What do your website visitors want when they land on your website?
It sounds like a simple question.
Yet, it’s an important question that website owners, managers, designers, and web developers sometimes overlook.
The next question is, “Does your site deliver what your visitors want?”
What Are Your Website Visitor’s Goals
You’ve implemented strategies and tactics to get visitors to your website (SEO, social media, email marketing, PPC ads, etc.), and they have arrived.
As a website owner or manager, it can be easy to become too focused on what you want your visitors to do.
Website visitors have reasons for visiting your site. It is crucial to understand what your visitors want to accomplish when they come to your site.
From a website user’s perspective, success will be defined in a number of different ways, as your visitors will have a range of needs and interests when they arrive.
Have you put yourself in the role of a visitor to your website? Walking a mile in your visitor’s (customer’s) shoes can provide some insights into what is commonly referred to as “the User Experience.”
In a more formal definition, website user experience refers to a user’s overall experience when navigating and interacting with website content.
User Experience is often abbreviated as UX.
It encompasses various technical and emotional factors that influence a user’s perception and feelings about a website.
User and Visitor Experience Factors To Consider
Not every visitor to your website wants to purchase your products or services on their first visit.
Or even on the second or third visit. But that doesn’t mean that their visit to your website won’t be a success for them.
Here are some items to consider when evaluating a visitor’s experience on your website:
- What do website visitors view and click on when they visit your website?
- What tasks do visitors want to accomplish while on your website?
- How easy is it for visitors to your website to find what they want?
- Is there enough content and information available on the website for visitors?
- Is the website’s performance fast enough to avoid user frustration?
- Are there any other impediments preventing visitors from achieving their goals?
What Value Does Your Website Provide to Visitors
With those UX factors and questions in mind, what value does your website provide visitors?
- For some visitors, it may be simply reading a blog post they found through a search engine results page link.
- Yet, for other visitors, it may be reading, viewing, purchasing, downloading, or just gathering information for the future.
Taking a step back to look at the value proposition that your website presents to visitors is a practical and potentially valuable exercise.
Spend the time to analyze which areas of your website provide value that will attract new visitors and bring existing visitors back to your site in the future.
Push and Pull of Website Visitors
The Pull
From a visitor’s perspective, they will want to engage with your website and feel a Pull towards your products, services, available information, your company, and further engagement.
This engagement will result in visitors accomplishing specific tasks on your website.
Visitor Tasks and Interactions
Website visitors complete tasks when they visit your site.
- One type of task could be making a purchase. However, sales are not the complete picture of visitor interactions with your website.
- Other tasks may include gathering information on your products or services, comparing pricing, reading, or viewing other related content on your site.
- Having a wide variety of visitor Pull interactions on your website may be especially true if this is the visitor’s first visit.
- For instance, an initial visit may focus on a visitor learning more about your company to see if they want to purchase a product or service.
Frequently, a range of tasks can help Pull a visitor towards further engagement and a sale—either today or after one or more return visits to your website.
The Push
As a business, you want to Push or guide your visitors to take specific actions on your site.
- The focus of these Push actions is to encourage steps that will lead to a conversion or sale.
- Frequently, Push actions will occur over multiple visits and be encouraged by strategically placed calls to action (CTA).
- Push actions can also be framed as part of a Sales Funnel.
- Having a clear structure to the website with a clear path (funnel) that leads a visitor to further engagement or a purchase will make the Push more effective.
When the Push and Pull align, the result is success for website visitors and for your business.
Website Call To Action – Enhancing Visitor Success
Website calls to action (CTAs) drive customer engagement and improve website interaction. They are another element in the Push and Pull of website engagement.
- A call to action is essentially a prompt on a website that urges users to take some specified action.
- Effective use of website CTAs serves as a bridge between passive browsing and active visitor engagement.
- The action could range from making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, signing up for a webinar, downloading an e-book or whitepaper, filling out a contact form, or engaging with a chatbot.
- CTAs are typically presented as clickable buttons or links strategically positioned on the webpage to attract users’ attention.
The primary purpose of a website CTA is to guide a visitor towards your goal conversion.
- The effectiveness of a call to action can significantly influence the success of a website’s conversion rates.
- A well-designed and compelling CTA can effectively nudge visitors to take the desired action, directly contributing to achieving the website’s objectives.
- At the same time, well-crafted CTAs can also increase a website visitor’s feeling of success on your website.
CTAs are indispensable for enhancing website interaction and increasing user engagement. They act as pivotal touch points in a visitor’s journey on your website, guiding them from passive browsing to taking decisive actions.
Consequently, incorporating compelling calls to action into your site design strategy is fundamental for achieving your online marketing goals.
What is Website Visitor Success
As noted earlier, not every visitor to your website wants to purchase your products or services on their first visit. But their visit to your website can still be a success for them.
Here are some steps in assessing visitor success:
- Defining what constitutes a “successful visit” for a visitor.
- Identifying the factors that will help you determine if visitors enjoy using your website, which may include pages viewed per visit, time on site per visit, bounce rate, engagement rate, shopping cart abandonment rate, and purchases.
- Creating and Measuring Call-To-Actions such as newsletter sign-ups, downloads of relevant information or whitepapers, special offers, requests for more information, file downloads, click-through rates on ads, and comments on blog posts.
- Implementing and Using Analytics like Google Analytics to effectively measure and understand visitor behavior, engagement, and success.
- Measuring Social Media sharing of website content and visits to social media platforms directly from the website.
- Developing Social Proof generated by the website, including testimonials, reviews, and links to the website from other sites. These can build credibility, trust, and validation.
Another step in improving visitor success with your website is personalizing the user experience.
This can be done based on user behavior, preferences, and past interactions. Personalized content can make visitors feel more valued and understood.
Conclusion – Website Visitor Successes
A successful visitor is a happy visitor. Therefore, a visitor is more likely to make a purchase or convert now or during a return visit.
Balancing a business’s objectives and the visitor’s needs is the key to a successful website. Every site visitor interaction, from clicks to scrolls, narrates a tale of expectations and experiences.
Take the time to understand what your website users want and how well your site meets those needs. It is well worth the effort.
Real success emerges when your business’s push aligns seamlessly with your visitor’s pull, fostering trust and building lasting relationships and business growth.
