Search Engine Optimisation and front page design

Recently I have seen a few websites which are getting lots of targeted traffic through Search Engine Optimisation and PPC, but receiving few conversions. This is due to the homepage design not sending the right message to the customer, making it hard for users to understand what the site is actually offering.

What many people fail to realize is that its pointless getting lots of traffic which doesn’t convert, you need to convert the users into customers or your website has achieved nothing. The problem is usability and design is a hard thing to gauge, you need to ask many people to get an overall opinion of the front page design. Of course to keep your traffic the front page still needs to be correctly optimised.

To improve conversions and maintain traffic you need to keep a good balance of usability and optimisation. This of course can be a difficult a time consuming thing to achieve. Your new front page design should be simple and easy for users to understand. Ideally users should be aware of what your site offering in a matter of seconds.

From an SEO point view it is a good idea to add keyword content, and use keywords in the standard navigation to help improve the relevancy of your pages in the search engines. Your new design should incorporate this content so that they page is still optimised, but is not cluttered, as this puts users off.

As part of our service Just Search can produce usability reports for your site to help increase conversions, and of course still remain search engine friendly.

Paul
SEO Programmer