Do pretty websites convert sales?

Originally Posted by Indigo Clean - Luke

“Now how much do I owe you ”

lol I'm pretty cheap, a Stella normally does the job 

Pretty websites, I think it depends on the business you have and a balance between pretty and practical, not to mention making it Google friendly and all that bla, bla b la stuff. Were the owners of Cream and Browns Florist in Middlesbrough, and we do need a pretty website but it has to be practical as well, as we do a lot of business online. We’ve had 4 or 5 websites over the past 10 years from freebies to paid websites with the likes of go daddy etc. But we now use a professional company who deals only with florists. So my advice would be use a company who specialises in your type of business. In regards to marketing and the SEO thing, we got ripped of so many times I ended up doing a couple of courses and doing it myself, and if you search Google for Florists in Middlesbrough your find us there.

There are a few basic rules, and if you keep to the Google webmaster guidelines you be fine, and the keyword with any website is, Content is King!

If you have any questions I’d love to hear from you or answer FREE. I’m a florist not any marketing company, I just know how frustrating it can be with websites. Hope this helps. Paul

Great post Paul. (Your web links tripped our filters, as its seen as self promo).

Very good point on SEO, so many people have been bitten so many times. To do some courses yourself and take charge is very proactive and a great strategy if you have the time.

Holding the top for Florists in Middlesbrough is a good achievement, does that convert well for you? It sounds like a logical and profitable search phrase for your business. A lot of people fall in to the trap of optimising search phrases they haven't fully researched, or are railroaded by seo companies looking for easy wins, rather than terms that will genuinely generate leads and sales.

Following Google webmaster guidelines is sound advice and as old as the hills, but very few people seem to listen 

Like many have alluded to, having an 'all singing & dancing' website (if such a thing were possible!) does depend heavily on the type of industry that you're in. As your website is your shop window online, you have to be prepared to test and tweak constantly to cater for seasonal variations, trends, new content, calls to action, imagery etc.

The trick is to have a website that is functional, informative, has an easy to follow navigational structure and converts well. Tools such as Crazy Egg offer a free 30 day trial where you can monitor how your site was found, what content and page section held your visitor's attention most, and the ones that made them beat a hasty exit and a whole lot more besides.

Business websites are a living, organic entity (at least they should be) and are never meant to be in a 'finished' state especially from a search engine standpoint as Google does love sites that are updated constantly.

Paying close attention to what your visitors are doing once they visit your site through GA and other tracking software is crucial in determining whether your site is as successful as it should be as well as giving you the opportunity to address weaker performing pages and sections of your site.

So, 'pretty' site or not, informed change is the only constant that underpins whether a site is successful or isn't.

Wise and solid advice!

Always banging on about Google Analytics. If you're not using them, give yourself a slap, it's free so no excuse. If you are using them, look at them regularly and learn to understand them.

They paint a picture and tell you everything that's right with your site, everything that's wrong, and what could be done so much better

Thanks Steve, couldn't agree more!

Google Analytics is a great free tool and will do a lot of the 'heavy lifting' for you but it is also renowned for being hacked and stats can be skewed as a result.

For instance, we use GA on our own site but have also had deploy 81 filters to weed out spam traffic from dubious sites originating mainly from Russia that redirect you to affiliate offers etc. - we were hit last night from this traffic2cash.xyz URL with the following-

New Users -75

Bounce rate -100.00% 

Pages / Session-1.00

Avg. Session Duration - 00:00:00

And as you know, time on site is one of the metrics that Google uses to determine ranking.

We also use clicky.com which in my opinion is a far superior product as it's not only hacker-proof but it tracks and anlayses your traffic in real time, is FREE up to daily page views of 3000 and does a whole lot more besides.

I'm off now to do a bit more tweaking...

UA spam is one of my biggest headaches. Was going to do a thread about this, but forgot 

Here's we get regularly targeted and filter out:

depositfiles-porn.ga|youporn-forum.ga|pornhub-forum.ga|generalporn.org|rapidgator-porn.ga|meendo-free-traffic.ga|amanda-porn.ga|torture.ml|pornhub-forum.uni.me|youporn-forum.uni.me|free-share-buttons.com|torture.ml|www5.free-social-buttons.com|www1.free-social-buttons.com|site6.free-floating-buttons.com|get-free-social-traffic.com|adf.ly

Can't believe GA hasn't addressed this. It's such a powerful tool, and this is just an annoyance that needs to be fixed.

Still don't really understand what spamming your GA number achieves? It's not genuine traffic, what do they get out of it?

Seems like their 'business plan' is to get you to click through to the redirected site in the hope that you might suddenly decide to buy one of their affiliate products.

We've been hit by some of those too and a lot of these sites redirect to alibabaexpress.com. With the porn ones I'm guessing that this to swell (no pun intended!) their traffic numbers, so that they can sell advertising on their sites or they might have Adsense installed and hope that you click on one of the ads.

It's high time that GA gets this sorted out though!

Just wanted to add my tuppence as I've been talking about this recently and in love with the gov.uk website at the moment. From a digital marketing perspective it ticks all the buttons, call to actions, responsive, clear. But visually you could never call it pretty.

My other favourite case study one is Amazon (sorry if its already been mentioned). Far from pretty but 100% functional, practical and tailored to you personally. Anyone with an e-commerce shop should analyse it and learn. It's one of the top 50 websites in the world for a reason, regardless of what you may personally think, it works.

So do pretty websites convert? No, functional practical ones do that interact with the visitor/consumer.

Now we are in 2016, it's never been more true as more and more of your audience will be viewing on a mobile device or small tablet. So don't trade or waste space with pretty when you want to either quickly answer a user query or steer them to a course of action.