Search Engine Optimisation and website optimisation, though used interchangeably are not the same. Website optimisation deals with varying aspects of the website itself, starting from its core design idea, programs used, Ecommerce additions and other developer tools that attract a visitor to the website and also hold the visitor in the website.
Website optimisation is the next logical step after SEO. Any online shopper would like to buy from the first-ranker in his or her search provided the website has a neat interface, a good design and was very easy to work with and fast as well. For an age when time is a very precious commodity, a website that is optimised to properly display content and be very usable is a major hit with websites.
So what are the essential needs for a website to be optimised for visitors, and not search engine spiders?
The following ideologies such as design, content and usability apply to SEO in terms of keyword usage. Thus, using these theories to optimise a website is what one must do to attract visitors to his or her site.
Design- One of the first things that a user notices when he or she enters your website is how it looks and feels. To ensure that a visitor converts into a customer, you must design a top-notch website that is very alluring to the eye. Although such websites do not come cheap, you should not scrimp when it comes to paying up your designers for their job.
There are some websites online that offer a walkthrough designing process and give you free tools to design your website yourself. However, more often than not, these websites sneakily put in irrelevant advertisements into your website, pulling down your rank far more than duplicate content ever could have. Avoid such sites like the plague, especially if you are looking to run an online business for a lot of money.
Professionalism is one of the few things that make a visitor stay in your website, as does quality build and content. These things, by virtue, encourage visitors to learn more about your website and your product because these things are neatly presented to them on a platter. Security is also one of the main concerns of the online shopper, and you must ensure that your security is verified by an online authority so that your customers feel safe inside your website.
Content- The attention period of the typical internet user is very low. Thus website content is methodically made to be precise and to the point, leaving no room for doubt in this tight box. Content made for the web also includes a lot of visual media instead of mundane text, because images and videos capture people's attention far easily than black-and-white text ever could have.
The content of your website must market the product in such a way that most of the features of the product that you are selling are highlighted in the first couple of paragraphs itself. While the rest of the paragraphs serve as further information for all those interested in knowing more, the low-attention-span users are either immediately converted into customers, or just unique hits. Use short sentences that are simple and easy to read - customers will never get bored too easily with short sentences that highlight great features. Offer a call to action for all those indecisive buyers, and gear your site up for selling your product well.
In that vein, your content must exclusively focus on your product, and if there are any links at all, they must all direct to those sites that are in your demographic, as visitors might want to know more about the industry by looking at other sites. Similarly, your writing tone must reflect your product's buyers - use a casual tone if you are selling teenage clothing, or a business-like tone if you are selling enterprise tools.
Usability- The most important factor of your website when it concerns human visitors is the usability of your website. Search engine crawlers are not so much concerned with your website's usability as they are concerned with the indexing process. However, when a visitor comes to your site from an SERP, he or she expects a level of usability not found in any of the other sites he or she has clicked upon or ignored. Thus, the entire site's layout must be presented in an easy-to-read way such that the user can navigate from one page to another fluidly, without pausing to look for where exactly a certain page will be categorised or placed.
For a merchant website, the importance of a shopping cart cannot be neglected. Thus the imperativeness of a call to action in the form of a button that says “Click here to buy now!” cannot be underestimated in that these are the essential tools that allow you to convert visitors into customers. A renowned shopping cart solution must be used that has proven to be secure and safe, while having minimal costs. Such solutions can benefit the shop-keeper and the shoppers immensely in the form of very tight and trusted relationships.
A difficult-to-use website will have customers leaving in an irritated mood, vowing never to come back. This is negative for your search engine ranking as well because of a bad word-of-mouth publicity.
Thus we see how website optimisation is one of the primary things that must be done before a website is optimised for search engines, as this is the very basis on which a website thrives - the visitors here are real humans, and it is their experience that counts, not some automated program's!