Having a functional, well designed website is a necessity for your company’s success and future outlook. It is a crucial marketing tool that can determine the future of your business and your ability to serve your customers and as a result; it’s extremely vital to make sure your website meets the needs of your users and offers an excellent customer experience to keep them coming back.
In this article, we will explore a few ways you can improve your website and the technologies available to prevent your business losing potential leads.
Make your website faster!
Users make an instant opinion about a business on the basis of their experience with the said business’ website. New research conducted by Google reveals that 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. A single 2 second of delay in load time contributed to an abandonment rate of up to 87% and in 2020, 47% of users expected a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
Having your website load faster will result in a pleasant user experience for your customers as well as help the functionality run more efficiently throughout. A user is far more likely to stay on your website longer if the site speed is faster and more likely to be converted into a lead for your business.
Some key solutions to this are:
- Enable browser caching — This allows the user’s browser to store a variety of information and files from your website, without the need to reload the entire page and thus request the same resources each time the user visits it.
- Reduce your redirect – When a page redirects to somewhere else, it prolongs the HTTP request and response process.
- Compress and optimise your images – Images are one of the biggest factors to consider for a fast website. Large file size images such as the famous .png extension, can delay loading times considerably, so we recommend you use .jpg extensions for all your website images.
Build responsive mobile-friendly web pages:
Most websites are viewed through mobile devices rather than desktop devices, which means if you’re not making your site easily accessible on mobile and providing the same level of functionality and features; your mobile visitors will not be happy and leave with a bad experience.
Google’s latest research draws a clear line between performance and key metrics like bounce rate, ad views and revenue. It also shows that many sites are falling short of user expectations, due primarily to poor performance and speed on mobile devices.
A solution to solve this problem is having a minimal responsive design, which lends itself to flexibility. Minimalist web design features few design elements such as images and videos which helps to load a page quickly and also enables users to navigate easily so that they can find what they need. Research has proven that the average attention span is just eight seconds, therefore business’ should capitalise this short time and not waste it by distracting users with unimportant elements.
“57% of internet users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile”
SocPub
Use live chat to engage with your site visitors:
Your users don’t want to browse your site in order to find answers to their problems, they need them right here and right now so that they can focus on other tasks and issues. Naturally, if they don’t get them quickly, they will use their search engine to find better alternatives — typically your competitors who may offer better customer services.
Live chat is one of the most dynamic ways to communicate with your customers and a good solution to improve your website’s customer experience. Once they’re added to your website, they will increase customer engagement with your website, which can only be a good thing as it will convert potential users into leads. They are a cost effective method in providing excellent customer service as well as keeping your users and customers coming back for answers.
It is crucial to choose the right live chat software and integrate the chat with your CRM to provide personalised services. However, choosing a good live chat software is not enough as your business will have to respond to customer questions and enquiries fast, or you risk losing a customer and potential leads.
Alternatively, your live chat can offer help in the form of FAQ’s that appear after the customer has entered their question.
Automate your website:
To keep up with your customer expectations and exceed them, you must know their preferences across all points of contact and interactions with them. The easiest solution to this is automation, with the added benefit of easily improving customer experience. Triggering business processes such as booking without effort and boosting customer retention and satisfaction.
You can get affordable leading marketing automation software, for example Hubspot and connect with your customers instantly. Some features Hubspot enables you to do are:
- Set automated alerts of customers, for any request or changes.
- Automate E-mail responses and send marketing material as part of your campaign.
- Use of reports to identify particular blockages and weaknesses in business processes.
The Bottom Line…
Implementing these suggestions discussed here can bring dramatic changes to your website. Therefore, not only will it improve your performance, user experience and retention but it also brings value to your users. We highly recommend you update and transform your website using modern tactics to distinguish your brand from others.
Here at SpaceIT Labs we can provide an analysis of your website and we redesign it using modern tools so that it is attractive and engaging to your user, providing value to your business.
Feeling confident and ready to improve your business? Get in touch with SpaceIT Labs today for our web development services.
