5 Little Website Tweaks That Generate Big Results

Just like small changes to a recipe make a big difference in the final meal, websites too can see big results from minor changes to usability and functionality. Aside from consistent content updates and the regular website maintenance, there are also some website tweaks that can vastly improve the user experience without requiring a complete website redesign. This month, we’ll review some simple updates that add a great amount of value to your website.

1. Personalize content. We should all know by now that "content is king", yet some of us don’t give it the attention we should. In order to make the biggest impact through your content, personalize it to your discrete audiences. There are several ways to personalize content for your users, but for the sake of this article we will focus on prioritizing your audience and targeting the vocabulary to each audience type. First you should have an awareness of who your key audiences are and what they are seeking within your website. With that in mind, craft the vocabulary and calls to action so that they engage and resonate with the reader.

2. Clarify your calls to action. Almost all websites, whether B2B, B2C, or Cause-based, share a common goal of engaging with your visitors and converting them in some way. This may mean buying a product, making a donation, or contacting a sales representative. Whatever your calls to action are, make sure that they do not compete with one another, they are clearly identifiable, and simple to follow through with. The key to clear calls to action is simplicity. And of course once that action is complete, remember to say thank you.

3. Create conversion goals. If you have calls to action on your site, then you most likely have forms for those actions (signing up for an event, filling out a contact form, etc.). Tracking the success of your form will give you valuable insight into how your visitors are navigating your site to get to the contact form, for example. Setting up a goal can be straight forward and there are some good tools to help. Hubspot offers tools for a fee that will help you manage and report on your site conversions. Google Analytics also has a conversion goal feature integrated with their suite of tools. If you already use Google Analytics it is just a matter of mapping the forms (your goals) with their tools and you’ll be tracking conversions in no time.

4. Update your Meta Data. There is a lot of debate about the level of importance given to Meta Data on your website. However there are a few key pieces that you should pay particular attention too. The "Meta Title" is the first line that search engines display on the search results page. This is important for two reasons, first search engines place higher importance on the keywords in this tad, second it is what a human will read and decide whether it is compelling enough to click the link. The other easy piece of Meta Data to consider is the "Meta Description" - the two lines of text that appear immediately under the Title on search results pages. Like the Title tag, the keywords in the description are important for the search engines, and how well it reads is important for the human reader.

5. Add sharing features. Many organizations can use social media sharing tools to make it easier for users to share information about your organization and give your site legs. Fortunately, there are several quick and easy solutions for adding sharing buttons to your site from sources like ShareThis or AddThis, that don’t require a technical background to implement. These free programs allow you to customize the look and feel of the sharing links so they blend nicely into your website. The administrative interface offers detailed reporting of what content is being shared, and by whom.

These are just a handful of simple ways to improve your website without investing a significant amount of time or money. Small tweaks in usability and functionality add a great amount of value to the user experience and the results that you will see from these changes are sure to outweigh the effort that they require.

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