PART 1 of a 6 part series<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everyone wants a successful website \u2013 one that will bring in\nsales or sales potential. Unfortunately, many people think in terms of how the\nsite \u201clooks\u201d will make a difference. To some extent, they are not wrong. A\nprofessional looking website that is easy to navigate is going to be a more successful\nwebsite than one that looks amateurish and is difficult to navigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With that said, however, there is far more information needed\nto build a better website. Think in terms of mice and building a mouse trap.\nYou wouldn\u2019t build a mouse trap that is the wrong size for the mouse you are trying\nto catch, nor bait it with food that wouldn\u2019t attract the creature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A website is no different. You need to understand your\npotential customer and how they are using your current website. What pages are\nthey lingering on? How far down are they scrolling down the page? What path are\nthey taking through the site? Did they even see your contact form? What\u2019s the\nmost popular page after the home page?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, there is a simple way to gather up this\ninformation. Using a service like HotJar (hotjar.com) you can look at heat maps\nof specific pages of your website and view recordings of visitors navigating the\nsite. These will tell you what the visitor is interested in and if he\/she is\nable to find the information easily or if they are confused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can even track the way the visitors use your forms \u2013 on\nwhat field are they abandoning the form?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, let\u2019s go one step further. Let\u2019s ask the website\nvisitor if they found what they were looking for. A simple feedback form tucked\ninto the side of your website will give those who are frustrated using your\nsite a voice to express that frustration. (I know everyone wants just glowing reviews,\nbut we learn more from those that are frustrated.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would recommend setting up this data gathering about a\nmonth before you start to build a new website. Now, with at least a month\u2019s\nworth of data you and your web designer\/marketer (I would never hire just a web\ndesigner when I know I need the insights of a marketer as well) can review this\ninformation and make plans to address the problems in the new website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On part 2, we\u2019ll discuss setting goals for your website and\nexplore some ways to achieve them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PART 1 of a 6 part series Part 1: Data Gathering Everyone wants a successful website \u2013 one that will bring in sales or sales potential. Unfortunately, many people think in terms of how the site \u201clooks\u201d will make a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[43],"class_list":["post-2101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-website-optimization","tag-website-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2102,"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2101\/revisions\/2102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-kare.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}