How to Make Your Website Perform to Its Fullest Potential
By: Michael B. Akinlabi
Tags: Marketing, The Ascent, Digital Marketing, Conversion Optimization, Advice

For years, Hibbert Sports Inc. suffered for not developing a great website.

Within two months of re-launching an appealing website, the company site’s ranking on Alexa jumped from around 200,000 to 78,000.

Web traffic to the site also increased by 45%.

Your website is the digital face of your company. The place where most people interact with your business.

Whether it’s to learn more about your products or services, or talk to a customer service rep, or make a purchase, your website is where most people go.

You may have a great marketing campaign, but if your website doesn’t convert because it’s not appealing to customers, you’ll lose potential sales.

Fifty-five percent of visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a web page.

If your goal is to acquire customers through your website, you need visitors to spend more than 15 seconds on your pages.

The more time people spend reading your web pages, the more they are likely to convert into customers.

It shows they are interested in your product or service.

I assume your business has a website. How can you increase the number of customers you get through it?

Here’s what you should do:

Do a/b testing on a regular basis.

A/B testing is comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better.

The version that receives the most conversions wins.

A/B testing is a powerful marketing technique that helps you improve every aspect of your website.

It helps you get more subscribers, leads, and sales.

How A/B testing works

Here’s what happens when you run an a/b test:

You have a 50/50 traffic split between the original page and another variation.

The original (current) page design is Variation A.

The other variation which shows to half of your visitors is Variation B.

Your goal is to see if Variation B gets more customers than Variation A (the current design).

If your website receives a lot of visits, like 5,000 daily visitors, you could decide to have more than two variations.

You can create and run four variations at a time.

My favorite is running two tests at a time.

Don’t run tests for a few days.

Make your tests run for 14 days. That means two full weeks starting from Monday to Sunday.

There should be no external event within the testing period that might affect the outcome of the test, e.g., Thanksgiving Day.

When you let the test run for over 14 days, the results may start to become meaningless.

Here are the top tools for doing a/b testing:

Optimizely

VWO (Visual Web Optimizer)

Adobe Target

So, what are the things you should a/b test on your site to make it perform to its fullest potential?

A/B test the headline

The headline is an essential element of a web page.

Even though the headline is not more than a sentence, 50% of the time you invest in creating a web page should go to the headline.

Why?

Eighty-percent of people who visit your site will never make it past the headline.

High-trafficked sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy are successful due to their abilities to create captivating headlines on a regular basis.

Peter Koechley, the co-founder of Upworthy talks to WIRED on the importance of headline.

“The headline is our one chance to reach people who have a million other things that they’re thinking about, and who didn’t wake up in the morning wanting to care about feminism or climate change, or the policy details of the election. The difference between a good headline and a bad headline can be just massive. It’s not a rounding error. When we test headlines, we see 20% difference, 50% difference, 500% difference. A really excellent headline can make something go viral.” — Peter Koechley, Upworthy’s co-founder

Test many headlines to find the one that gets visitors to stay longer on your web page. For example, the website of Nicholas A. Parr, Maryland personal injury lawyer, displays the name of the firm’s principal on the headline. The name could be tested with other headline ideas.

I love Lyft’s driver recruiting landing page. Their headline is captivating. Anyone who likes driving will surely want to “earn more.”

There’s no doubt that the marketing team at Lyft conducted a series of a/b tests before settling on this headline.

Digiboost, a digital marketing agency uses a simple headline on its site: “Web Design for Small Business.” The agency helps small businesses and it made that clear in its headline.

A/B test the subheadings

When you scroll down the Lyft’s landing page example given above, you’ll see these subheadings:

These subheadings keep visitors’ interest alive.

An interested driver will want to know how much they’ll earn.

The next subheading answers a question drivers may have:

“What is Lyft?”

These subheadings keep visitors on the Lyft’s website, increasing their chance of converting them into drivers.

Jumpstone International, a business coaching firm has a great subheading on its website. Here’s the subheading:

“Find clarity, gain confidence and excel in your market!”

Potential clients will want to have these three key things.

A/B test the first sentence

The first sentence also called the description or lede in news writing is an important element of your website.

It should grab a reader’s attention immediately. It should be memorable.

For example, on the homepage of Ahrefs, their first paragraph makes a bold promise to visitors.

“Ahrefs helps you to learn why your competitors are ranking so high and what you need to do to outrank them.”

A/B test your call-to-action buttons

Every website has a goal it wants visitors to complete.

What’s the action you want visitors to take on your website?

It could be that you want visitors to book a demo of your product.

Or, you want visitors to fill out a form.

Or, you want visitors to start a free trial of your service.

MedCognition wants visitors to test-run its realistic patient simulation software.

For example, when you visit Groove’s site, they want you to do is start using their help desk software for free.

They want you to drop your email address and click their call-to-action button which says, “Try Groove For Free.”

You need a call-to-action button that makes visitors act.

The goal of Evernote is to get visitors to sign up. Their call to action is focused on that.

Some websites have two call-to-action buttons.

The reason for that could be that there are two important actions visitors may want to take.

For example, Skype’s website has two call-to-action buttons.

The first button wants you to “start a conversion,” using Skype’s web version.

The second button wants you to “Download Skype” on your computer and start using Skype from there.

Some websites use three call-to-action buttons.

For example, Zendesk gives you three options.

The first button asks you to “sign up for a demo.”

The second button asks you to “start a trial.”

The third button appears on the bottom-right side of the screen and less prioritized, and asks you to “contact sales.”

No doubt all these companies have conducted a/b tests for the positions and number of their call-to-action buttons.

Another important thing you should a/b test in your call-to-action button is its text or phrase.

For example, Netflix call-to-action button text is simple:

“Join Free For A Month.”

A/B test different words and phrases in your call-to-action button.

EmpireFlippers.com increased clicks on their CTA button by 33.10% just by changing its text.

You should also a/b test the color of the CTA button.

OKCupid’s call-to-action button stands out.

Karen Brody offers man coaching service, where he helps men awaken their potentials both as leaders and lovers. Her call-to-action copy is, “learn how.” A prospect would want to click after reading that. But can a different call-to-action copy generate more clicks? We can never know until we test.

A/B test images on your site

Images boost conversions.

For example, the images on the Circle Surrogacy home page would make visitors stay longer.

Some sites don’t use images on their landing pages.

If an image isn’t improving conversion rates on your website, then it has no reason to be there.

After you’ve proved that an image increases conversions on your website, you should test different types of images too.

For example, Harrington Movers, a New Jersey and New York City moving company, tested a generic photo versus an image of their employees.

They also tested an image of the company’s truck.

Conversions improved for both the truck and employees’ images by 45% versus the generic stock photo.

Test different kinds of images.

Test different image sizes too.

For example, test a large image versus a small size.

Images sell online. But some images sell better. It doesn’t matter the size of your business, you should a/b test the images on your site. For example, Cute Smile 4 Kids is a dental clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. They have both stock photos and brand pictures on their site. They could a/b test both to see which performs best.

A/B test videos on your site

Sixty-one percent of businesses use video in their marketing according to Wyzowl.

Various marketing studies have shown that videos boost conversions and sales.

Shoppers who view video are 1.81 times more likely to purchase than non-viewers according to Adobe.

Now, you may want to consider adding a video to important pages on your website.

You should still a/b test video versus non-video on a web page.

For example, MedCognition, a healthcare startup that creates realistic patient simulation software, has a demo video on its homepage.

Elville and Associates, an estate planning and elder law firm in Maryland has videos that feature its principal on the home page. Videos like these turn prospects into clients.

Videos help visitors learn about your product or service quickly. It takes less time to watch a video than to read an article.

A/B test every aspect of your website and watch your revenue soar.

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Thanks in advance.