1. Define the objective of each page
Why does that particular page exist? Is it to provide information to encourage the visitor to enter the order process, is it to capture a prospect’s details for future communications…

By defining the role of a page on the site, you can either tighten up a page’s content/ design to pull more visitors through the conversion funnel, or prune the unnecessary ‘filler’ pages that distract from your site’s ultimate goal.

2. Install web analytics software
With out hard data about your site’s performance at every level, you can’t identify what is working and what is failing. Once the preserve of large companies, good web analytics software is now available free and easy to install in the form of Google Analytics.

3. Clear call to action
At every stage make it blindingly clear what you want the visitor to do next and how they do it. For example, if they have to fill in contact details to get a free gift, then make that form the clear focus of the page, and remove any distractions that may grab their attention and draw them away.

4. All killer no filler!
Don’t write for the sake of it, as more often than not people simply won’t read it. You may think that paragraph after paragraph of text makes your site look respectable or authoritative; in fact most people’s eyes go directly to content such as product features, lists or links.

Keep your page’s opening text simple and answer two questions for the visitor, what the page is about and why they should read it.

5. Ask for visitor/ customer feedback
Every time some one visits they are essentially testing the design of your site and are in a much better position to provide a critique about their experiences than you are. Once they get to the end ask them some simple questions about how they found navigating the site, and for ideas on how to improve it.

6. Act on the information!
This might sound obvious but you would be amazed how often lots of great information can be collected and then never used, as if the exercise of getting it was enough. For example, now you know that product page has a higher than normal bounce rate than the other product pages, or you can see people are dropping out at a particularly text heavy page, start investigating why and make the necessary changes.