A Page Per Day

We have all heard the "apple a day keeps the doctor away" saying. The general idea behind it is that there are simple things you can do, like eating an apple, to prevent health problems. The same general idea can be applied to websites.

At QW Consulting, we recommend improving a page of your website every day. Why? The logic is roughly that a page a day keeps the visitors on your site.

Put another way, the more time you spend improving the pages of your website, even at a pace of one page per day, the more the people visiting your website will be able to better understand your website. As a direct result, the visitors will be more inclined to give you their contact information, buy a product from you or complete some other action you are hoping for.

In short, making small daily alterations to your website's pages will help your website convert more website visitors into paying customers.

To start, you need to prioritize your pages. This prioritization could be by the number of visitors to a page or simply how important a page is to your business (for instance, your number 1 selling product).

Once you select a page though, what do you do? Here is the “page a day” to do list we use at QW Consulting.

Analyze The Page

First, review the quality performance of this page.

The idea here is to learn how people are really using this page of your website. Using free tools like Google Analytics, you can learn about a page's bounce rate and how long people spend on a page. These help you gain insight into what people think of a particular page.

For example, if you see that the bounce rate on your home page is 70%, that means only 30% of people stick around to go to another page of the website. You have a definite problem with the way people react to the page. You need to change this page to capture people's interest and encourage people to go to other pages of your website.

Second, review the quantitative statistics.

In addition to quality performance measurements, you also want to look at the amount of traffic the page received. However, instead of looking at just how many pageviews or visitors a particular page received, look at that number relative to site traffic overall.

For example, if a page received 100 visits and the site as a whole received 1,000 visits that page received quite a bit of traffic. However, if the page received 100 visits and the site as a whole received 5,000 visits that page did not receive that much traffic.

This number should be compared against your expectations. If your number 1 product that you are trying to sell online only received 1% of the visits on your site then you know you have a problem with that page. To correct this you obviously need to create more interest in that product on your website.

Improve The Page

How exactly you need to improve the page will vary depending on what you see in the quality and quantity measurements. Let's look at what to do in a few specific instances.

Short time spent looking at a page (shorter than what you expected). This could means people are not interested in the page. Adjust the content, add in a video or images to make the page more interesting. You should ask yourself questions like “Why would people want to see this page?” and “What do people expect when they are looking at this page?”

High bounce rate. Like the time spent on a page, this also indicates a lack of interest but also indicates something more: a lack of interest in the site. After looking at this page, the person left the site (or bounced away). To fix this, find ways to make the content more interesting but also find ways to encourage people to click into other pages of the website. For example, links to related products or reviews can be helpful to encourage people to stay longer on your website.

Low traffic to page, compared to site, on key pages. If a key page is only receiving a small percentage of site traffic that problem means you need to add more ways for people to access that page. It could also mean you need to make the ways to access that page more prominent. To correct this problem, put links to those key pages near the top of pages that do get high volumes of traffic.

If you need help reviewing the pages of your website, or have questions about the statistics, contact QW Consulting today for a free website review.