There are a number of ways you can keep up to date with issues with your site.  I’ve added a list of some easy and cheap methods:

Track your error pages

Google Analytics is a free option, great for small businesses.  If you modify your code on your error pages, you can check regularly for broken links and problem pages (these may even be broken links from other sites or links typed in by users).

With this knowledge, you can fix issues with your site, request that other sites linking to you update their links, or create some custom content that people seem to want to find.

Here’s a link to the instructions, Keemo has written up.

Check out your goal funnel

Here you can identify issues (not necessarily just errors), with your conversion path. This may uncover a particular problem page, which puts users off buying or signing up.

If you’re using Google Analytics, you can set this up quite easily by changing the settings and adding each url used for a purchase process.  Other Analytics packages allow you to do this also.

Now, about that 10 page checkout process…

Monitor your server status

If you’ve got an advertising campaign on the go, it’s important to check for server outages.  Sign up to something like Monatastic, which will send you an email every time you need to pause your advertising and kick the server.

Ask your users

You can install a couple of feedback tools which can ask your users about their experience of the site, or view what they do. Use ClickTale for videoing your users path, Google Talk Chatback to let them ask questions or talk to you, and 4Q to ask them how their experience was once they have finished.

More fantastic tips on fixing usability issues with your website here: Conversion Rate Experts.

Fresh eyes

Get someone else to look at it.  Ask them to complete a set of tasks, and talk to them while they’re doing it. When you’ve designed a process, it’s obviously logical to you, but is it logical to everyone else?

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Justin from Ion interactive has written a great post entitled ‘Lift in lead-gen search marketing‘. He talks about how targeting your audience effectively, being specific with your offer and asking for a fair amount of form filling effort can lead to higher conversion rates – making the most of your marketing budget.

My two favourite quotes are:

“By being discriminating in your search marketing, you can reduce top-line spend and improve conversion quantity and quality. This increase in quality can impact your close rate (the percentage of converted respondents who turn into customers) and your average sale value”

and:

“your requirements must be proportional to their desire to get the banana. If the form has thirty fields in it and they’re going to get brochureware in return, odds are you’re looking at a bushel full of abandonments.”

So firstly, as opposed to a ‘throw as much mud at it, and some of it will stick’ approach, target specifically, so you have a small number of highly qualified leads that you can nurture into sales.  In this way, you don’t waste admin and customer service costs on people who aren’t particularly interested, and you have more time to spend developing a relationship and increasing lifetime spend with the people who are.

Secondly, he emphasises that you need to make it as easy as possible for your users to interact.  There are a lot of people who can’t be bothered filling in forms at all, so if you keep it as concise as possible you’ll get more leads.  You may think you need to qualify your leads by making people answer all your questions, but If someone’s ready to buy, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are ready to do your work for you.  It’s likely you have a competitor who is offering an easier way.

Someone once said to me that “we’re offering a valuable e-book for free, so people should put some effort in to fill out all their details”.  Well the reality is, there is a huge amount of free stuff on the Internet, and your competitors are probably already offering free resources without making users jump through hoops to get it.  It’s a case of you needing to be greatful that someone’s taken the time to fill out your registration form to get your info/free trial/brochure or whatever it is you’re offering, and not the other way around.

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Masses of traffic is pointless if you don’t convert it into sales, leads or repeat visitors. It’s so easy to find what you want online, if you make it difficult for your users, then they will go elsewhere and they won’t come back.

Justin Palmer has written an excellent checklist to help improve your E-commerce conversion rates.

Another thing to consider is creating useful, regularly updated content for your users.  This has a three fold benefit:

1. You have the opportunity to appear in search results for a larger quantity of search terms related to your industry/products/services
2. People will come back later to see what other useful stuff you have to offer
3. People will link to you (this helps increase the number of referrals you get & your search engine rankings)

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