CRO Checklist | Website CRO Best Practices Part 2

[00:00:11] Kasim: Here's our CRO checklist. This is actually pulled together by the head of our technical team, Yvonne, who's on this call. He's the poor guy that actually has to do this work. So the very first bullet point is more of a catchall. Make sure your site's working properly. We wanna make sure that the site is fast and you wanna make sure that you're using Google page.

[00:00:26] Kasim: You wanna make sure you're using the right tools to test. So if you go to a developer and you say my Google page speed insight rank is low. What they're gonna do is they're gonna show you GT metrics and they're gonna say, well, your website speed is fine. Look over here at these other diagnostic tools, and here's the thing.

[00:00:40] Kasim: They are probably correct. The problem is, is Google is measuring your page speed according to their own tools and page speed insight. My understanding of it is it doesn't necessarily take into consideration things like latent loading. So where other site speed tools are going to measure how long it takes for the site to load for the customer and then allow, server side and, sort of subsequent processes to load in the background.

[00:01:02] Kasim: Google says, no, we wanna know what all this. Looks like in its entirety and that's why your Google Page speed is probably lower than your page speed and other tools sucks for you, sucks for me. This is the game that we have to play. So if you're talking to somebody and you're gonna hire somebody to help you, you wanna make sure to manage the expectation that this is the tool that you want to improve.

[00:01:19] Kasim: Page speed inside of. And I just dropped a link inside of chat so everybody has it. And can we actually just go to Google? Just use google.com Right here? Yeah, just to run pay speed insights. Here's what's interesting. So Google measures their mobile site speed against the amp.

[00:01:34] Kasim: I guess as a benchmark accelerate mobile project. So what's funny is you'll see here that Google says, Hey, my own website is slow. Google gave itself a rating, but here's the four things that Google's gonna be counting on, and this is actually true for SEO and ppp. C If you look at the four metrics here, first, Contentful paint first, input, delay.

[00:01:53] Kasim: Largest Contentful paint and human li layout shift. These four areas are what Google is measuring your landing page score against. So the landing page score is, is these four areas here now. Normally you'd wanna have a developer take a look at this and they would be able to identify ways to increase that speed.

[00:02:10] Kasim: But if you look down underneath there you go. So like diagnostics and opportunities, this will actually, they're accordions and they'll tell you exactly what you need to do in order to increase your paid speed. So reduce unused JavaScript. Avoid multiple, I don't know what that was up there. Yeah, avoid multiple page redirects.

[00:02:28] Kasim: Here's image elements. essentially I'm not sure why this looks broken on their side, but usually it'll, give you a picture of the image that it says, Hey, this image is too large. You need to reduce the size of this image. So , when you're running the pastry insights, you can run it on your own site, then send that link.

[00:02:42] Kasim: Right to a, developer or or freelancer that you trust and say, Hey, can you work on these? And it'll give them a, checklist, a task list of everything that they need to do in order to bring up that paid speed and how much paid speed is going to be increased because of it.

[00:02:53] Kasim: Awesome. You wanna make sure that your contact information is in the header and or footer. This isn't just because of compliance requirements. People tend not to buy from people they don't think they can get in touch with. And that's something that consumers, especially if you have a small site and an unknown brand, it's something I check for.

[00:03:06] Kasim: It's like, how receptive and available are you going to be to me in case I have an issue or a problem? You'd be surprised at how much a phone number can improve conversion even though they're never calling. They just want the comfort of knowing that they can call. Now I realize a lot of people are building a lifestyle business and they don't want phone calls.

[00:03:19] Kasim: And if that's the case, that's okay, but at least try to prioritize an email let people know that you're going to be there and you're going to be receptive and you're gonna be available. I don't wanna overemphasize this. I don't feel like you need, web have 2.0 or what are we on now?

[00:03:31] Kasim: Are we on like 9.0? Who knows? Are we on know? Yeah. Anyway, you don't need like, the biggest, baddest website design in the whole ed world, but you wanna make sure that it's appealing, that it's clean, that it's aesthetic. The way to look at your website, in my opinion, is to look at it the same way you buy a picture frame.

[00:03:44] Kasim: It's the picture that matters. Your product is the picture. the investment you're making in the frame is meant to make your products look as. Good as possible. So be really careful with websites that might distract from that. Specifically websites that you know aren't. Aren't going to fall under the background.

[00:03:57] Kasim: I've heard it said that a musical score and a film is only good if you don't know it's there. The minute you identify the musical score, that's when you know that the, the person writing the music didn't do a good job because it's supposed to be in the background. It's supposed to support and supplement the story.

[00:04:09] Kasim: Your website should be the exact same way. Your website is the musical score to this film, and the products are the, the main characters, and they're telling the story. That got super philosophical. I'm sorry. We're gonna talk about image quality and even offer up some advice in terms of how to produce some pretty quality images by yourself without any cash out of pocket.

[00:04:25] Kasim: Make sure that you have really solid descriptions and features of your displayed. John does a good job of showing how this influences Google algorithmically. Use contrast colors for your call to action.

[00:04:34] Kasim: This means isolation effect. There are some people that do this really well. One of my favorite is So we've got Ezra Firestone, who's like the godfather of e-comm, and this dude makes sure that you always know where the button is cuz he's got. The only time you ever see this bright pink is when you're gonna go do something for Ezra.

[00:04:53] Kasim: And that's the isolation effect. And to be honest with you, even his tends to kind of blend in from a brand perspective. There are some people that will make it like an obnoxious color that doesn't even, coalesce or coincide with the brand want people to identify exactly where it is they need to go in order to take action.

[00:05:08] Kasim: That's the isolation effect. Those are contrast colors. Make sure you're using social proof and reviews. We're gonna talk about this as well. And then verification badges. Again, these can improve, especially for smaller brands if you haven't been around a while. This helps improve just the trust that people experience with your site.

[00:05:22] Kasim: If you're using a merchant processor, they've got generally like embeddable badges that you can use if you're a part of an organization that has a badge. The Better Business Bureau, I feel like has lost some of its luer over time, but there's still, especially if you're serving a specific demographic, what I really mean by that is a specific generation.

[00:05:37] Kasim: There's a group of people that still feel. Very strongly that the b, b shows well. And then the other thing to do too is take anything that you're offering and you can turn into a badge. If you're offering free shipping and free returns, those are batchable. And if it's text standalone, that's just text.

[00:05:51] Kasim: But if it's a badge, all of a sudden it became real. People trust badges to degrees that I don't necessarily understand.

[00:05:56] Kasim: