As an industrial marketer, you may wonder which fixes you should prioritize when you overhaul your site. We went ahead and made that list for you. Note: these are in no particular order. Evaluate your site and then determine which fixes should come first.
Easy-to-use Navigation Structure
Site navigation is supposed to, you know, navigate. Illogical or user-unfriendly navigation is to your site what Lieutenant Murdoch was to the Titanic. Maybe that’s a tad overdramatic. Then again, some sites really are that bad. Fortunately, there are some simple ways to improve navigation. Try one (or all!) of these:
- Content silos that make sense: If you have scads of product categories on your site or if you just add new categories to your navigation without organizing in a helpful way, users will get frustrated. Make sure you have parent pages that link to products and organize them in one place. If you sell fasteners, pneumatic valves and shrink tubing, you should have a parent page for each of those. “Hex bolts” goes into the content silo you’ve created for fasteners – where users will expect to find it.
- Breadcrumbs: Those little links at the top of the page that help you get back to where you came from are called breadcrumbs. Hansel & Gretel reference! Cute, huh? Adding these to your site can make getting around on your site simpler.
- Interlinking between relevant pages: Link pages to related products, services or other useful information.
Part Number Builders and Faceted Search
Though website technology continuously evolves, the goal remains the same: make sites easier to use. Faceted search and part number builders are two excellent ways to make an e-commerce site perform better. We’ve written about these things before, so in the interest of not being a broken record, we’re not going to devote a ton of real estate to them in this post. If you missed them, check out our posts on faceted search and part number builders.
Clear CTAs/RFQs
Calls to action and RFQs need to stand out on the site and provide clear direction. If users have to hunt for RFQ links, they might lose interest in your product or service. Do you hang around in a store when the salesperson is nowhere to be found? You split and shop elsewhere, right? CTAs and RFQs are like sales people; they help guide the customer to the checkout counter. Make sure they’re present, attentive and ready to assist.
Faster Load Times
No matter where people are, whether they’re in traffic, in line at the grocery store or sitting through previews at the movie theater, people hate waiting. That doesn’t change when they go online. 79% of users won’t return to a site that takes 3 seconds or more to load. 44% of those surveyed said they would tell a friend about a site that provided a bad experience. Imagine that your website is a room. It has the capacity to fit 100 people. When they arrive, the door is locked. 79 of them get antsy, turn around and march out. Most of those people leave, but 40 or so people hang back in the parking lot to tell new people who are pulling up not to bother – the room is locked. That leaves 21 people in a room for 100. How much product do you think you’ll move when so few people stick around to shop your slow, creaky site? To determine whether you need to focus on improving load times, test your site speed.
Banish All PITAs
“PITA” stands for “pain in the ass.” This acronym applies to things like autoplay videos, interstitial ads (those ads that cover the whole screen forcing you to bypass them to see the site content), excessive pop-ups, image carousels that stall and boring stock photos. Eliminating or fixing these things might just give you the boost you’ve been hoping for. If you’re ready to make some changes, contact Ecreative today.
