How We Beat the Odds with a Stronger, High Converting Website

Image: Google Analytics Year-over-year organic traffic. Covid Shutdown:3/15/20 Website Relaunch: 3/26/20

Updated: 5/6/25

Updated website strategy increases traffic by 35% resulting in new orders for Seattle area small business

Home-based businesses have an advantage right now, but that doesn’t mean growing one is easy. Here’s how a small business located in Bonney Lake, WA, continues to increase orders and revenue while the rest of the world seems at a relative standstill.

Using Google Analytics to Identify the Problem

A couple of years ago, Tom decided to learn more about how to grow the business. I met him at a class of mine he attended at the Bellevue Library. A few months later he contacted me to ask how we could work together.

His website was my first stop. After a look at the site and review of the data, it became clear Tom was getting a decent amount of organic traffic. It was supplemented with Google Ads, referrals, and just a bit from Facebook, but the website was a dinosaur, resulting in very low visitor quality and conversion. Leads were just dribbling in, 2-3 a week.

Organic Traffic Wasn't Enough

Watson's Wooden Words' old website was getting organic traffic, but quality metrics were low.

There were a number of issues we encountered right away:

• The back end of the site was difficult to use.
• The look and imagery was really hurting. Tom’s work was a key differentiator, yet it wasn’t presented in the best light.
• The template available to use for the site were very basic, with no standard grids. That made it difficult to maintain with a consistent, professional look. In terms of the website builder tools available, little custom HTML and CSS was needed anymore.
• The architecture was confusing.
• The language was written for some old Google algorithm, not human beings — you know, the people that actually buy stuff.
  

The old website was getting organic traffic, but quality metrics were low.

The Move to a New Website Platform

From the beginning, I wanted to update his website so we could increase conversions from the existing traffic. At the same time, increase organic traffic that was more qualified and engaged, so as to lead to higher conversions.

Tom wasn’t excited about building a completely new website. He had spent quite a lot of money on the old one (and a couple of others before that), and he was leery of throwing more money at the problem. So as a first step, we cleaned up and edited the content and added keywords. The traffic increased somewhat, but we were still experiencing low quality visitors, participation, and conversion.

We needed a much better way to show his portfolio; the whole website needed to be more visually appealing and branded. After about a year, I finally persuaded Tom to do the site overhaul and thorough on-site search engine optimization.

7 Changes Lead to Increased Traffic & Conversion

Let’s just say, his online presence went through a drastic change on 3/26/20. Here’s what we did.

Website builder platform:

We moved the site to Squarespace, because it presents images beautifully. It has an overall “design” appearance that underscores what Watson’s Wooden Words is all about, and it had the features and functionality we needed.

Overall design and personality:

We chose fonts and colors for their warmth and to reinforce the personal brand. We added lifestyle images from customers (which saved money on photography), rather than showing signs alone. We resized all the images to better show detail, while optimizing size for less impact on site speed.

Less is more:

We reduced the number of items in the main menu to feature popular pages (based on website traffic data), and moved secondary navigation into the footer. Content was edited down to focus on key differentiators, while making it easier for visitors to acquire information, and to ultimately drive contact and purchase.

Content that converts: 

We added what I like to call “Decision Helpers” and “Money Pages.”

Decision helpers, as the name suggests, build trust and remove the confusion buyers experience when purchasing high involvement products, like creative services.

We added pages demonstrating the sign making process. This “bucket” allowed us to add more content later, like photos and video. This type of content is also valuable for generating organic traffic.

Money pages provide a key signal in the buyer journey, indicating a visitor is on the verge of making a purchase (or generating a lead). It’s important for measuring value, especially if a site isn’t set up for ecommerce.

The “How to Order” page in this case is a good example, so a key strategy is to direct visitors to it and to understand which source is sending that valuable traffic. It’s not surprising that Google organic is driving more than 50% of the visitors who end up on that page, because we know that organic has higher purchase intent.

Social proof: 

We used a third party tool to embed Google reviews, and added a “Latest Creations” page with feeds from Facebook and Instagram. It allows Tom to keep the site fresh without a lot of effort.

SEO: 

We made improvements to titles, descriptions, H1’s, etc., while keeping the URL’s of the pages that had decent traffic.

Position has remained relatively the same for key search terms, yet there’s been a tremendous improvement in impressions, click through and actual clicks.

Operational improvements:

Operationalizing the creation and sale of custom made products can be a challenge. So beyond driving more traffic and increasing conversions, we wanted to use the website to help Tom be more efficient when working with customers.

We built in functionality on the Contact page that allowed visitors to upload their artwork, added a design resources page, and built a “catalog” for sign hanging hardware to encourage add-on sales.

Improved SEO results in better rank, impressions, and click through to the website. Source: Google Search Console (earliest tracking available 4/29/19)

More than 35% Increase in Qualified Traffic — Conversions and Sales Way Up

Beyond improved acquisition numbers, year-over-year quality metrics are way up thanks to the site redesign. Visitors are sticking around to see what Watson's is up to. All indicators are positive, and we’re ticking all the right boxes (year over year data):

• Organic traffic has increased by almost 35%.
• Quality metrics — page views, pages/session, average session duration, and bounce rate — have all improved.
• Tom, on average, is now getting 2-3 leads per day, not per week, and he's a great closer.
  
• The value of each sign order has gone from $100-$200 on average to more than $300. Bracket sales are up too.
• More leads are coming from businesses, including one from Facebook.
• Leads are coming in from further afield, including Alaska, New Jersey and Florida.
• More Google reviews are flowing in, which in turn will help improve search rank.
  

Beyond improved acquisition numbers, year-over-year quality metrics are way up thanks to the site redesign. Visitors are sticking around to see what Watson's is up to.