Last month's "3 Free Tips" looked at "How to Use Your Call To Action", providing some pointers on how to improve the likelihood that visitors to your website convert to business / users / donators etc.

 

But how can you find out what to tweak on your website in order to improve conversions without first knowing more about what visitors are doing and how much time they are spending on your website?

 

This month's Web Wise Business 3 Free Tips looks at How To Know How Visitors Use Your Website.

 

 

1. Website Analytics

 

A quick look at your website analytics can provide the answers to many questions about which pages on your website are popular, how long people spend on the site, how they arrived there etc. If you don't have, or don't know if you have website analytics, make sure your web developer adds them to your site and makes them available to you. It's not a difficult or time consuming thing to do and really, all web developers should be including some kind of analytics package on sites they develop as there are numerous freely available options - the best of which is probably Google Analytics.

 

 

 

Another method for developing an understanding of how visitors interact with your website is to conduct user testing. Much like conducting scientific testing, this requires you to find some willing participants who will sit down in front of a computer and look at your website while you watch. The results of user testing can vary in terms of how worth-while they are to conduct depending upon how well you observe the user's interaction and how much direction you give them prior to letting them loose on your site etc.

 

There are a number of companies offering website user testing services for a moderate fee and they will provide video play-back and analysis of what takes place in any tests. Ultimately, it depends how much you want to spend.

 

 

 

If you don't want the hastle of setting up and analysing user testing of your website, then there are a number of "User Monitoring" software packages available to help you see how actual "live" users are interacting with your website, allowing you to make your own assumptions on any changes or tweaks that may be required in terms of layout, design etc.

 

Heat mapping and click tracking software, for example, can show you where visitors are most commonly moving the cursor around on your website's pages and which links or buttons receive the most clicks. Information such as this can be valuable in helping you improve the strength of your website's sales message or call to action, turning those users who seem to dither and then leave into conversions.

 

While these software packages can typically cost a bit more than you may usually spend on your website on a monthly basis, the additional conversions they can help generate could be priceless.

 

 

 

So there you have it, 3 ways to help you find out what works and what doesn't when it comes to generating conversions on your website.

 

If you are looking for a web developer who can help you with any of these things then call the team at Web Wise Business on 01786 430 076, or email us.