How Do You Know it’s Time to Redesign a Website?
The lack of conversions can be frustrating. Could it be a design issue?
Video Transcript:
Bryan: Would you change your SEO strategy? Or would you opt to change the interface, like move buttons around or something like that?
David: So, if you found you were not getting conversions, should you change your design or change your SEO strategy?
Bryan: Yeah.
David: It’d be hard to come up with a hard and fast rule that applied to all circumstances. Here are the questions I would want to know before making that decision. One is I would double-check the keywords that I was focusing on. I want to make sure that… S0, sometimes clients are the worst source for keywords. And this is because clients have very specialized and expert knowledge of their field. So, they will use jargon and vernacular that the average person might not use.
Tricia: The industry terms they use. Their personal or the industry terms that only the industry knows, right?
David: Right. I mean, I’m working on a fun side project for a neighbor. He built a watch, and he wants to promote it. I’m like, “I’ll help you. Let’s do this”. So, I wrote some content for his website. Oh, I spent time. I was so proud of it. Like, I sneak keywords in, but it was fun to read. I was so proud. I gave it to him, and he’s like, yeah, I don’t want any of that. It was disappointing. But the worst part was the words he wanted to put on the page. He didn’t even mention that it’s a watch. So, it’s like, how is Google supposed to figure out that we’re offering a watch here? Like, is it supposed to catch your drift? So, if I was getting no conversions, one of the things I would check is the keywords that I’m focusing on to make sure those are keywords that convert. So, if you follow the Curious Ants keyword process, we have several steps. One of the steps is called the clarification process. And that’s where we ask ourselves, okay, someone might be searching for something, but is that something they’re searching for, a product or a service? Or is the term very, very broad? So, for example, if we sell widgets, we might not want to focus on the word widget because someone searching for the word widget might be looking for what is a widget. What do you use widgets for? How do you build a widget? What’s a good job at widgeting? You know, because the phrase is so broad. And so, what we want to do is we want to narrow that down a little bit more. And if we offer widgets for sale, maybe a better word is widgets for sale than widgets. And things like that. So, I guess what I’m saying is sometimes clients focus on words that are so broad people are searching for them, but number one, they’re never going to rank for it because it’s such a broad phrase. Two, it’s not connecting with the customer who’s ready to become a customer doing the search. It’s something broad that isn’t necessarily like, say, for example, one day, if I work really hard, I might rank for SEO, but when I do, I’m going to be people find people finding my website who want to know what SEO is. Or they have a Korean friend named Seo. Which is actually a really common misunderstanding in the SEO world. Hilarious. Because apparently, that’s a Korean name. They might want to get a job in SEO. Right? So, ranking for SEO wouldn’t necessarily help, but if I wanted to be found as a service provider, maybe I want to rank for SEO services or SEO company. Now, we’re getting closer to who I am because it’s a little bit more relevant and limited than SEO. And so, the keyword research process encourages you to think through the keywords you found, to narrow them down, to be closer to what it is that you provide as a service or a product, rather than just think about SEO or tarps, or valves, or lawyer. Right? There is a number of kinds of law that lawyers practice. But not every lawyer can practice every kind of law. So even if we did family law, that’s still pretty broad. So, we may be limited by geography because, in the United States, you can only be licensed to practice in a particular state. So that’s North Carolina family law or North Carolina family lawyer. You know, again, clarification. So, the first thing I do, if I was finding no conversions, is I check the keywords to make sure that these are keywords that are relevant to customers and that we are focusing on that to make sure we’re not missing opportunities because we’re focusing too broad or too technical. After I was sure that the key research was good, the next thing I would do is check on heatmap tools to see if people are able to find the call-to-action. Are there calls-to-actions at all? Right? I had a conversation today with a client, and they’re like, we don’t want to be obnoxious and ask for it. Well, that’s one way of thinking about it. They don’t want to ask for the sale. They don’t want to be obnoxious. The other way of thinking about it is we don’t want to make it easy for our customers to become a customer. And that’s a good website. A website that says, yeah, a braindead monkey could convert off this website. As opposed to, well, we don’t want to be too much in your face, and we’re going to be really subtle, and we’re going to kind of hide a button at the bottom of the page because we’re going to assume you’re going to read the whole page. And we’re going to use the button, and it’s going to be the same consistent color scheme as the rest of our website, and it’s kind of look like a bunch of other buttons that are less important, like sign up from an email list. But the heatmap tools would help you know if people are even getting to them. And then, heatmap tools would start to tell me if it’s a site design problem. And if it is, then I would not… So, I’m not a developer. So, what I don’t do is redesign websites. However, I will go into websites and add more direct calls to action. Or if I am, for some technological reason, unable to add my own call-to-action, I will hire a developer to do that. But I typically don’t redesign sites because, knock on wood, I’ve never found a website so horrible that we couldn’t get at least some conversions off it. Then, after a certain point when the client has plateaued and we could prove that we’re making money, then I would say, “Hey, you know what? I think your website’s a little old. I think it’s time to redesign.” But usually, I’ve already proven that there is money to be made. So, now that website design project is not a sunk cost of doing business but an investment to get more business. So, does that help answer your question, Brian?
Bryan: Yep, definitely, very helpful.