94% of website users’ first impressions are design-related. Okay Creatives, you win. But, as web design and digital marketing consultants, we can’t run with this and call it a day. We need to prove ROI for our clients and that’s going to come from website conversions.

A pretty design can’t drive website conversions on its own

Time and time again, we hear the web analytics question right off the bat: “How are you going to prove ROI?”

And, we can’t argue with it. Redesigning a website is a major investment of time, resources and budget. We expect – and appreciate – when potential clients are focused on website conversions and proving ROI because we are too.

You want a fresh, new, sophisticated design for your website because the current one doesn’t align with industry trends, falls far behind competitors, doesn’t properly position you as a leader in your space and the website conversions aren’t there.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but (all together now) it’s still a pig.

Rest assured, we aren’t just throwing “lipstick” on your website. A research and metric-driven approach from the very start is important for long-term success.

Define your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

At the start of your project, define what success looks like for you. Your KPIs might be “Contact Us” form submissions, resume submissions, product inquiries, downloads of educational materials. Understanding your KPIs  will be helpful later when the website needs to be designed in a way that supports them.

Optimize to increase visibility and drive website conversions

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) have an inherent link. SEO ultimately comes down to conversion. It drives well-qualified traffic to your website and the goal of the website is to convert visitors, driving business growth. We also know that SEO doubles the average website conversion rate, from 6% to 12%.

Aligning your SEO and CRO efforts into a single, integrated approach can get you the results you need. Website elements like landing pages, call-to-actions (CTAs), site architecture and form fields should be optimized with your most important keywords and key phrases while UX best practices are applied to make important actions simple for a user to complete.

Track performance

At the end of the day, it should be natural for users to navigate your website. They shouldn’t have to think about where they need to go to contact you for more information, where to find product materials or where to go to search for a doctor who accepts their insurance. Website analytics will capture metrics such as:

  • Engagement – Length of stay, number of pages visited per session
  • Most/least visited pages
  • Bounce rate
  • Exit pages – The last page people visit before “bouncing”
  • Goal completion – Remember your KPIs? Now we track them.

Tracking these metrics consistently over time is critical and helps us make the proper adjustments to improve performance. Once you have the analytics for your KPIs you can start to diagnose the roadblock and pinpoint the modifications needed:

  • Is your call-to-action (CTA) to download educational materials buried within a cluttered web page?
  • Are employment candidates able to find the Careers section? Or is searching for a position too cumbersome?
  • Are product/service inquiry CTAs positioned properly (or at all) on the corresponding product/service page?
  • Is your overall user experience intuitive? Does it guide users to the information they need?

A modern, cutting-edge design will portray your company as professional and up-to-date, which can play a role in engagement and conversions. That’s only one piece of the puzzle though. Defining your KPIs, optimizing for SEO and CRO and tracking performance to help you prove ROI is critical to the long-term successful of your online presence.