There is a trend happening at the moment across every single website we manage for clients – the proportion of mobile visitors to the site is doubling year on year. Currently most of our client sites are averaging between 10 and 15% of mobile visitors. This is up from about 6% this time last year.

We have heard site owners say:

“yes, but these are smartphone users, they can see and use my site on their devices.”

True, but there’s a massive difference between ‘can’ and ‘like to’… and in virtually all cases, a non-mobile site will massively underperform a mobile one.

Analytics will give it away – if the bounce rate is measurably higher, and the pages viewed is measurably lower, then your site may be usable, but it is not liked and, ultimately, will not perform for you. Here’s a good example:

You can see from the above illustration that pages visited is down, duration is down, bounce rate is up and, ultimately this site’s performance will be punished as a result with conversions halved.

This is OK whilst the figures are at 12% of site visitors, but what happens when it’s 25% next year, or 50% in 3 years’ time?

Sounds fanciful? Let’s see some statistics:

• There are more mobile phones in use in the UK than there are people
• By 2013 more people will use mobiles to get online than PCs (Google)
• 57% of people would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site (Compuware)
• Gartner Research predicts Mobile Ad Revenue will be $3.3 bn in 2012 (and $20.6bn by 2015)

And, if that’s not enough evidence, then just take a look around you: people are using their mobile devices for business, whilst travelling, out of office or home and even when in a social environment. And this trend is going to increase as people become more experienced with such devices.

Have You Also Accounted For Mobile in Your Email Marketing?

If you measure your email marketing and the devices they land on, then be prepared for another shock… Between 30 and 40% of your email recipients are now viewing your email in their mobile device.

Email layout and design is therefore simplifying and shortening to account for smaller screens… but there’s also a further hidden issue – if they click through on an offer or promotion, then your email performance is going to suffer if you send them to your normal website rather than a mobile one.

What Are Your Mobile Site Options?

What you do next is entirely up to you, but we are here to help guide you through the maze of options for mobiles – site or app? iOS or Android? Commerce or QR?

If you can have a smart mobile strategy then the opportunity is far greater than the cost. Just ask Ergo, we’re here to help – simply call 01962 605 000.

The ‘hit’ of not optimising for mobile devices is clear: from smartphones in particular, the bounce rate can be close to twice as high, and the number of pages viewed halves – so for as long as you don’t have a mobile site, you’re limiting your opportunity to reach and sell to your mobile visitors.

With tablet sales predicted to exceed laptop sales in 2013 and smartphone penetration continuing to soar… your future market will increasingly be using such devices to relate to, and interact, with your business. The challenge for you is to make the most of this opportunity.

Yet, many businesses fall at the first hurdle. We often speak with businesses who don’t choose the right solution and end up investing, sometimes heavily, in solutions which are not right for them… particularly Apps. These are not the same as a mobile website and, if not considered carefully, can just end up disappointing you, rather than getting you the results you want, underneath the veneer of app success is an ocean of failure.

So, here’s a quick run through of your options, and the best mobile solution for you…

Small Online Business / Low Traffic Site?

You need a mobile site, but can afford to wait until you think it’s the right timing for you. The perfect site for you is a small bespoke built mobile site (possibly using Google Mobile Site Builder) which is mobile-friendly with shorter content and simpler navigation.

The only two exceptions to this are:

• If you have ‘high ticket’ sales or customers, in which case they will not only be more likely to be using mobile devices, but your investment will be covered by the increase in business
• If you have aspirations to grow rapidly online, in which case you’ll need to plan for the future

Medium Online Business / Medium Traffic Site?

You will probably have hundreds of mobile visitors every week and, if you’ve not done anything, then you almost certainly will be losing a substantial business opportunity. You need to develop a considered, and bespoke mobile site. Don’t leave it to Google, you need something better which designed, written and managed specifically to suit your business objectives.

The exceptions to this approach include:

• News, content and media sites: you need to do much more than just make a pared-down version of your main site, you need to adapt it to integrate the full content and advertising
• Non-commercial websites: if your existing main site doesn’t earn you any direct revenue or business opportunity, then your mobile site won’t generate income for you

Large Online Business / High Traffic Site?

If you haven’t already, you need to get a mobile site for your mobile visitors in place as quickly as possible. You need to consider very carefully how the site will work – is it for lead generation, do you want to sell, are they going to search your site, does it need to integrate with the rest of your site… and, most importantly, how are you going to manage it?

You also need to think carefully about whether you need an App or not. The most simple litmus test is whether you think your mobile service would benefit from re-use: is it a shop? Is it media / entertainment? Is it interactive? If so, then an App would complement the mobile site (and can even be effectively promoted by the mobile site).

For this category, there are no exceptions. If you’re a large brand or business, you need to take mobile incredibly seriously because these are the devices of choice for the connected world we live in today, and as they improve and connections get faster, then mobile will be increasingly the way that people use online.

Are you ready? Give us a call on 01962 605 000, or email us and we’ll try to help steer you in the right direction.

Worse, you may never discover that a little attention could double your performance. So here are our five ways…

1. Make it obvious what is wanted

Too many forms suffer from not making it clear which information is mandatory – the common symbol for a mandatory fields is an asterisk (*). However you can now apply ticks (or crosses), field colour highlights or even tooltips (friendly text prompts) to assist with a form fill, like this one:

Can you see how, with this simple prompt, you avoid user frustration and increase conversion?

Also, make sure your descriptions are easy to understand. You may know what you want with a phrase like ‘Confidential Address’ – but is that business, home, email?

2. Make it inviting

Many forms also suffer from being bland or, in extreme cases, seemingly disinterested.

If you would genuinely like someone to contact you, then say it! There’s no reason just to put a stack of fields and nothing else.

Moreover, we recommend you actually make sure that the person knows what they will get out of it. You need to answer the ‘what’s in it for me?’ if you want someone to share their personal details with you.

Finally, make sure they know what they’re opting into, or not.

If you don’t rent or sell your list, then make it clear that you don’t. If you plan to send emails out, then give them the option to untick the ‘further contact’ box. Again, be polite about it.

3. Trim the fields

If a field is non-essential, remove it. The fewer fields there are the more likely a form will be completed.

For example, if you’re following up leads anyway, then don’t ask for the full details in the form – just enough to contact that person and then complete their details over the phone.

4. Never trust your developer to get it right

Most developers and designers only care about making sure a form functions. They won’t consider the user-experience, they won’t care about conversion rates. You need to make sure that you specify the form fields needed, the field descriptions, and then test it.

Here’s an example of how it goes wrong. It’s a search field, but the ‘save as’ and ‘save search’ are in the wrong place meaning that the search button (which is the main action button) is not triggered properly when the ‘Enter’ key is pressed:

Not only that, but what is the ‘View All’? And why is it next to the Search button? This form is from a large email marketing business who should know better!

5. Use Your Forms

Go on, try your own form or, if you’re too familiar with it, get someone you trust to take a look at it.

Ask them these questions:

• Was it easy to use?
• Did you understand what information was requested?
• Did you understand what you would get out of filling out the form?
• If you made a mistake on the form, did it guide you to what you needed to change?

Bonus Point…

We always like to offer a ‘bonus’ – here’s a tip: measure your forms! Find out what proportion of visitors to a specific page then go on to complete your form. Make some changes (based on the above) and see how it affects your conversions – you’ll find that you will get more opportunities and be more successful as a result.

If you’d like this kind of thinking applied not just to your forms, but to all of your site, then please take a look at our form – we believe it stands up to scrutiny – fill it out and we’ll be in touch with you.

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We’ve already covered some of the pitfalls in our first two articles: never commit to a monthly SEO contract and 5 critical keys to managing your SEO supplier. These give you the groundwork to understanding SEO better.

In this article we now give you the ammunition to manage your SEO supplier (rather than them running rings around you).

Before we start… important note… to make this work you need analytics. We’re working on the assumption that you’d choose Google Analytics, but any analytics package which can measure visits and search terms for those visits will do.

In fact, even more importantly, do you like driving with a blindfold on? No? Then get some analytics and then look at it regularly, or just give up on your web marketing!

So, onto the job in hand… Steps 1-4 can be done before the SEO visits, steps 5-6 in negotiation to reach agreement.

Step 1: Measure Your Brand Visitors

Firstly, importantly, identify searchers for your brand or sub-brands, or people working for your business. for these two reasons:

1. You will come top for this without ANY help from a SEO, and
2. They are not ‘new’ business as they have heard about you before

Step 2: Measure Your Current Organic Traffic

Secondly, identify your latent organic web traffic – the number of searchers who are already visiting your website (this will be your total organic traffic minus brand searches from above).

Step 3: Value a Visitor

This is very easy if you’ve done any Pay Per Click (Adwords) marketing. If you spend on clicks you will, almost certainly know what the cost is of your average visitor, if not, then  estimate what a visitor is worth to you.

Step 4: Target Relevant Keywords

Using your analytics and through your own business knowledge, you will know what keywords and phrases are relevant to your business. You will also see from your current analytics that you do get a number of visits on rather spurious keywords. So concentrate on keywords which are relevant and are likely to bring in relevant visitors.

Step 5: Meet (Suitably Prepared) With Your SEO

So, when you go to meet your SEO, then you can have a proper discussion with them. Set the ground-rules:

• All brand searches, past or future, are not a part of the SEO’s service, so when it comes to performance, these will not be included within the SEO’s measurements
• Your current organic traffic is where you are today. Again, the SEO has not contributed so they need to improve on this and should be measured on the improvement over your current visits and not be given credit for your current ones
• Any non-relevant keyword visits will be ignored as these are ancillary to the job in hand and a good SEO should be able to get you ranking for relevant phrases

Listen carefully to their reaction to these items. These are all fair, they won’t like it, but they are fair! And hear from them how they are going to go about gaining you extra traffic.

Step 6: Agree Targets with your SEO

You will then be able to give your SEO a target: tell them that your ‘break even’ SEO performance for you is their fee (almost certainly monthly) divided by your average cost per click.

For example, if they want to charge you £300 a month, and your cost per click estimate is £0.50 then they will need to give you 600 additional visits a month to break even in terms of performance.

If they cannot commit to this, then it speaks for itself: they are not able to deliver you enough traffic volume to cover their fees. Therefore they should not be appointed.

Step 7: Measure, Measure, Measure

We would support any SEO in two respects: firstly that improvements don’t happen immediately, and secondly that there’s no value in a ‘free lunch’ – you have to pay as you’re expecting them to work hard for this, probably harder than they do on most of their clients!

Tell your SEO that you will give them a three month trial to get to this target figure of monthly visitors from their work, and that you will pay them during this trial. If they achieve your target then you will continue working with them, if not then the trial is over.

Furthermore, tell them that once they’ve achieved this target you will be expecting further incremental improvements until they at least double this figure per month – because one of the myths of SEO is that your need to continue spending to maintain your rankings. This is barely true and only in a select few competitive business areas. If you cancel the contract, unless they have been using ‘black hat’ techniques, your ranking should be maintained.

As you measure your visits in analytics, you should start seeing improvements in SEO within a month and, even if your SEO doesn’t hit the full target, if they’re close then you should give them the benefit of the doubt… if they’re a long way short, either renegotiate until they hit the target or cancel.

In this way, you can manage your SEO rather than letting them run rings around you.

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Here are five ways to make sure that you can manage your SEO and ensure they’re going to deliver for you.

1. Don’t Focus on Position

Do not, we repeat, NOT, fall into the ‘Page 1 of Google’ trap. This is usually the domain of the lazy SEO. They will guarantee a first page position and, as soon as they get it for you, they’ll down tools and just bill you monthly.

Getting a page 1 position is easy. What’s hard is getting it for a high traffic keyword. Most SEO’s who play the ‘Page 1 trick’ won’t like questions such as:
“How many people search for that a month?” (you can find this in the Google Keyword Tool), or
“How much traffic will that get me a month?” (the answer can be found in your analytics software)

So, don’t focus on position, focus on traffic.

2. Relevance is Everything

One of our clients had a blog post which was all to do with mouse pointers, but which was nothing to do with their core services business. They got to page 1 and had about 10 visits a month from people interested in mouse pointers.

One of our more popular posts about Tree Surgery and Leylandii (there is a connection – it’s about valuing your clients) and we’re position 8 on Google UK for ‘Leylandii Tree Surgeon‘ – do you think that’s relevant to a digital marketing agency? Will that position win us business?

Here’s another ‘classic’ illustration:
We pitched a business who targets central London clients with a top tier professional service. We explained why SEO would not work for them – the local ‘expert’ (ahem!) wanted to rank them for ‘[Professional Service] in Hampshire’.

OK – so that’s a ‘triple fail‘. Why?

1. Because their target market in London won’t search for Hampshire
2. Should potential clients visit the site, they would be put off with Hampshire being plastered everywhere when they want services delivered to them in London
3. This particular keyword phrase has fewer than 100 searches a month (across the UK!!)

So, make sure the keywords you rank for are relevant! Make sure that your SEO supplier knows your business well.

3. SEO is NOT Free

You pay for SEO. It is not ‘free’. It has to be measured in exactly the same way as other forms of marketing.

4. You Can Stop Your SEO and it Won’t Damage Your Rankings

If you use a SEO supplier and they ‘threaten’ you that everything will crash and burn if you stop using them, they’re wrong. Very little if anything will happen (positively or negatively) over the course of time.

If, on the other hand, you do see your rankings being badly affected, then it’s almost certainly because they were engaging in underhand methods to boost your results; trust us, you’re best clear of them anyway as you were probably a blacklisting candidate (where Google pushes all your positions down, say, 30 places for as long as they feel like it!).

5. Be Reasonably Patient

Your SEO will tell you that it takes time for Search Engine rankings to materialise. That is true – give it 1-2 months, possibly three. No longer than that… if your SEO is playing the ‘time’ card after 6 months: give them a red one!

We hope this is all useful stuff, please share this post with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ … we’ve made it really easy for you: nice chunky buttons below! And if you want us to help you evaluate your SEO, then talk to us today.

For smaller businesses much of what they do has to involve some educated guesswork, but it is encouraging that the bigger fish, with all their access to focus groups, beta tests, online research and user feedback, also make mistakes.

Strategic Mistakes – Microsoft…

It is our view that Microsoft is currently treading a very fine line around a customers’ patience. This mainly revolves around their inability to support (or recognise) any browsers other than Internet Explorer.

Have you tried ‘Skydrive‘ – their online document storage facility? In Explorer it works, in Firefox it’s all over the shop! Yet there is no obvious reason for this happening – apart from the ‘optimised for Explorer’ mantra coming from Microsoft. Yet, with Google Docs already being the online file storage and management of choice, you can’t help feeling that they’ve pulled the trigger before taking the gun out of the holster!

This ‘blind spot’ also came to a head last week when our head of search was invited to join an online webinar on the Yahoo! Microsoft merger for search marketing. Did it work on Firefox? Of course not – it’s being run by Microsoft.

Yet, again, what this means is that we’re not as educated as we need to be for the new product and are less likely to take full advantage of it for our clients. So, again, they lose.

Does the world revolve around Explorer? We don’t think so.

Specific Problems – Yahoo! Prompts

One thing we are looking forward to from the Yahoo! Microsoft merger is the final putting to bed (/out of service) of the Yahoo! Search Marketing online interface.

If ever there was a case of not learning from the competition, then this is it. Changing campaigns, adverts and ad groups takes twice as long on this system than with Google Adwords or MSN AdCenter. Reporting is basic and unhelpful. The conversion tracking is unreliable (and in favour of Yahoo! of course)…

If it were to be summed up in a nutshell, then we’d point out this little box. It appears EVERY time you change an advert in a ad group with only one advert in it. You can’t turn it off, even though you have read the message. Not only that, it’s untrue. It must have been clicked 10,000 times by us. We can’t wait to never see that again.

Errors of Judgment -Waitrose

Waitrose has discerning customers, and they can spot a lemon a mile off. The very expensive re-design of the Waitrose website has backfired massively on customers.

It seems that even with an interstellar budget, the project was late and hurried out and had several major problems:

• Search results are too long: unless you were very specific in your searching, you often got pages and pages of results meaning a time-consuming trawl to find what you’re looking for
• Navigation: customers found it harder to find ‘shelves’ of items using the new navigation, often having to hover or click up to three items to find the area they wanted to be in. Once you got where you want to be, it wasn’t easy to find your way back
• Slow loading pages: almost certainly not due to server capacity, we fear that this is probably down to the amount of users spending longer on the site and performing more searches. We really hope that it’s not down to their shiny new technology – now that would be a disaster!

This comment summed it up:

“New Waitrose £10m website is most successful industrial espionage stratagem ever devised by Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda”

Want to see a small sample of the vitriol? Why not! Let’s hope they get it right in the end.

So, when it comes to websites, you need to bear the user in mind – because without users who actually USE your website, you have visitors, but not customers!

If only people were that predictable… sadly even in the larger and better resourced of businesses there still exists people who don’t play by the rules and therefore suffer the consequences.

Case 1: Diaspora – the Social Network for the Private (eh?!)

We remember hearing that they wouldn’t offer ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ as the options for Gender – but had a free text field instead. There’s no point going with the argument of ‘well, you’ve got to be one or the other’ because it doesn’t work like that in Diasporaland. So, ‘focused’ (if that’s the right word!) are they on offering freedom to the individual and not pre-judging gender (because they ‘love’ everyone, even if they are unlike anyone else on the planet) they have retained this option.

So, what does that mean? Well, it means that they don’t have 1′s and 0′s, they have complications. Sure, you could argue, they can still filter by male, or is it masculine, or man, or homme, or… hmm… do you now see the problem? In any case we predict a few ‘Jedi’-gendered to join the network which allows them the freedom to make it up as they go along.

Zuckerberg must be chuckling about this one. He even put 0.0001% of his daily income into this particular ship. He almost certainly realised it wouldn’t sail, just don’t mention the PR it gave him (hey, he cares about the little guys)! But even for ‘the Zuck’ there is no immunity from this kind of problem. Let’s look at …

Case 2: Facebook Places – FourSquare Without the Fun

We visited a bar in London called ‘The Fire Station’ and thought, ‘hey let’s check in here’ – so we looked up our Facebook app, logged into ‘Places’ and searched in the area. We found ‘Fire Station’, and ‘Fire Station Waterloo Road’, and ‘The Fire Station’… and that was just the first few.

This is the same problem again, just with different stripes.

So, why is this a ‘problem’? Well here are a couple of immediate issues that spring to mind:

1. Facebook Places is about socialisation. When we logged into it, we found two people also checked into ‘The Fire Station’. But six more checked into the other ‘Fire Stations’ (note: there is only one!!). So, there could have been nine check-ins to the same location. But there weren’t.
2. This makes it impossible (as it stands) to start having some fun – if you own ‘The Fire Station’, which group do you communicate to? If you become ‘Mayor’ (or the Facebook equivalent) of one, then what if it’s the least popular. Does that make you ‘Mubarak’ in a sea of Borises?

The human mind, left to it’s own devices, sadly, isn’t as thorough as it could be. We need the firm guidance of a computer to ensure we don’t go astray. Without such guidance we are prone to just doing whatever we randomly think is best. If nothing is done by the end of 2011, we expect there will be double-figures of ‘The Fire Station on Waterloo Road’ in Facebook Places.

This process needs one of two things:

• A proper database to cross-reference with, or
• Timely human editorial intervention

However, because they were in a rush to get a location-based solution out there, we have much more confidence that Facebook will get it right, and will start merging locations in due course to bring everything into line. Diaspora’s problem is more severe as it is not an oversight, it’s in their DNA. Sadly we fear that this will be a self-inflicted wound to come on top of the general lack of interest and enthusiasm in their offering. As we look around for Facebook ‘killers’, if it isn’t too late already, Diaspora won’t be one.

When it comes to social media it can be too easy to think that anything goes. It’s true, the content can be as varied as the people it represents, but the web and the means of navigation that allows us to get there must be logical and precise, or it’s built to frustrate and will turn users off.

There is no antidote to muddled thinking.

If you don’t know what we’re referring to, let me get you up to speed: Flash, a software owned by Adobe, is responsible for most of the attractive moving graphics on the web including adverts and games. This software is free to download and use, but whoever uses Flash to design needs to buy licensed software to create Flash applications.

Given that it is free, easy to embed, and a ‘one size fits all’ offering creating beautiful interactive treats, you would have thought that the Apple audience would be ideal users for Flash. Sadly, they aren’t given the option.

What initially leaked out from Apple as ‘the iPhone is not compatible for Flash’ reason last year (let’s call that ‘Episode One’), then became ‘we don’t want Flash because it isn’t Open Source’ (Episode 2), has now grown into a corporate mud-slinging match (Episode 3) with Flash ‘banned’ from all mobile devices and optional on laptop and desktops.

The irony here is huge. Because if there’s ever been a more tightly patrolled walled garden, then Apple is the curator. Every product they produce is policed. Every competitor pursued. If they really believed in Open Source then surely they would allow full access to their software, which, of course, they don’t and won’t.

Looking at this purely commercially  the real reason that Apple doesn’t want Flash on it’s phone is quite clear and is hidden in this ‘open letter‘ from Apple:

“Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.”

Though true, the reality is that with so many Flash games available free of charge, the revenues from the app store would shrink dramatically if Flash were readily available. By backing HTML5 Apple give the impression of being the good guys. But they know that there are hardly any HTML5 games available and most are of a poor quality and difficult to locate on the web… as most are supported by advertising and sponsorship using… yes, you’ve guessed it, Flash design!

Far be it for us to support Adobe, given that they’re masters of acquiring great software and then tripling the price. However this instance, for all the hot air from both sides, gives the impression of Apple protectionism.

As usual Apple, and teflon Steve, seem to come away from what amounts to a corporate mugging looking clean. However, their actions show that for all the words written and spoken, they are as commercially merciless as the competition, if not more so.

For most, the above page is a dull footnote in the ocean of Google blog posts, but for those using Adwords, this is exactly what we were expecting (and hoping) for.

What Was the Problem

A few years ago, brand owners threatened Google by arguing that they were using their trademarks unlawfully by allowing businesses to use their brands in keywords and adverts.

Brand owners thereby forced Google to let them approve which advertisers could, or could not, use their brand.

If this had been done properly, all well and good, but in our experience what this meant was that brand owners decided that those who offered the best discounts, or special terms, or even import of branded good were effectively barred.

Whilst those who towed the corporate line were given ‘special dispensation’.

… Cracks Started to Appear…

However, Google’s first counter to this was to allow advertisers to advertise against branded keywords as long as they didn’t use the branded term in the advert. So, for example, anyone could advertise to searches for ‘Adidas Trainers’ just as long as they didn’t use ‘Adidas’ in their advert.

… It Then Got Ugly…

The upshot of this was, however, ‘ugly’ adverts. For example on ‘Adidas’ trainers then the advertisers would misspell Adidas – Addas, Ad1das, and so on. So, for example, the advert could look like this:

Cheap Ad1das Trainers

From only £29.99 buy Ad1das trainers
With free delivery.

It was soon realised that whilst Adidas could take out further brand protection with Google, they would have to cater for all misspells and then they’d still be dealing with ads which are well written but don’t mention the brand at all.

… Which Brings us to Today…

So, finally the post from Google which has just been announced for the UK: essentially any legitimate store or advertiser of branded goods can use the trademark on Google.

Sense has prevailed at last. But if you think that Google just did it for us, then think again. More brand advertisers is undoubtedly a good thing for advertising revenues. They may be backing ‘the little guys’, but you can be sure that they’re confident it will be worth their while.

After all, it is by increasing the number of advertisers that the big G’s pockets are filled!

An Addendum…

As usual, Yahoo! and MSN are some way behind Google. Just had an email in from one of the two telling me that they were stopping me advertising on a brand name… ah well… give it 6 months to a year and they’ll catch up at the back!

Here are five quick tests you can take to find out if your website is passive or active:

1. Can You Navigate Without Using the Menu?

If a visitor cannot navigate through the website and end up at the destination you’d like them to get to (sale, enquiry or whatever your main revenue aim is) then your site is passive.

Ideally, website visitors should not need to use the main menu at all. It’s a fallback, not a critical path.

2. Do You Have Obvious ”Next Steps’ at the Bottom of Pages?

Once a visitor has read a page, or scrolled to the bottom of it, can they see relevant messages encouraging them further into the website? If not, then your site is passive. If you make the next steps as obvious and targeted as possible, then you will increase page views and conversion rates.

3. Do You Place Links in Your Text?

Too many websites avoid using links in their text, normally because they didn’t have the time to do it, or know what phrases to link. Sometimes this is done for aesthetic reasons. However, by not placing links in your text, you are creating a passive site.

4. Do You Have ‘Calls to Action’ in Every Page?

A ‘call to action’ is a genuine offer to a cust0mer with the express purpose of generating an enquiry or sale. Too many sites expect the website visitor to act – and too often they don’t. You can also mature your calls to action by ‘packaging’ them properly for the audience – for example if you offer a free consultation (like we do!):  then describe the value that the client will receive in that consultation. If you have a sale on, pick out the best selling items or the biggest discounts. Otherwise, your site will be passive and unappealing.

5. Are You Lazy With Link and Button Text?

If most of your links and buttons are ‘read more’, or ‘more’, or ‘next’, or anything generic then your links are passive. They again are making the assumption that the visitor will be so interested in what they are reading that they will click regardless. Make your links and buttons more compelling – and if you’re not convinced then test it!

Want some help making your site convert? Then consider Ergo Digital to overhaul your content, activate it and renew your business opportunity.