90% of buying decisions start online so it’s important that your website is built with a frictionless buying experience in mind.
It’s super important that you are optimizing every opportunity to stay in contact with each person. We’ve outlined some of the best online tools for conversions to help you enhance your user experience during every step of their journey.
SEO TOOLS
When it comes to SEO the first thing we hear is “I want to be number one on Google.” Ahhhh, don’t we all. When it comes to Google page rank there is no quick trick or workaround. It turns out Google is smarter than everyone and they can see through any sneaky behavior.
There are a ton of great SEO tools out there, but here are a few of our favorites.
Yoast
The SEO manager space is super easy to read as it evaluates the page you are on and gives you color-coded triggers (red, yellow, green). The goal is to have your page green-lite so it’s ready to roll. How do you do that? It’s super easy as it will walk you through what areas need attention and offer suggestions as to how to enhance your page’s SEO.
- Take a look at you primary keyword phrase - is it in the title, within the first few sentences, phrased in the subtitle or naturally occurring throughout the content? This keyword phrase should also appear in your meta description as well as alt text in your images.
- When writing your page or blog content keep those keyword phrases in mind and as the page develops Yoast then it will evaluate it to make sure you are optimizing for best search results.
One pretty great feature about Yoast is the ability to customize your meta description - that page preview displayed in Google search results. There is no need to be an expert. Yoast does a great job of walking you through areas where improvement can happen, offers link suggestions and the premium has additional features to amp up your SEO with advanced features. Ultimately giving your content the best opportunity to rank well within those search results.
Answer the Public
There are 3 billion Google searched each day! This platform will give you insight into different keywords that are being searched and a deeper understanding as to how people search for topics. It’s a great platform to help you get started with keywords.
Google Keyword Planner
The Google keyword planner is for those using Google Ads. Put a term into the planner and they will give you other potential keywords and traffic and competition for those specific targets. These tools will also, share word variances to best hit your audience, what they are searching for, how they are phrasing it their terms, and how your competition is using it/ranking for it.
Browseo
This site, focuses solely on HTML and lets you see what your site looks like from a search engine perspective. You can quickly see the page’s structure as well as search for specific terms.
Can I Rank
Can I Rank is great for you or a client if you are doing agency-work. Google ranks search results based on relevancy and authority, so this platform uses AI to score or grade your site. You’ll enter in what information you want to rank for, list in competitors, and then the platform will take it from there. Analyzing your site pages individually you will be given feedback as to how you would rank and what the competition would look like.
SITE SPEED TOOLS
Why does website speed matter… outside of pure frustration with lagging load times? It matters. A) you’ll lose your visitors if images, videos or the site itself aren’t performing well. B) slow site rendering will lower your rank among search engines. Here are a few tools to help speed up that “heavy” site.
GTMetrix
GTMetrix will analyze your site to help you determine why it’s performing slowly and help you find optimization opportunities.
wp-Smushit
Smushit will analyze for speed and share results. For example, if your images are too large, they will provide suggestions as to what your next steps should be. Compressing your image library folder to a lighter weight so your site speed increases is a super easy fix. Most people don’t realize that image size does matter. We often want large high-resolution images so they appear crisp and clean, yet those large files will slow the site considerably. Lower res, web-friendly are the way to go for optimization.
wp-super-cache
Caching is when your pages are remembered so they can be delivered faster. By adding a caching tool will help a site load quickly and will help other users with poor connectivity or those with slower data speed.
wp-rocket.me
Blog sites can be enhanced with caching tools as well. Let’s say we have a piece of pillar content with several images, maybe a video added into the content and a slow load speed. A “lazy load” could be the trick you need to boost speed. Instead of loading all images and videos at the same time, they will load once the user gets to them.
Pro tip: Reminder, your cache will need to be cleared if you update links or other content on your page otherwise your users won’t see the update.
Google Mobile-Friendly tool
Desktop user experience isn’t the only consideration. Google will rank results higher if mobile requirements are met.
MEASUREMENT TOOLS
Test, measure, adjust... repeat.
Page Analytics by Google
Google Page Analytics works as an extension on your browser allowing you to see real-time the activity on your website. This is a really cool feature, as you can visually see where people are engaging with the site, shows key hot spots, and with this data, you can gain a better perspective as to what is a priority on your site or within an individual page. It gives you insight to adjust your content, page deliverable to match your users’ preferences and traffic patterns, giving them a frictionless experience.
HotJar
Realtime visual representation of what is happening on your website. Hotjar shows a visual heatmap of where users are spending their time with “Hot” and “Cold” spots. This application can track a user’s navigation and provide a screenplay video of what a website visitor is doing on your site. These hot and cold spots can give you insight into changes and updates you may want to make based on the user’s experience and interaction with your sites… are people clicking on an image thinking it is linked, but it isn’t? Maybe that should then be a link. Are visitors skipping over main graphic information for something below the fold? Maybe your information needs to switch priority placement. Hotjar gives you the opportunity to pivot your content to best serve your audience.
ENGAGEMENT
Once you have visitors to your site, it’s time to wow them with engagement points for an overall exceptional experience.
Messenger
Add Messenger to your website and sync to your page. Why? This consolidates all your messages into a single space. And Messenger has grown into a pretty robust tool. Messaging should be a standard on your website. People are searching for easy answers and offering a chat or messenger option allows for easy conversion.
Messenger an chatbots can be easily manager for real-time conversations as well as set for out-of-office hours directing visitors to a list of pre-populated Q&A solutions. And be creative with your messages. Use photos, gifs, and videos in your responses and customize with your branding.
Messenger also has the option to label your contacts so you can better speak to their needs, add notes, or even assign to another team member to continue the conversation.
NOTE >> If you’re using messenger on your site - the site visitor must have a messenger account to use this specific option.
Drift
Drift is a simple set-up with just a little piece of code added onto your website. It’s super easy as you can set hours, specific messaging and it’s a robust app allows you to carry on a conversation or address questions from wherever you are.
FreshChat
Similar to Drift, but allows you to have 10,000 visitors/month with 5 users for free. With the free version, you will have the app’s branding on it, but it's a great way to start and test out the chat.
HOW TO OPT-IN YOUR PEOPLE
Who has a blog? How can people stay in touch with you easily? Collect email addresses on your site, not to spam, but to reach out with value-added information. Offer coupon codes, free ebooks or access to helpful downloads. By offering something of value in exchange for email addresses you are easing the line of communication and creating an avenue to share your message.
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot’s CRM is completely free to start collecting data with sign-ups and is a great way to start collecting details when you need a little more than just an email platform.
Optinmonster
Opt in monster has a pretty robust conversion optimization toolkit and will help with lead generation. The best part… no coding needed. Lead generation forms are templated so you can easily create a beautiful design, target and personalize offers and increase web conversion.
Mailmunch
Both Mailmunch and Optinmonster will integrate with email marketing services and CRM systems with exit intent. What’s exit intent? The AI will notice someone is about to X out of the site and will serve a pop-up offer to keep people on the page.
Gravity forms
Gravity forms is basically a one-stop-shop for WordPress forms. You can easily build and publish forms in minutes and has a ton of add-ons and integrations with other apps.
Google forms
Google forms is part of the Google Suite and is an easy way to create online forms, surveys and other forms of data capture. The beauty of Forms, is that it integrates with the rest of the Google suite so all the data capture happens within the family of docs keeping your information right at your fingertips.
Sendinblue
Send In Blue can manage emails, forms, drip campaigns, text marketing and offers a built-in CRM. Basic/limited (yet still pretty robust) usage starts for free, upgraded enhancements starting price points are super low.
Calendly
Calendly automates your scheduling. By sharing a link you’re able to provide calendar options to contacts looking to schedule appointments. This is a super convenient option… just think about all the back and forth that happen when trying to schedule a meeting. Sharing a link that is synced to your calendar cuts down all that needless run around.
Share This
Make it easy for your audience to share your content. Adding simple share buttons to your pages will make the social share process seamless.
We hope you find value in some of these tools, they’ve been a time saver for us and have helped to maximize our own online conversions and also for our clients. We’d love to hear from you… what apps or tools are you using to help boost your customer/user experience?
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