By: Chad Bell

A: OPTIMIZED WEBSITE CONTENT
Converting eCommerce website visitors into paying customers is not an easy task. Thankfully there are a few fundamental techniques for optimized website content to help you when planning your new website.

1. KNOW YOUR VISITORS
   Before you start planning and generating your content, you should be able to answer the following questions about your website:

Who is your core customer?
Why do they want to do business with you?
Why are you different from your competition?
How do your visitors find your website (Search engines, marketing collateral, word of mouth, etc.)?

2. PRESENT A CLEAR VALUE PROPOSITION
   Within seconds of visiting your website, your visitor will make the decision to stay or go find someone else. Your home page should present a clear message on why your product or services is better than your competition.
3. PRESENT A CLEAR CALL TO ACTION
   “Buy Now”, “Book Now”, “Sign Up”, are all examples of a clear call to action. Don’t make your potential customers hunt for these triggers. Display them proudly and predominantly throughout your site on every page.
4. USE EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS
   Presenting your product or service as “scarce” or “exclusive” gives your visitors a sense of urgency which intern will drive faster conversions. In other words, create the tipping point between gathering information and making a purchase.

Another example would be presenting yourself as an authority in your industry. Whether you’re the first, best, fastest, or most affordable, present yourself as number one through sophisticated design and a clean site structure.

5. REMOVE DISTRACTIONS
   This is an extremely important step in deciding what content to display on your site. For every piece of content for your website, ask yourself, “Is this going to increase sales or conversions?” What may seem imperative to you personally may seem irrelevant to your customers and thereby becomes a distraction. Anything that distracts from a conversion or sale should be removed. Also avoid annoying your audience with excessive pop-up, or sidebar ad’s. Advertisements should be displayed alongside the content elegantly as if they are a part of your content.
6. BALANCE YOUR WRITTEN CONTENT AND IMAGES
   Zen Den Web Design eCommerce Optimized Website Content

The sad fact of the visual world is that people do not want to read unless they have to. Web pages completely full of text with a tiny image at the top are a thing of the past. Create engagement and excitement through cleverly designed charts, diagrams, and images. If your customers are looking for information about your product or service, give it to them, don’t make them find it.

7. DISPLAY TESTIMONIALS
   People trust other people. If there are two coffee shops across the street from each other, one empty, the other has a line around the corner; statistics show that people trust the latter. Testimonials do the same thing for your website; Build trust by presenting your business as being popular and trustworthy.
8. KEEP YOUR SITE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE
   Optimizing your content for the web is another task that is essential to creating conversion or abandonment. According to Kiss Metrics , your rate of abandonment goes up roughly 7% per every second your site takes to load. Keep your site speed under control by fully optimizing images, using clear professional code structure, and avoiding hacks and plugins whenever possible.