Google Content Experiments for Conversion Optimisation

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Matthew Barby

Alongside any search engine optimisation (SEO) or any of your digital marketing in general, it is important that you have optimised the content of your website to be focused around conversion. What I mean by this is that when a user eventually gets on to your website, they should be presented with content that will encourage them to make a purchase (if the site is an e-commerce website), make an enquiry through a contact form, or some other target that you have for the site (i.e. share the content through social media websites). It can be very surprising what a small change of the way text is worded or the layout of parts of a webpage can actually make to your website’s conversion rate. In order to actually test the effect of a new change, you can use a new feature within Google Analytics called ‘Content Experiments’.

Google Content Experiments

Content Experiments will replace the previous tool that Google developed, ‘Website Optimizer’, which offered very limited functionality. Content Experiments works by creating multiple instances of the same webpage, each with slight variations. Once you have done this, you can set up a ‘goal’ within Google Analytics; for example, a user going through and buying a product on the website. Then, Content Experiments will present the different page variations to users at random and record how many times the goal is achieved on each. This can then be used to compare the conversion rate of each page in order to decide which is the most effective. Not only this, but you can limit the visitors who see the page variations to specific segments, for example, users that have came on the site via a mobile device, in order to see how the specific segments respond to the changes.

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How important is website design structure to your SEO?

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Matthew Barby

In many of our blogs that we have written in the past there has been lots of different tips and advice on ways to tweak your website to improve your on-page SEO. These tips normally consisted of changes to the <title> tag, the web content, images, and meta data. Now what we are going to look at is what you can do when your building your new website from scratch and how important is the actual structure and layout of your website to the search engine optimisation of the website as a whole.

Structure is an extremely important part of SEO, however it is not often paid much attention to in terms of SEO and this is often where a lot of web designers go wrong. The website can have the best content in terms of getting in your keywords and relevancy to the page topic but if Google can’t read this content then it is all done for nothing.

Thing about your design as containing several parts, for example, take the top navigation bar or side navigation bar and clearly separate this from other content so that Google is able to identify this as the navigation section. Next have your header area where you may want to have some rich media content to make the site look nice. If you do decide to do this, make sure that any text that is wrapped in amongst it is readable by the search engine and isn’t hidden within a Flash object. A great way to do this is with either a JavaScript or HTML5 image/text slider, and with the new capabilities that the HTML5 standard has brought, it can also add a nice aesthetic appeal to the page.

Now for the main section of the page. This is where you want to get in some of your important text keywords and a bit about the website. For example, we have the following on our homepage: ‘Wow Internet offers web design and search engine optimisation from Birmingham and Manchester as well as SEO conversion services.’ Try not to just keyword stuff in this area though as it will only be detrimental to your SEO and try to focus on getting across what your website is about.

The footer section of the website is a good place to put in any feeds that you have, so you can place your RSS feed, Twitter feed, Blog, Facebook, etc. By doing this it will increase the internal links within your website, make it easier to navigate, and have more fresh content related to you flowing through the site.

It is also very important to make sure that you keep a consistency in information amongst the different sections and make sure you follow your set theme throughout, i.e. don’t talk about how you are a web design firm in the main body and then talk about what’s going on in the sport headlines in your footer!

You will be surprised what a difference this can make towards your search engine optimisation and not only that but it enables users to find exactly what they are looking for much quicker and easier. Keep this in mind if you are in the design process and you will have a solid foundation to build upon.

The Importance of Mobile Device Friendly Web Design

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Matthew Barby

With the emergence of mobile devices and their increased usage it is becoming more and more important for web designers to take this into account when designing their websites to ensure that their are mobile device-friendly.

A recent study carried out by online research company, comScore Inc, found that over 38% of smartphone owners within the US had at some point used their phone to purchase goods online. This is an enormous figure and one that really cannot be ignored by web designers as it offers a whole new opportunity for new revenue streams.

“Fueled by smartphone adoption, mobile is becoming a central part in the shopping funnel for many consumers,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president for mobile. “In September we saw two-thirds of all smartphone owners perform shopping activities on their phones, including comparing products and prices, searching for coupons, taking product pictures or locating a retail store. Considering there are currently 90 million smartphone owners in the U.S., retailers without a well-developed mobile strategy are not only missing a tremendous opportunity with these customers but also risk becoming obsolete in the minds of these digital omnivores.”

In order to not get left behind in your competitors’ dust, a stable mobile strategy is essential and understanding the way that users will interact with your site is vital to getting this strategy right. There is a high emphasis on speed and ensuring that your users can get anywhere they want on your site in as little clicks (our touches in this case) as possible is a complete necessity to retaining custom to your website.