Strategical website planning is crucial for reaching profitable traffic
When businesses or individuals start to plan a website there are several crucial factors that predefine how effectively it will convert. Business or web developers that don’t do this planning or ones that plan it later have issues and are not able to either reach top positions on Google or their conversion rates are lower than they could be.
So, let’s see what the crucial website development planning factors that every web developer and/or business owner should consider when building a website are.
Steps to planning website that converts:
- Define goals
- Define traffic sources
- Define content strategy
- Define website structure
- Implement testing
What is the website’s goal and purpose?
Every website has a specific goal. What do you want to reach with this website?
When the website is almost finished, you will have to set up Google Analytics Goals. What will these goals be? You can track form submission (if you sell services), outbound click (ad revenue), sales (e-commerce), engagement (blog/content), downloads, sign-ups, …
So, start with clearly determined goals you will pursue later. Ask what we want to achieve. And how it will be achieved.
How will you achieve goals with your website?
This is the question that should primarily consider how you will gain website traffic that will be compliant with website goals you had to determine. How will you reach users that are ready to take the action (goal) you have set?
Traffic sources as defined in Google Analytics are:
- Organic search (finds you in google results)
- Paid search (clicks on google search ad)
- Direct (enters your URL in a browser)
- Referral (clicks link on the website that links to your website)
- Social (clicks your Facebook, Twitter, … post)
- Email (clicks a link in an email campaign you sent)
Traffic from each of these channels’ costs money. If you want to reach high positions on Google that users will click, you’ll have to do Search Engine Optimization which costs a lot. Paid search will cost you also every time people will click your ad. Direct traffic just won’t happen unless your brand is using offline campaigns or is already established. Referral traffic is hard to get and social requires followers that also take time and/or money to gain.
So, when defining your goals, you should have in mind that each conversion will cost you money. You must make sure (when planning a website) that cost per conversion will be as low as possible.
How to increase website conversion rate and lower CPA (cost per acquisition)?
This is probably one of the most profitable questions ever asked. However, it is too broad. Lets first define factors that directly affect conversion rate:
Traffic relevance
If you want high CR, you need relevant traffic. These are either highly relevant money keywords that will bring you users that are ready to buy, either social media users that share interests you can satisfy or a mailing list that is in the process of researching purchase they are about to make …
Website conversion optimization
Website optimization factors that affect conversion rates are:
- Page speed (people just hate slow website)
- Content (quality and relevant content makes an impact)
- Thrust (it is crucial to building as much thrust as possible)
There are others but as broadly as possible these are the main factors that will affect your CR.
How to define website Content strategy
Content is crucial not only for SEO purposes but also for lead generation. Each user that is a potential customer will research his purchase decision. He will read articles, watch videos, review… You just must be there when this happens.
The content strategy only works if you help your future customers. But how can you help them? This is the question you need to answer, and your strategy will work. To answer it you need to know your customers. What information do they need, what concerns they have, which answer they can’t find, how can you talk to them so they can trust you …
Once you figure this there is only a question of form. You can publish videos on YT, write blog posts, create visuals, … Channels and types of content you choose to deliver are defined by your customers’ habits. Where they search and what.
Structure website
The website structure should reflect your business services/offers. What do you provide and where does it belong, how important is it, on which place?
Also, the structure should enable your visitor to get what he is looking for in no more than a few clicks.
For this purpose, it is best to consult seasoned web design companies like Clay who can advise you about essential user experience elements.
Testing implementation for improving conversion rates
How will you know what is working better? You need analytics tools that will not only tell you how many visitors you got but also their behavior. This must enable you to understand what is happening. Google Analytics works ok, but you will need some knowledge to find the right information.
Besides google analytics you will also need Google to optimize. This is a tool that will allow you to create testing A/B pages for different groups of users. So, you will be able to show one variant to a new user and other to existing, one to the user from location A, and other to the user from location B…
Summary
When building a website that needs to perform well, you need to find professionals that know how to achieve high conversion rates. We design is not limited to what you see but is, even more, something that happens in the background where you can’t see it. Defining goals and traffic sources, in the beginning, is crucial to achieving profits later.
