Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to find your keys when you’re in a rush? They’re never where you’d expect them to be. You may have even bought that little $5 organizer thing that you promised yourself you’d always put your keys in after the last time your ripped apart half of your house trying to find them. But they’re not where you swore you’d leave them, and now you’re standing in the middle of a room full of all sorts of stuff—pillows, dog toys, blankets, clothes, books—everything except your keys. You turn over everything, and still haven’t found them. You’re about to throw your hands up and just call a cab, and suddenly something catches your eye. Your keys! But they’re all the way on top of the bookcase, and you’ll need a step stool to reach them (how’d they even get there, anyway?). You stretch as far as humanly possible, and you’re just able to wrap your finger around a keychain to tug them down from the shelf, when suddenly you lose your balance and come crashing down to the floor, along with your big screen TV. The room’s a mess, your TV’s broken, and on top of it all, you’re hurting pretty badly. But at least you found your keys, right?
What is Findability?
Maybe that’s just me. But if I had known where my keys were, I wouldn’t have to buy a new television or pay for a chiropractor. Things that are important need to be findable. Findability is the concept that a piece of relevant information can be easily found on the internet when a consumer searches for that product. Those companies that are easy to find and offer quality content see much greater revenues than those without, and can dedicate more of their time to their products instead of having to worry about where their company shows up on Google Search.
Building a Hummingbird Feeder: How to Get Google to Promote Your Site
While it is possible to bring people in through organic reach, sometimes it pays to pay when it comes to findability. An investment in building brand awareness and search engine optimization can bring in a plethora of new customers, which will generate revenue and will offset the investment you made in the first place.
After investing a substantial amount of money in pay per click advertising, you’re going to want to make sure the content on your site is maximizing your potential to bring in business. If customers can’t find what they’re looking for on your site, they’re not going to buy anything and you’ll have paid money to drive their traffic to your site with no return on your investment.
Keep Your Customers from Bouncing Out the Door with On-Site Findability
Customers will leave your site and find what they are looking for elsewhere if it’s not readily available on your site. That will increase your bounce rate, and it will make that findability investment backfire in a very bad way. Here are four tips to increase your on-site findability:
- Site Search – If a customer is using the search function on your site, then they should be considered a potential buyer, as 90% of buyers use search to find what they’re looking for. Those that can’t find what they’re looking for on the first try will be 3 times more likely to move to a different site that is easier to navigate. Consult web professionals to streamline your site to increase your conversion rate.
- Related Links and Products – This is a nifty organizational tool that will encourage consumers to buy more products from your site. This is like the aisle of candy bars next to the cash register at your local supermarket. Do you need that candy bar? Probably not. But it’s only 99 cents! SOLD. The same concept applies to your website. Show customers related products that they might be interested in and watch your sales increase.
- Site Match to Customer Needs and Preferences – People get mad when they are shown irrelevant content (irrelevant content being information that is neither a want nor a need for a consumer). Combat this problem with good site design, amazing content creation, and solid recommendations that are relevant to customers.
- Cross Device Experience – Thanks to the smartphone, people are accessing the internet from anywhere and everywhere. From a business perspective, that means that people can do their online shopping from their mobile device. But, your website has to be supported by a wide array of products from the Android to the iPhone. Professional web developers know how to format your website so that potential customers can access your company on the web.
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