Update these four things on your most popular website pages
Update these four things on your most popular website pages
In this blog I’m going to help you with one thing that should be a regular on your marketing housekeeping ‘to do’ list: updating your website content and calls-to-action (CTAs).
As with many things “marketing”, this exercise has the potential to run out of control and turn into a monster project!
To avoid that, I’m going to help you to focus your efforts on updating the website pages that will give you the biggest return for your time investment. It’s all about helping you to convert website traffic into leads and customers.
Enter Google Analytics!
Quick note: if you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website you need to get it on there asap. That is your marketing priority for this week. There’s a million and one articles online that will tell you how to do that but to save your time searching, here’s a set of clear instructions.
For everyone else with Google Analytics installed and working, here’s what we are going to do: Look at which pages on your website get the most traffic and create a list for updating those pages in order of priority.
To begin, you will be carrying out a review by answering these questions about each page:
Is there a call to action on the page?
Do the photos/images on the page need refreshing?
Does the wording need updating?
Do all the links work?
I will come back to the nitty gritty actions for the four things above once I’ve explained what you need to look for in Google Analytics.
How to find your most popular website pages using Google Analytics
Open up Google Analytics
Click on Behaviour on the left hand side:
3. Click on Site Content:
4. Click on All Pages:
5. Change the date range to cover the past 30 days, click Apply:
6. Scroll down to see pages ordered by number of Page Views:
Look at the top five most visited webpages - this is where you will start with the page review. We are going to look at all five pages and ask the same set of questions.
It’s probable that your home page is at the top of this list and that’s a good place to start.
Just before we jump in to doing the review, I will say that this is a perfect task to batch as you will ‘get your eye in’ after the first two pages so it makes sense to capitalise on that tuning in and complete the task in one sitting if you can.
Side note: I know batching is easier said than done at the moment for a lot of us working at home with children around but I feel confident that you can complete this exercise in under 90 minutes which is the average length of a Disney film. Use that digital babysitter with a clear conscience - you need to make the time to improve your website right now - it’s important.
Here we go with the web page review.
First question: Is there a call to action on the page?
I’m starting with this one as the most critical because if your most popular website pages aren't telling people what to do when they get there, you are seriously missing a trick.
If your website does have a call to action or two (hurrah!) now is the time to look at it/them with a critical eye and ask:
1. Is this really what I want the visitor to do?
Have your priorities changed since you first published the page? Do you now have a special offer you should be pushing here or have you launched an email list you should now be focussing on building?
2. Am I telling them clearly enough what to do?
Really spell it out. E.g. Click here to subscribe to my mailing list and I’ll send you helpful tips and advice straight to your inbox every week.
3. Why would anyone do what I’m asking? What’s the ‘so what’ factor?
People don’t just do what you tell them to without a compelling incentive. This is especially true if you are trying to get someone to hand over their email address or contact details. Shout out loud what’s in it for them. Stating that if they opt in they’ll get a newsletter is not good enough. So what? What are the BENEFITS? You've got to really convince that person to take the desired action.
4. What happens when the call to action is clicked?
Test the CTA yourself and note: does it go to a thank you message on the same page or open up a new page? Does it actually work? Does an email get sent out? Look at the CTA sequence as a whole and don’t be afraid to make yourself another ‘to do’ list on what you should do to improve it. If it’s a bit of a lame process, call yourself out on it and aim to do better. With a bit more work you can set up an auto-email reply or whisk your clicker off to a shiny new page with a thank you message or delightful piece of content. Aim big.
If you have two CTAs on a page with different goals, I’d encourage you to whittle it down to just one. If your page is split into sections with different messages or offerings, it might work just fine to have a CTA for each section but be mindful of the user journey as they scroll down the page. Does the journey you’re taking them on make sense? Try not to overwhelm your visitors with too much information in one place and conflicting calls to action.
Take a look at my blog if you want to learn more about writing strong CTAs.
Second question: Do the photos/images on the page need refreshing?
Be honest, is your website using the same stock photography as everyone else in your field? Is that photo of you two (or ten!) years old? Is the imagery still on brand?
First impressions count for a lot, so if your website photos are less than great, make a point of refreshing them.
For stock photos I like Adobe Stock. I pay £23.99 a month and I get 10 assets for that.
Canva is even cheaper at £10.99 per month which includes stock images alongside image editing (I have both services as I use Adobe for lovely pictures and Canva to edit them and create graphics for social media etc).
Check out Unsplash for free images. I prefer the paid services as I find there are more high quality images and it takes me less time to find something suitable.
If you need new pics of yourself, hire a photographer. Sure you can try to take them yourself but chances are that unless you’re pretty good at photography, they are going to look rubbish.
There are so many talented freelance photographers that would love to work with you - in the current climate it’s important to support small business. If you’re in the East Midlands/Nottingham area and like the look of my photos, get in touch with my photographer, Carla Mundy.
Third question: Does the wording need updating?
Sometimes it’s obvious that your website copy is out of date. For example, do you still offer the products and services as described or have you moved on since it was written?
As your business evolves so does your terminology and your website needs to reflect this. Make the website speak to visitors in the same way that you do in person or on the phone. Consistency is key.
Have you niched down on your audience? You should be writing as if addressing your customer persona - get very specific. Avoid the temptation to go too broad with the description of the problem you are solving. It’s not true that appealing to everyone will result in more sales. Talk to your niche and your words will resonate. Not everyone is your customer - even if you think they are.
It can really help to get someone else read over your website with a fresh pair of eyes. Get someone outside of your business to read your copy and give you some honest feedback on it. Ask them if they understand what it is you do or sell once they’ve read it. If they can’t articulate it back to you after reading, you need to start again and go simpler.
Fourth and final question: Do all the links work?
This is a no-brainer but it’s a job that a lot of us don’t do often enough. Check your links! You can do this manually by simply clicking on all the links on your top five pages one by one (fine to do if you don’t have many on the page) or use a tool like Screaming Frog’s broken link checker to do a site-wide audit.
Once you’ve carried out all four checks for your top five pages, you will have a list of actions to complete. I encourage you to work on this over the coming days and weeks.
Batching is again your friend here. If it’s copywriting for the pages, try to do that in one sitting as you will hone your tone of voice and get into the flow.
I suggest sticking on some nice music while choosing stock photos or while having your photoshoot. Carla and I listened to an emo megamix for four hours straight during my photo shoot which was super fun. My Chemical Romance and pastel pink was the perfect combination.
How will you know if all this work updating your website has made any difference?
There are two ways you can tie this back to your hard work:
1. Google Analytics - make a note of your bounce rate now and keep checking it every month. It should go down as your CTAs funnel your visitors on to the next page and your copy engages the reader.
2. Your CTAs start to convert visitors. Depending what tool you are using to build your CTAs, there will be different ways you can check the conversion rate. Just like bounce rate, keep a note of the number and check it monthly. Report on the number of enquiries coming in via your website, number of downloads, number of bookings, number of email subscribers etc. Whatever number you can measure, start doing it and record it every month. That way you will start to see trends and patterns and can act accordingly.
Conclusion
Reviewing and updating your website content and calls to action should be something you do on a semi-regular basis (perhaps once a quarter). It’s easy to put this task off but if you start to track things like bounce rates and conversion rates of CTAs, you will start to see upward trends when you make regular updates and tweaks.
You’ll need to check Google Analytics to see trends and I recommend checking website stats once per month to do this.
To make the review simple, start with the top five web pages in terms of visitors. Look at calls to action, photos, wording and check links on these top pages.
I hope this website housekeeping process has given you plenty to get stuck into and that you feel positive after taking action. Remember, you can certainly tackle this job yourself and keeping your website fresh and in tune with your audience will generate results for you.
When you’ve reviewed and updated your top five pages, you can carry on down the list to make sure all your best-performing pages are set up to woo and convert precious visitors.
Keep going!
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