Organic traffic, the kind brought through SEO marketing, covers over 51% of all traffic worldwide. It’s bigger than all of the other traffic sources combined and has an average conversion rate of 2%.
In reality, many websites have less than that because of poor user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). Millions of people land on webpages with no clear calls-to-action, an ineffective design and lackluster user experience.
Read on to find out how improving your UX can boost your SEO conversions.
Before talking about how to update the UI and improve UX, you first need to better understand the search intent your users have.
For traffic generated by ads, you can easily create a landing page specifically for gathering conversions.
For traffic brought in through your SEO efforts, you have less control over the actual design. The reasons are:
Traffic brought through search engine marketing can be split into four main categories based on the intent of the user, according to Joshua Hardwick from ahrefs.
Users who have an informational search intent get on your website to learn something. Maybe they want to learn more about UI and UX or research the best CMS. They are not interested to buy anything right now, yet, they wish to learn and become informed.
Of course, not all informational searches are questions. Some can be extremely simple like “CSS guide” or “mobile-first indexing.” The chances of directly selling something to these users is low. The best option here is to increase your conversion rate by improving both your design and your CTAs.
Integrate a table of contents that allows the user to navigate faster through the content. This will reduce the bounce rate and may also give you a couple of link-rich snippets in the search engine results page (SERP).
By reducing the bounce rate and increasing the time spent on the page, you also increase the chance that the user will convert.
As for the CTA, give the user more chances to learn. Instead of selling him something when he doesn’t want to buy, offer to add him or her to your newsletter subscription in exchange for an in-depth guide.
Users who arrive through a navigational search intent already know what they want. Most of the time, they either forgot the exact page/URL or they think it’s faster to search for a query than input the URL.
Their search queries are most of the time a combination of the brand and the service. “Kuno Inbound Marketing” is a navigational search intent query.
The best option here is to analyze the top navigational queries people use to get to your website. This shows their interest in your product or service.
With the info you get after the analysis, you can:
Remember, it’s best to allow the user to reach your page in three clicks or less.
Transactional search intent users already know what they want to buy. Right now, they are searching for the prices, extra billing info or exact information about the product or service.
Search queries relevant here can be: “HubSpot pricing,” “buy video editing software,” or “keyword tracking tool features,” for example.
For users interested in buying your service, you need to make the process as fast and easy as possible.
Some experts even recommend removing the navigation or reducing the navigation options on pages that are supposed to sell. Yuppiechef increased its conversion rate by 100% through an A/B testing process where it removed the menu on certain landing pages.
Another option is to make sure you ask for less data. People tend to stay away from long forms that ask for too much personal information or take too much time from the start.
Ask for the contact information and get the rest of the data down the pipeline. Venture Harbour created a case study related to the correlation between contact form length and conversion rate.
They realized that reducing the form from nine questions to five can increase the conversion rate by more than 30%.
Users caught in the commercial investigation phase search for variety. They already know they need a certain product or service, but they have yet to decide which provider to commit to.
They’ll look for “the best headphones for games” or for “best food distributors in San Francisco.” Local searches are usually filled by users who investigate opportunities. Whenever you’re searching for pizza delivery, you know you want to buy a pizza, but you haven’t decided on the actual seller or offer yet.
Users in this phase need a better representation of the service that can be compared to the competition. Showcase your data in table formats and as many numbers as possible. Clearly state your prices, features and limitations.
Investigate your competitors and find their unique value proposition. Tailor your design and content in a way that integrates this information in your sales pitch, as well.
Now that we’ve talked about the types of people you can get through SEO efforts, let’s discuss general methods that will help you get more clients and leads with little to no effort.
Right now, most users visit websites through a mobile device. While most articles state you should have a mobile-friendly website, we think this is something so standard we can’t even consider it a tip.
Instead, we advise in separating the content in blocks. On mobile, where the content is arranged from top to bottom, it is extremely important for the user to be able to differentiate between certain types of content.
If a user understands where a paragraph stops and a CTA starts just from the design, without reading the actual content, you’re increasing the chances he or she will convert.
Separating content through design will also help to stop users from scrolling through your entire content without reading it by showcasing something that will catch their attention.
This type of separation can also be seen on the Kuno blog, where a colorful call-to-action in between the content was added.
User experience is not only related to design but content and functionality, as well.
Increasing your website’s speed will help decrease the bounce rate and the number of users who fail to see your content, resulting in more conversions.
Increasing your website’s speed will also help in ranking better in the SERP and increase your overall traffic. It’s a win-win situation.
You can do this by:
Page speeds are so important that Walmart found out the following: for every one second it reduced from the loading time, it increased conversion rate by 2%. Firefox also encountered a 15.4% increase after eliminating two seconds out of its loading times.
You open a menu at a restaurant and see more than 30 types of pizza. How much time does it take you to pick one?
The same concept can be applied to CTAs. We’ve seen websites where the user could apply to a newsletter, got a pop-up for a sale, was pushed to fill a contact form and saw an ad.
Make sure you only have two to three different CTAs on a webpage. Also, put enough space between them and allow the users to look for the one that is relevant for them. If you put a CTA after every 600-700 words, you’re in the green.
There are multiple tools that allow you to send users to two or more variants of a page. This is called A/B testing.
The best way to improve your UX is to do small changes and test them out with large numbers of people, or at least enough to have statistical validation.
It’s almost impossible to work on the UX of users brought by your SEO campaigns if you’re not analyzing user behavior.
How can you decide to change a certain button or CTA if you don’t know where people look or click?
That’s why software programs that check user interaction and heatmap their scrolling or activities are a must in both A/B testing and improved user experience.
You can use tools like Hotjar to track everything that happens on your website, going so deep that you can also see recorded videos of a user’s activity.
One pro hint: Filter your recorded users and look for people who got to the cart or checkout page, but failed to convert into buyers. You may find out the errors or problems that they encountered in their process.
As an example, a company that sold cotton bed sheets had an increase of 50% in sales after they removed the mandatory setting on their email section of the checkout form. Most of their clients were females, over 50, that did not have an email. They would add to the cart and fail to convert as the system would not allow them to purchase without an email.
Because emails are not needed to ship the product, its necessity was removed.
SEO traffic is one of the main sources of web traffic globally. Because of this, you’ll encounter multiple types or personas of users. Knowing how to analyze their behaviors and working to give them a better experience on your website will improve your chances of converting and give you better results in the long run.
As the Content Director at Moburst, Maria supervises the creation and updates of the educational articles on the Moburst Blog. This includes creating content and supervising all tasks related to SEO. Maria maintains the communication between their brand and content curators for guest posting, PR and paid media advertising.
