It’s easy for many website owners to “set it and forget it” when it comes to their site, like a digital billboard showing that the company is open for business. However, with the right design and strategy, your website can become a lead-generating machine working hard for your business all hours of day and night — not just when your sales team is on the clock.
While the price tag for website improvements isn’t always cheap, the return on investment (ROI) of effectively turning website visitors to leads and customers can quickly recoup (and multiply) initial investment costs with the right strategy. On average, a business can expect to see a three to five times improvement in key website metrics after investing in the design and user experience of their website.
In today’s digitally-driven world, devoting resources to website improvements is essential to staying ahead of the competition and making the most of your digital marketing budget to capture quality leads for your business.
Why Devote Resources to Website Improvement?
Did you know the average B2B customer reviews 10 websites before making a business decision? And the average consumer looks at three to five pieces of content before even reaching out to a business? Whether you’re investing in your website or not, your prospective customers are using your website as a stop in their research journey before making a purchasing decision.
When these visitors land on your website, having a pleasant user experience is vital for developing conversions. If the website is cluttered, hard to navigate or an outdated design, they will likely bounce. In fact, 94% of first impressions of a website are based on the initial aesthetic impression. Websites that look good get people to stay. Websites that have clear calls to action, robust product pages or simple contact forms encourage visitors to take actions on your website in their journey to become customers.
Even if you have the best sales team in existence, they can’t work their magic if people see your website and decide not to pursue reaching out to you. From first impressions to purchases, a website plays a role in leading a consumer through their buying journey whether you’re investing in your website or not. Ultimately, a well-designed and well thought out website provides a dramatic ROI for businesses.
ROI of Website Improvement
Devoting time and resources to making your website work for you and your customers provides tangible ROI in more areas than you might expect. Although leads and conversions provide a very tangible ROI, a well-designed website can also uncover a variety of other secondary growth opportunities.
Improved brand awareness
When you’re considering a purchase, large or small, one of the first and easiest methods of research is visiting a business’s website. This is exactly what your prospective customers do. No matter where they first encounter your business, they are most likely going online to validate who you are, what you do and what you can offer them.
A well-designed website serves as an extension of your brand — you’re in charge of the experience you want them to have and what they remember when they think of your brand. With a well-designed website, they will leave with a positive impression of your brand and a stronger sense of who you are. Brand awareness doesn’t provide immediate conversions, but it gradually builds your numbers of customers (and leads) over time.
Increased web traffic
A properly constructed website will improve the amount of organic, unpaid visitors coming to your website. A well thought out website will have a search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing strategy that pulls your web pages up to the top of the search engine results pages. With a keyword strategy that matches your products and services, your website will work for you constantly and can be continuously monitored and tweaked for improvements.
Growth in leads and conversions
The clearest way you will see ROI from your website investment is through increased leads and conversions. The way these visitors view and experience your website influences whether or not they will fill out a form, download a white paper or complete any other action that leads to a conversion. Investing resources in your website creates a pleasant user experience and clear opportunities for leads to reach out to you directly through contact forms or CTAs strategically placed on your website. Over time, digital marketing as a field has developed tried and true strategies that can bring potential customers to your digital doorstep — with the proper investment in a great website to greet them.
Better customer retention
Everyone knows that it’s cheaper to keep an existing customer than find a new one. A well-designed website can serve as a way to keep your customers engaged with your brand and continue to provide value. With blogs, social media integration and other tools, you can encourage your customers to use your website as a resource to help them do business better and stay in touch with you.
Website Improvement Tips: Key Metrics to Understanding Website ROI
Good website improvement is based on data, not guesswork. Several metrics provide key insights to how your website can improve and how you have progressed overtime. By tracking these numbers to see how visitors reach your site and what they do once they get there, you can directly measure the ROI of your website improvements. This can also help uncover continuous opportunities for improvements to further optimize your website.
Key metrics to follow for helpful data about your website include:
- Number of unique visitors
- Number of website visits per person
- Pages viewed per visit
- Keywords that visitors search to get to your website
- Conversion rates
- Cost per lead
Your website can also provide metrics that tell you whether or not your visitors have a pleasant user experience. Is your bounce rate high? Visitors may not be able to easily navigate to find what they need quickly and instead just head back to the search results. How fast is your page loading speed? If it’s too slow, people won’t hang around to engage with your website and likely won’t be coming back. How much time do visitors spend on your website? A rising number means that they are finding the information they need, continuing to engage with your business and moving their way down the sales funnel.
Website Investment: Measurable Results
Continued updates and improvements are vital for keeping your website relevant and functioning at its best for your needs. Devoting resources to website can provide ROI far and above the initial costs of your website improvements. And continued monitoring of key metrics allows you to stay on top of your website’s performance for the future.
