Your website experience plays a vital role in your marketing strategy. This month’s webinar explores key changes you should make to your website to drive more traffic, engagement and sales in 2025.
Understanding the Digital Consumer
In order to understand how to make your website more impactful, we must first explore the modern digital consumer journey. The digital age has changed rapidly over the last 15 years. As devices and technology change over time, so do the user’s expectations. Understanding how today’s consumers research their problem, become aware of your business and make the final purchasing decision will help you with the digital mindset you need to critically evaluate your own website.
- Phase 1: In the Awareness stage, the consumer is just introduced to a problem, need or want.
- Phase 2: In the Research phase, the consumer is beginning to learn about all the options available to fulfill the problem, want or need.
- Phase 3: In the Consideration phase, the consumer has narrowed down the options to the top fitting brands, and is weighing the best choice.
- Phase 4: In the Purchase phase, the consumer has made the final decision and is ready to become a paying customer.
- Phase 5: The Retention phase is all about staying top-of-mind with your active and recent customers to ensure long-term loyalty.
A question you may be asking yourself is how much does my website really matter through each of these phases? Well, 68% of U.S. adults prefer to shop online instead of in-person — and that percentage continues to climb every year. For bigger purchases or service-based needs, 81% of U.S. consumers use the internet to research the product or service before they go out in-person for it. Your website is not only the key to attracting new customers, but it also plays a vital role in nurturing your target consumers every step of the way in a very highly competitive online market.
The key to increasing your website performance in 2025 comes down to 3 main factors: Search Engine Optimization, User Experience and Trust Signals. Keeping those 3 key factors in mind, let’s take a deeper look at the 5 things you can do to your website to drive more traffic, engagement and sales:
1. Conversion Points
The most important job your website has is to collect contact information of your target audience. Your website only has one chance to make a good enough first impression that will encourage your target audience to voluntarily give you their contact information for future sales. In the digital world, the moment a customer makes the effort to try and contact you is considered a conversion. So, a conversion can be anything from a contact form submission to a phone call or a newsletter sign-up.
The goal of your website is to make that conversion as easy as possible. This can be done through pop-ups boxes with exclusive promotions, downloadable content behind a sign-up form, automated abandoned cart messages, or creating a referral program for your loyal customers.
2. Fully Responsive Design
Smartphones have been the dominant devices for browsing the web for years now. In fact, over 64% of global internet traffic in 2024 came from mobile devices. Now is the perfect time to ask yourself: when was the last time I reviewed my business website on my phone? As user trends shift to a mobile-first mindset, so should your website design. With everyone having all different types of smartphones, tablets and laptops, the key to a seamless customer experience is a fully responsive design that is fluid across all devices. No matter what device your target audience is using, there should be no complications or barriers to accessing your web pages on any device.
In addition to the fluid design across devices, users have certain expectations on how a website should function on mobile touchscreens. Utilizing universal elements such as main menus, simple contact forms and buttons will ensure an intuitive experience. You will also need to test all the functional elements to ensure they are easily usable on mobile. Your fingertip is much larger than your desktop mouse cursor; If buttons are too small or too close together, it can affect how easily a thumb could click them on mobile.
3. Testimonials & Trust Signals
The next key factor to focus on is building trust and credibility with your audience, as well as search engines. Today’s online consumers are much more tech-savvy which means they are also much more cautious online. They are more self-aware of trust signals to look for before giving a website any personal information.
- Showcasing your online reviews builds trust in your products or services and can boost your sales by 280%.
- Google prioritizes ranking websites that are fully secure and they will even warn users before navigating to an unsecure website. You can accomplish this by talking to your website provider about installing an SSL certificate which adds an encrypted connection between your site files and a user’s browser.
- Adding accreditations, awards and community membership badges to your site can all help build trust in the legitimacy of your business.
- Lastly, if your website utilizes e-commerce, you need to configure the highest quality security measures to ensure no payment data will be at risk during or after the purchase.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The primary goal of Search Engine Optimization is to align a website’s content with search engine algorithms, making it easier for users to find relevant information when searching online. Unfortunately, this is not a one-time fix; new competitors are popping up everyday and Google is constantly updating its ranking algorithm. SEO efforts are a constant piece of every digital marketing strategy. If you follow these 6 steps on a cycle, you will see a lot of improvement in your search rankings over time.
- Step 1: Define your website goals. What do you want your website to accomplish in the next year?
- Step 2: Analyze your current performance. What are your strongest and weakest pages in terms of traffic and rankings?
- Step 3: Conduct Keyword Research. What search terms are people typing into the search bar to find your products or services?
- Step 4: Update Your Content. How can you update your content to include those common keywords?
- Step 5: Regular Content Plan. How will you update your website content more regularly?
- Step 6: Monthly Review. How can you make necessary monthly adjustments based on your website performance?
This 6-step method will help you maintain a data-driven digital marketing strategy that will improve the ROI of your website.
Website Accessibility
Website accessibility is the practice of designing and developing websites so that they can be used by everyone, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. It ensures that all users, including those with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments, can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with web content effectively.
With over 70 million U.S. adults having one or more disabilities, there is bound to be some crossover with your target audience. Making your website accessible for all users opens up a whole new sector of your target audience you may not be attracting just yet. If your brand is all about inclusivity but your website isn’t accessible, your brand just becomes empty words. This is your opportunity not only to reduce your legal risk as a business owner, but to also make a strong brand position that your competitors might be missing out on.
We recommend talking to your website provider on the best website accessibility solutions out there.
At Katava Marketing, your vision is our mission! Our full-service marketing agency offers website development, digital marketing, creative services and everything else your business needs to increase its revenue. Contact us to get started today!
