It is important for every internet business website to get the maximum amount of traffic that it can in order to boost rank and also generate sales. Yesterday we discussed the importance of the call to action function so that visitors will perform some meaningful action, however ongoing testing is needed to ensure you get the maximum conversions you can.

Development and Site Testing Cycle

So today we look at some of the additional things you can do to optimise your site so that it has an even higher conversion rate and also increases traffic flow to help your Internet Business flourish.

If you want a better performing website then it is important that you must optimise it in all respects. Technically, the backend code of a website must be simple and free from extraneous code. Basic Search Engine Optimisation can be utilised through use of meta-tags, header tags, alt tags as well as in the overall content which consists of texts, images or videos.

If you are unsure how to do some of this yourself, try reading up on it or get an internet marketing service or web developer to help you. when you have done all you think is possible with your page the next thing you need to do is use a site optimiser like ‘Google website optimiser’.

In essense what it does is allow you to test between variations of your site to see which is the best for conversions, for example if you had two possible headlines for your homepage you could run an A/B split test in which half of the visitors to your site would be shown Headline A and the other half would see Headline B. You could then see clearly which headline brought you the most orders.

Google Website Optimizer lets you carry out tests like this, the only downside is proper testing can take several weeks before you could see what works and what does not. The real power here though is that it allows you to carry out loads of these tests at the same time.

An example of this muliple testing phase could be the ability to test a headline, a page element/s – such as images, text, prices and even offers, which can all be tested at the same time. Each time someone visits your site they will see a different combination of these elements. Google’s Website Optimizer will then take an average of which of the elements performed the best, you can then use this information to produce a highly converted traffic magnet page.

Many people do use Google Adwords to run split tests, basically they will create two identical ads with different destination URL’s and see which ad does better, however this is really not the same as testing onsite features so really should not be used to optimise your site, however Google Adwords can and should be used for ad optimisation to help drive traffic.

Google Website Optimizer

The biggest problem any site owner has is not knowing what caused a person who has visited your site to exit and testing can help you solve some of the issues but not all. Having other features may help you to see if you can combat some of these loses. Features like Live Chat or a help type pop up may allow you to connect with that person before you lose them, so it is worth considering adding such a feature.

Web analytics package are great tools to help you see what is being clicked on your site. At the most basic level, the ‘site overlay’ function tells you where people click, where they don’t and also where they are leave your site from. This can help you improve the pages not being clicked or remove them and add to or improve those that are.

Usability testing is probably the easiest testing you can perform and can really be virtually free as you can ask anyone you know to go to your site and test it to see how easy, it is to navigate, find information etc and feedback that information to you so you can improve those features. Make sure when doing your usability tests that you look at fixing all the things that are ‘broken’ do this first as these are probabily the fastest improvements to do and quickly seen.

Marketing strategies is always an issue and can always be improved, to do this start by identify from your usabilty tests where your marketing tatics on and off page are weakest. Look at everything from initial marketing of your site right through to closing a sale, make sure you look closely at your ads, homepage, product or services pages and the all important checkout page and confirmation of order page.

If your usabilty testing has shown any issues on these pages fix those first before testing your marketing and retest the usabilty of your site with a new group of people once changes have been implemented.

Running a successful website is not a one-off time/ effort deal you need a lot of creativity and constant monitoring if any success is to be had in generating an income. Being able to anaylse traffic on your internet business website goes a long way in developing more targetted high volume traffic and gaining new customers.

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