to generate more potential leads for insurance bookings.
- Managers of a fundraising campaign optimize the donation form to generate more donations.
Which website elements can be optimized?
Depending on the company’s goal, website optimization may include testing the following elements:
- Headlines or key statements related to the company’s value proposition.
- Use of visual media such as photos or videos
- Length of a form, different numbers of required fields, or the order of fields
- Highly visible placement of case studies in which customers describe their successes with your product or service.
- The visual style, text, and placement of a call-to-action (CTA).
The placement of navigation elements on the website - Placement of the social media content sharing feature
- Layout and design of the website when viewed via a mobile device
Marketing campaign landing pages often lend themselves to optimization because of the high-quality traffic generated via ads, emails, or social media. Website owners can also run website optimization for actions that span multiple pages on their website, for example, registration for a free trial, a checkout funnel, or a multi-page form.
Search engine and website optimization: comparison
Website optimization is sometimes used to describe how the visibility of a website in search engines is improved. The goal here is to increase the rank in search results for certain important search terms.
In Search Engine Optimization (SEO), key measures to improve rankings include: changing page titles, reducing page load time, improving user experience, using appropriate keywords, and generating engaging content.
- Changing page titles – search engines like Google use your <title> tag to understand what your page is about and deliver the content to its users. Make sure your <title> tag is less than the required number of characters, unique to the page, and worth a click.
- Reduce page load speeds – website optimization can also be linked to improving website speed and performance. This implicitly applies to the goal of web page optimization as the completion of the desired action on a web page. Poor web page performance, such as latency or low page speed can prevent visitors from taking action due to the inability to navigate the web page.
- Minimize poor user experience – google’s latest algorithm updates show that user engagement metrics like dwell time – how long someone stays on your website as a Google search engine results page – are used for rankings. When users, compared to your competitors, stay on your website longer, you see higher rankings.
- Using the right keywords – the core of SEO still depends on the use of relevant keywords. As an example, suppose you run a sushi restaurant, then it makes more sense to have a page that works with the keyword Japanese delivery or sushi delivery? Based on a keyword search in the US, we can see that there are 2,000 searches for Japanese delivery and 18,000 searches for sushi delivery.
- Produce well-written content – at the end of the day, search engines give their users the best content they can find. If Google directs one of its users to your content and it’s full of grammar and spelling errors, it reflects poorly on Google. Make sure the content you create is unique, full of value, and well written.
Website optimization can also help in improving the speed and reliability of a website’s performance. This is implicitly relevant to the goal of website optimization, which is that the desired action is performed on a website. Poor website performance such as latencies and errors can potentially prevent a visitor from acting on the website because, for example, the website navigation does not work.