Improve your Squarespace Website Conversion rate with these 7 adjustments
As with any challenge, sometimes the hardest part is knowing where to get started.
Your website is often the first point of contact a potential client or customer will have with your business. Beyond making a great first impression, your website is also an extremely powerful marketing tool.
Often people will avoid updating their website because they think their current one is adequate and a new website will be too costly. In reality, not updating your website could be leaving money on the table.
Here are 7 Squarespace website adjustments you can make to help drive conversion for your small business.
The following will cover 7 website adjustments you can make to help increase your conversion rate and gain more traction in search engines.
1) Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
These days, mobile-friendly is a requirement, not an option. As of March 2020 over half of all website traffic comes from a mobile device. If you’ve ever landed on a non-mobile-friendly page, you know how unpleasant that experience can be. People don’t want to pinch and zoom to try and find what they are looking for.
Google is well aware of this. Google is in the business of delivering the best possible search result for someone making a search query. If your website provides a poor user experience, you aren’t likely to be high on that list.
All this to say, ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is great for your business for two key reasons:
A mobile-friendly website is more likely to rank higher in search engines
A mobile-friendly website provides a better user experience and is more likely to lead to conversion
Luckily, Squarespace websites are designed to be mobile friendly. This mobile responsive functionality is a huge advantage of building on the Squarespace platform.
2) Clearly define and communicate your value proposition and services
Getting people to your website is only half the battle. Keeping them there and leading them to conversion is the other. The average website visit is only 8 seconds. Often people land on a website and can’t quickly find what they are looking for. Accordingly, they leave and continue their search.
A big way to counter this problem is to clearly communicate what you do and why you are the best choice above the fold.
It is very common for people to use clever slogans and pair text with imagery hoping people “get it” but more often than not, people just find themselves confused and move on.
Passing the blink test
A quick look into analytics and time-on-site will allow you to uncover if people are bouncing from your site or staying very briefly. If you find your time on site is minimal and your bounce rate is high it is possible website visitors can’t make sense of what you do, or their expectations weren’t met.
People should understand what your business offers within the blink of an eye. This means you have about 3 -5 seconds to convey what you do and why someone should continue to explore your website and consider doing business with you.
Visual design aside, a great way to do this is through an informative headline. This headline should be both brief and informative. Nailing your value proposition and communicating your core services is a great place to start if you are struggling with bounced visits and short time on site.
3) Decide what content is essential to provide on your Squarespace website
There are two major content sins I see on websites. A website that is swimming in poorly organized content. Or, a website is full of thin content (content with little or no added value).
If you have a website with a ton of content it is vital you first and foremost think about the intersection between user needs and business goals. So often we think more content is better, while in reality, that content could be detracting from conversion by creating a difficult user experience.
Google is focusing on the individual making a search query. They want to help them solve their problem as quickly and simply as possible. While we may think it is important to write several paragraphs about the history of our company, this information may not help someone determine if we are the best fit to assist them.
Is your content providing value?
First and foremost make sure the content you are providing is of value. This goes for the case of a lot of poorly disorganized content and for thin content that fails to deliver much value.
If you have thin content it is important to consider how you can help solve a person’s problems or provide them with valuable information. From there, take a look at where you can expand and build on your content to improve it.
Once you have decided on the content that you think fits both business needs and user needs, it is time to start optimizing your content.
4) Use headings to organize your content
People have increasingly smaller attention spans and are likely only skimming through your website. As discussed earlier, you want to give people the information they are looking for and help them solve their problems or answer their questions as easily as possible.
A great way to start optimizing your content is to add headings. By headings, I don’t just mean a larger, bold font. I mean using your h1, h2, and h3 tags.
Google cares first and foremost about user experience, so headings shouldn’t be used as some sort of black hat SEO technique. Rather, adding headings to your content can improve your website for two key reasons:
Headings can help improve user experience. Because people skim content, headings allow them to find the information they are trying to access more easily.
Headings can provide some hierarchical information to Google around the importance of your website content.
When a website page is built, google spiders are sent out to scan the content and make some assumptions around what your website is about. Where we see trending colour palettes, fonts and graphics, Google spiders see HTML and CSS.
What we see:
What Google Spiders see:
Google is getting better and better each day, but it needs a little help. By using your headings in a clear and well-organized manner you can demonstrate to Google what information on your website best represents your service offerings. Simply put, headings are a great way to say to “Hey Google, this information is important, please prioritize it.”
5) Write clearly, research keywords, and avoid jargon
So often we know so much about a topic or subject that we write for other experts. If your customer base is other experts, this makes a lot of sense. More often than not, however, people are selling their service or product to people without as much information.
It is so important your website reflects this. When people make a search query, they may not have the technical vocabulary that you do to explain what they are looking for. Make sure the words you use to describe your services are something a prospective client would use to make a search query.
In doing so, you are more likely to show up in search engines, and secondly, you can provide a better user experience. If someone arrives on a website full of jargon and phrases that don’t mean much to them, they are likely to continue searching.
Simply put, you want to think about what phrases potential website visitors might type into Google to solve their problem or find more information. If you have used those phrases and created quality content around them, Google will be more likely to serve up your website in a search query. Additionally, potential customers will have landed on a website page that is in line with their expectations and, therefore, more likely to convert.
6) Embrace landing pages
Landing pages are single, action-oriented pages with a single goal. Often websites can get pretty bloated with a lot of information. Landing pages help create a clear path to conversion. Rather than trying to solve a bunch of problems, they guide the website visitor to one solution.
I especially love landing pages for professional services. If for example, you are a business specializing in residential and commercial services, you want to capture traffic for both sides of the business.
Your homepage might address both your commercial and residential services, which is fine, but because the page is not as focused, the path to conversion (such as requesting a quote or contacting you for more information) is not as clear.
Landing pages can become quite granular. For example, let’s say you provide residential painting. You want to reflect this on your website on one page, but this can be expanded on in even more detail. You could create landing pages for both interior residential painting and exterior residential painting.
Landing pages are excellent for increasing conversion because they allow you to showcase each service, create a singular focus, and are more likely to meet website visitors' expectations.
If someone were to search for a residential interior painting company and you happened to have a webpage about that very thing, you are more likely to show up in the results for that search query.
Improve paid ad performance with dedicated landing pages
The same goes for traffic coming from paid ad campaigns such as Facebook Ads or Google search ads. People will have a better user experience if they click on an ad for residential interior painting and land on a page about just that. As a best practice, you don’t want to send traffic to your homepage for this very reason.
You can see in the examples below that I’ve created individual pages that are more narrowly focused. This way, I can create ad campaigns based on each unique service offering and build pages to rank for each service.
When a website page is more tightly linked to a visitor's search intent, your chance of conversion (form fill, quote request, telephone call) is much higher.
7) Consider the overall look and feel of your website
While this is last, it is certainly not least. You only have a limited amount of time to make a great first impression on a potential customer (remember the blink test). You’ve no doubt put a great deal of care and consideration into your business product and services. Your website is part of your brand ethos and it deserves that same attention. It is often the first point of contact a potential client or customer will have with your brand. You want to take this opportunity to shine.
So many people are busy running their business that they don’t get around to updating their website, or they make a few attempts to make improvements and don’t get very far. It happens.
Potential clients and customers need to see you as a trusted and competent service provider. A key way to help convey that message is through a modern and professional website. If your overall aesthetic is dated, or you have horrible stock images and fonts that fight with each other, it is likely time to update your website.
To learn more about web design trends in 2022, visit this article.
Squarespace website optimization is a continual and ongoing process
You can make all sorts of tweaks to improve conversion rates that aren't listed above, but most of them will boil down to creating a good experience for website visitors. For a deeper dive into conversion-focused web design, read this how-to guide for growing a business online.
For example, requiring fewer form fields at check out can help improve conversion rate. Why? It is a better experience for the user.
Improving page load speed can help improve your ranking in search engines. Why? It is a better experience for the user.
Including social proof on landing pages can improve conversion rate? Why? It gives a greater sense of confidence and, therefore, a better experience.
There are so many ways you can optimize your website. Each element of your website, from headings, photography, CTA's (calls to action), and forms, can be optimized.
Take some time to do conversion optimization research and consider how you can improve your website
