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How to Turn Visitors into Customers

Having a website is a great idea if you want to be able to update information quickly and cheaply and attract business from around the globe.

However, simply having a website isn’t enough; you also need to be able to convert visitors into customers if you want to succeed online.

Making sure that your site is as user friendly as possible is one of the best ways to do this and in this article, I’ll share some top tips to help you do this.

1. Make Sure Your Site Loads Fast

Not only are most people too busy to wait for ages for your website to load up, but they also don’t have to since there are plenty of other sites out there that load very quickly.

Don’t lose business to your competitors because you have a slow website. Research suggests that most people will not wait for more than four seconds (at the very most) for a site to load before hitting the back button on their browser.

2. Make Sure People Can Easily Find What They’re Looking For

You know where all the products are situated on your site, but does your customer? If it is difficult for people to find the products and information they are looking for, they will simply stop trying.

Think about how intuitive your navigation is to follow to put yourself in your visitors’ shoes. If it is not logical then don’t be afraid to change it.

3. Make Sure You Don’t Have Any Broken Links

Not only are links that don’t work frustrating for your visitors, they are also penalised by the search engines. This is because a site which has lots of links that don’t work is probably not well maintained.

Check all the links on your site to check whether they are still working. If the sites you link to are no longer live then remove the links as quickly as possible.

4. Make Sure Your Site is Readable

Some colours and colour combinations make it very difficult to read copy on the web. Avoid using white writing on black backgrounds or very light or bright colours like yellow, for example. After all, if people can’t read your message then how do you expect to be able to close that sale?

5. Make Sure Your Pages Aren’t Too Copy Intensive

Although you probably have lots to say about the benefits of your products and services, you’ll get your message across much better if you keep your copy concise.

Keep your pages short so that people don’t have to scroll down to read everything on them and avoid cluttering them with too much text. Short punchy sentences and bullet points work really well on the web.

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Re-Publishing Information

Please feel free to publish any of these articles on your websites.

If you do so, please include the following 'about the author' box:

Victoria Selman is the founder of SEMS Consultancy- an internet marketing consultancy specialising in search engine optimisation. SEMS Consultancy prides itself on offering a personal, reliable and cost effective service for those looking to establish or promote an existing online business.