Testing Small Business Website Changes
The great thing about having an internet business is that you can make a change to your website and see instant results from the visitors that come to your site.
But what happens if after you have made changes you see your sales start to slow down or your conversion ratio suffer? Could it be the changes you made to your website have a negative impact or that something else such as traffic changes or that customers have seen a change to your site and are mulling over their decision to purchase?
If you run an ecommerce store the chances are that new customers are not quite sure whether to trust your new website with the changes they have noticed.
Most purchases on sites that people are never come across before happen after several visits. Your new customers will come to your site and see what you have to offer but are then likely to go and visit other similar sites to check prices and to see if they may get more for their money.
Because of this they may come back to your site with a view to purchase but then see changes to your design or offer and are now not sure whether to continue with their purchase.
They will have questions in their mind such as “will their products arrive on time”, “will they be as described on your website”, “are there cheaper alternatives”, and ”will their payment be secure”?
As there are so many questions that new customers are likely to have in their minds they will come back time and again before they make that final purchase — and if on those six or seven visits things always change on your website they may likely move onto somewhere else and you’ve lost that sale for good.
I have seen and heard stories about sites that change something thinking that it will improve sales and then if the sales do not improve immediately then believe the change hasn’t worked. Even if the website owner has used split testing this can also occur if they simply haven’t got the volume to conduct a full test.
I have also been impatient with some sites after a changed and just waited a couple of days, sometimes just a few hours, to see if changes had an impact. For these tests I wasn’t split testing so I didn’t really know if sales would have slowed down in any case.
So what’s the answer? In the first instance you really need patience, and lots of it. Some things to improve on a website are obvious such as ease of navigation navigation, secure checkout logos, that it’s easy to add items into a shopping cart and it’s intuitive to move through the checkout process.
Others include good quality pictures of your products, telephone number and address in a prominent place. But there are other smaller changes that could be made to improve your sales and conversions and if you do change something on your website here are some tips to help you with the process:
- change one thing at a time
- give it time
- properly test with software to see if your change improves against the original
- make a copy of the page before the change so you can go back
- test many hundreds of visitors and not just a few
- really do test your site and don’t put up with a 1% conversion
- employ experts - what would a 10% improvement in conversion do for you?
It’s important to change and test areas on your website as the internet business is moving so fast. Do try to improve your website for your small business and make changes, but test and track what you are doing, and above all, have patience.
