5 Checks: Is Your Site Passive or Active?

A passive site is a website which doesn’t work in the content of the site to develop new opportunities for business growth. It lacks offers, calls to action, links and marketing messages and, as a result, gives visitors every opportunity just to walk away.

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.