How to Make Your Website Better than Your Competitors’

You've spent weeks developing a beautiful ecommerce site. Your website is professional and functional. It’s attracting customers, but not as many as you had hoped. Most of them leave without making a purchase, though some visitors add several items to their carts before abandoning them and never returning.

What can you do to convert visitors to buyers and take your website from its current state to a top performer in your local market or market niche? Here, I provide five, high-impact strategies to get your website firing on all cylinders.

Strategy #1: Improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is some of the most critical grunt work required to make a website a success. SEO provides value to searchers by magnifying your website’s content for users to find. Though it can be tempting to bring in a consultant who promises to vault your search engine results for high-value keywords to page one, know that Google and the other search engines have been investing heavily for years in remaining one step ahead of every snake oil salesman with a black hat strategy.

What you can do immediately is add or improve meta titles and descriptions to increase clicks and traffic. According to Smart Insights, long-tail keywords outrank one-word keywords by 3-6% in positions 2-5 on SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). Simple, short URLs containing page keywords are easier to read and rank, so consider this move if you have long, cumbersome URLs.

SEO research should include competitor research. Use the Ahrefs.com SEO tool and the Spyfu.com PPC tool to determine the keywords that your competitors are going after. Determine where you fit on the SERPS relative to your market and use the MOZ toolbar to identify domain authority and keyword difficulty. SEO can be intimidating, but it’s not rocket science and doesn’t take years of study. Just remember, everything you do should be centered around your target audience(s).

Strategy #2: Design your website to load quickly and be mobile responsive

According to Google, the probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds. Not only will visitors abandon the website, but your search rankings will slip as your high bounce rate tells Google and other search engines that users don’t find your page content valuable.

In 2022, mobile devices now account for 59% of global website traffic. So your website not only has to load quickly, but it has to have mobile responsive design so that it loads as quickly on smartphones and tablets as it does on laptops and desktop PCs. Remember, if your website is optimized for mobile, your users can access it from anywhere, and this is crucial.

There is no simple fix to speeding up your website. This objective requires a combination of tasks, beginning with finding a web host that provides ample resources and excellent loading speeds. From there, use adaptive images and browser caching, and keep plugins to a minimum. Enable HTTP keep-alive response headers, compress your content, and minify JavaScript and CSS. These are just a few of the technical ways to improve website speed.

Strategy #3: Use multiple, high-resolution photos and videos for products

Virtual shopping experiences should attempt to recreate some of the benefits of real-world shopping. In a brick-and-mortar store, consumers get to touch and compare products. You can offer a similar experience online with high-resolution photos and videos that demonstrate the quality, functionality, and value of your products to online shoppers.

Think of the questions and concerns that your visuals can address. How will your product look or function in certain environments? How is the product correctly used? Images and video don’t merely supplement product descriptions; they often answer as many or more questions.

Strategy #4: Capture leads, even when visitors don’t make a purchase

For all of the investment your business pours into your website, make sure your return on investment extends beyond the first site click for each unique visitor. Use lead capture pages to promote a single offer in order to collect valuable information from customers. Contact information alone will allow you to communicate through email and nurture your prospects into becoming customers, moving them further down your marketing funnel. Answers to a few short questions can help you segment your database for more specific correspondences.

A lead capture page may contain a video or copy summarizing your product(s) or service(s) and explaining the unique value proposition. It may also offer something of value, such as a free trial, a free product, or free information (ebook or whitepaper) for sharing contact information and/or answering a few short questions. Multiple lead capture pages enable you to target specific segments and match them up with keyword searches and even pay-per-click ad campaigns. Newsletters and product wish lists are compelling, value-added ways to capture leads who are interested in your brand or product.

Strategy #5: Use blog articles to refresh your website with engaging new content

You have to keep updating your website to keep it relevant, and your blog is one way to do this. Blogs educate and engage your audiences, providing “sticky” content that will make them bookmark your page and return with frequency – provided you continue to update with engaging new content. Blogs also establish your subject matter experts as authorities in their fields and your company as one that values educating its customers. Blog platforms allow you to use multiple content formats including copy, images, video, and even engagement devices like quick polls.

Conduct keyword research before you build your blog’s editorial calendar. Know the monthly search volumes for keywords and phrases, and research what your competitors deliver to satisfy certain search queries. Search Google to find all of the top-ranking pages that exist for key topics, find out what the domain authority looks like for each, and check out Google Trends for similar topics. Answerthepublic.com is a great resource to help you find questions that can relate to your topics.

Promote your blog content throughout your site, driving visitors from your home page and other relevant content. Once your visitors are there, remember to engage, engage, ENGAGE! Blog platforms utilize a comment section to help authors and brands engage with their users. Google loves this. Facebook loves this. Write about something that provokes positive sentiment and talk to users when they do leave comments.

As you make each of these website improvements, make sure to track your website performance metrics to gauge their impacts. Have any questions about these strategies for improving your website’s performance? Ask us in our dynamic, online Facebook community!

Like this blog? Be sure to check out part 2: How to Make Your Website Better than Your Competitors’ Part 2: The User Experience (UX).