You know your business better than anyone else.  That’s a good thing; you understand what your strengths are, where your weaknesses lie and what your customers want.

Or do you?

Understanding every detail of your business can be a double edged sword when it comes to your website.  Do you end up structuring it the way that you see your business or the way that your customer wants to understand and navigate your website?

There can often be a temptation to structure a website the way that you understand your business.  This can however be different to how a potential customer wants to find their way around your site.

The good news is that if you have Google Analytics or another analytics package running on your website the data is there for you to make informed decisions as to how people are finding their way around your website.

If you are selling goods or products online do you have goals set up for your processes to see if there is any drop off points?

Even if you’re not selling online are you looking at funnels to see how people navigate your site and highlighting any issues?

Once a website is launched it’s not the end of the process, it’s only the beginning.

Making sure that you are quickly understanding and addressing visitors needs will help you convert more business.

A quick test you can take is to give someone (not a family member or close friend!) something to find on your website and ask them to locate it.  Ask how easy they found it to find and if it were in the place that they expected it to be.

Try this again with a few other people and see if there are any common issues.  If there are, move to address them, but only if your analytics backs up the issues raised and once you’ve consulted with a decent number of people to make sure it isn’t an anomaly.

Ideally you shouldn’t have more than three layers of pages to get through to get to what you are looking for, even on the most complex of sites.

The more popular the information the easier it should be to find.  For example, if you have holiday cottages, how easy is it to find booking availability or facilities for disabled visitors?

Understand what your customers want to know and give it to them quickly and simply.

They may well understand your business the way that you do, but they may not, so make sure you are always backing up your website decisions with supporting data, because at the end of the day you want as many enquiries as possible.

Knowing what visitors want and giving it to them will help you achieve this.

For more information on how we can help you build a website that is easy to navigate and delivers exactly what your visitors are looking for please give us a call on 01566 784860 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk