Is your website a portal to the products or services your visitors seek, or is it an escape room?
Escape rooms have been amazingly popular over the past decade or so. If you’ve never been in one, you and the rest of your team are “locked” in a themed room and are challenged to solve a series of puzzles and challenges within a set period to escape. It can be an exhilarating experience, so people pay for the opportunity.
But imagine being stuck in one without your ascent. That’s the stuff that horror movies are made of!
So why do so many websites resemble escape rooms?
It’s true. Think about the last time you went online to find a product you don’t often need. If your experience was like mine, the search engine suggested several websites that when you opened the site you couldn’t even tell if they sold that specific item. Instead, you found information about the company. Or a page that looked like the middle of a catalog – but not the item you were searching for or…
Only a listing. Nothing to tell you if that product really would solve your problem.
Or, maybe you could tell that they offered what you wanted, but you couldn’t tell how to get it – and, after searching for a while, you discovered they were a retail location on the other side of the continent.
When faced with similar situations, users often don’t even give your website a chance. They leave within the first 9 seconds of arriving, not finding what they were looking for. They are not interested in an escape room experience with your website! This high bounce rate means customers are slipping away.
So, how can you protect yourself and your website from being mistaken for an escape room?
First, it is crucial to understand why visitors come to your website. They are on a mission, looking for something—perhaps very specific. This knowledge is the key to creating a user-friendly website design.
If your website design doesn’t align with what your customers are looking for, you create an escape room. And they will try to escape and not engage with your services.
But what if your website is for a large company that sells more than just a few items or services?
Simple. Remember the 1/10/100 rule in website design.
Your secondary pages can be optimized to be the landing pages. This way, visitors find these when looking for “ethically sourced organic Guatemalan whole coffee beans.” Your company name and brand will be there. So will the benefits of that product (or service).
Second, consider what information your visitors are interested in.
Don’t be like that boorish date who goes on and on about how long they worked at their job and what school they attended. A date wants to know certain specific things, and so does a buyer. They are looking for several specific details, but first and foremost, they want to know, “Do you have what I need, and how can I get it?”
Don’t bury those two most basic details in a digital escape room. It’s a battle you will lose. And worse, when your competitor streamlines their website with the user in mind, you will be left in the dust.
The good news is that you can be that competitor and, by streamlining your website with your user in mind, leave your competition in the dust.
Contact me now to set up a free initial consultation, and I’ll review your website with you and make a suggestion or two to help you help your customer solve their problems on your site.
Afterwards, you can hire me for a full website audit. I can tell you how to make your website as user-friendly as possible and fully optimized so that your competitors feel like they’re the ones groping through the escape room.
What do you say? Go to my homepage and schedule that initial consultation now.