Meet the Maker: Optimise your website
Toyin Laketu, a strategic consultant, mentor and founder of Onwards and Up offers advice on making your craft business website work for you
If you’re looking to reach new audiences and solve customer needs, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a useful tool. Read our summary of recommendations from Toyin Laketu to optimise your website and present your online business effectively.
Key topics
- Tips for search engine optimisation (SEO)
- How to improve customer engagement through web layout and navigation
- How to convert web traffic into purchasing customers
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
SEO is a digital marketing tactic that generates new leads and improves public awareness of content, goods and services. An organic (non-paid) SEO strategy has become a crucial component in digital marketing activity as web users wise up to paid advertising. By targeting content to your customer’s needs and interests you can reach new audiences and boost traffic to your website.
To maintain a competitive edge, it’s important to climb search rankings and appear on the front page of search results. Reflecting on your own online habits, consider a recent search you’ve made. Did you look beyond the first page of the results? If no, you’re not alone. In fact, 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results.
- 51% of all website traffic comes from organic search
- 81% of web users use Google search engines to source products, information or services
- 5 seconds is the time within which you need to grab someone's attention when they're browsing online
“Five second rule – that's how long it takes for a customer who comes to your website to figure out whether or not they want to stay on it.”
- Toyin Laketu
How can I improve my website pages?
On pages visible to your target audience, it is important to display relevant copy with accessible language and strong imagery. By using clear call-to-actions, headings and interactive elements on the page you can be confident your user experience rewards new enquirers. Questions you might ask yourself include:
- is it clear for the end-user where they can find and purchase my work?
- Are contact details, opening times and delivery costs easy to locate?
- How can new leads connect with my other channels such as Instagram?
Beyond what is visible on the front-end of your website, most content management systems (CMS) and website builders also feature functionality to help you target keywords. SEO keywords (also known as 'key phrases') are terms tagged onto online content to improve search engine rankings for those phrases. By researching search volume and market competition you can quickly align your business with consumer intent. Some quick steps to make your page more user friendly include:
- Use sequential headings (this may appear as H1/H2/H3 in your CMS) to indicate page structure
- Look for meta-data functions from your web provider that allow you to tag keywords and phrases
- Connect your website’s pages to one another through internal links
- Improve your page load time by keeping media file sizes to a minimum
- Use the 'export for web' option when saving image and video files to maintain quality across desktop and mobile
- Add alt tags and image descriptions to your pictures to improve accessibility and pick up more key words
How can I improve customer experience?
By thinking 'user-first' you can practice exploring websites from a customer’s point of view. Follow the steps below to improve your awareness of user journeys and online behaviour.
- Search for something unrelated to your artwork, for instance a domestic item or piece of tech.
- Use a search engine to source your product – what type of words do you use to search for the item?
- Click on a website listed and see how easy it is to navigate – does the content solve a problem? Is the language and page structure easy to follow?
- Note down additional features – is there a way to sign up to a mailing list? Can you jump to their social media? Is there a live chat function?
- Rate your customer experience – exceeded expectations, good, satisfactory, or could be improved?
This 5-step exercise will help focus your decision-making on improvements that will benefit your customers the most. Try this again with a maker’s website and see what you notice!
“Ensure all your key information can be found on the (product) page, don't make people hunt for information”
- Toyin Laketu
Useful resources for SEO mentioned in Toyin's presentation
Toyin Laketu, Fashion Business and SEO Consultant
About Toyin Laketu:
Toyin Laketu, founder of onwardsandup.co.uk is a fashion business and SEO consultant providing website SEO evaluation and tailored business support.
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