Your website is a window for the world into your business, and perhaps your most valuable sales tool. Therefore it’s imperative that it performs as a conversion tool, aiding you in securing new business. In today’s digitally focussed climate it’s imperative that your site continues to be measured and perform. Your site should be delivering on structure, design and SEO. A website that delivers on all of these things, will mean more sales and greater brand recognition.
Project context
We were approached by Mazars, Europe’s 8th largest accountancy firm to help them measure and understand their site performance across key departments so that they could better optimise their content and design to help with customer conversions and lead generation.
We broke up the areas of analysis into three sections:
1. Data
Marketing used to be somewhat of a mystical art as it was often hard to measure your efforts and show data-driven results. This is no longer true, Google Analytics among other paid for services ensure that your website can be completely accountable and measurable.
In order to get a useful set of data to analyse, we worked with three years of data which ensured that all anomalies weren’t going to skew information, and that patterns could be identified if present. Firstly we looked site wide at user numbers, content popularity, entrance and exit pages. We then broke the data down into relevant departments to evaluate their performance in comparison to the wider site as well as their specific content popularity. This allowed us to see user consistencies, make recommendations to amend the design to content access and create relevant call-to-actions to keep users on the site providing them with more engaging content.
As well as helping inform decision-making, having an archive of data also ensures that a client can establish a status quo, understanding what one may expect to see across the site moving forwards so that measurable goals can be established.
2. Terminology
The financial services industry has a wide range of specialised language which can often mean that it’s hard to deliver clear and simple messaging. Audiences can vary from industry professionals to potential clients that have no knowledge of what service they even need. When a user comes to your site without knowing your offer or your brand the business goal is to provide them with a solution. Too many things to focus on will mean that they can’t focus on any of them. Your company value will be lost.
In order to provide our client with the full picture of exactly how their terminology was performing we actioned the below:
A comprehensive breakdown of Mazars department terminology alongside their key competitors so they could see exactly how the industry was communicating in comparison to themselves.
Demonstration to how their current SEO was ranking for each of their specific service terms e.g if they were featured on page 1, page 2 etc.
Creation of a detailed keyword forecast generated by AdWords for each of their potential Google search terms and their competitors comparative terms. This allowed the client to see what their potential audiences were searching for and then ensure that their site content included it.
This information was extremely valuable to the client as it allowed them to have a really clear understanding to how their terminology was performing. Unless content meets user intent, it’s very unlikely to rank highly on Google (meaning you could be missing out on valuable potential clients). We made recommendations on what changes could be made as well as creating an estimated budget for a marketing campaign around key search terms and competing ones.
3. Design
The design of your site is just as critical as the terminology. Creating a visual approach that supports your messaging helps users understand and engage with your brand. The design should support your user's journey through the site, using clear call-to-actions to aide conversion rate optimisation. Responsive behaviour is also a must, according to eMarketer, 55% of survey respondents in the U.S. said they wouldn’t buy from a brand if its website or mobile experience was poorly designed.
In order to review the design for the client we pulled screenshots from key pages on their site and the comparative pages for competitors. This gave a visual overview of the marketplace and the visual language/style used within it, particularly focussing on how effectively the company demonstrated their process.
Results
Since completing this work our client has requested further analysis across different organisational departments. Understanding user behaviour is the most valuable tool in your digital arsenal; capturing users through search, presenting them with a clear offer, and supporting this with a strong and logical journey flow will lead to conversions, which ultimately means more business. Building a historical picture of your website performance means that you can build goals going forward and help develop your offering and increase your conversion rate. Get in touch today if this is something that you think can help your business and brand growth.
