How Important is Good Site Architecture For CRO
Whether it is a physical or digital platform, architecture plays similar roles in both the verticals.
Building a new website for your business generally aims at gaining new leads and conversions. The visitors become prospects, and prospects get converted easily only if you have a fine website architecture.
A digital business works in the same way as the physical one. In physical businesses, you need to keep your company infrastructure clean and appealing, while in the case of digital ones, it is about keeping your website neat and simplified.
While there are many ways of increasing your conversion rates, having a good site architecture is an important one. Fine website architecture can help you in improving your user experience, conversion rates, and your SEO performance as well.
Although the later one does not strictly come under increasing your conversion rate, it does improve the oncoming traffic to your site. The SEO performance coupled with other improvements can increase the number of conversions you get. But first, you need to have an idea of what is site architecture.
Here we are going to take a glance at the following points:
- Website Architecture: The Base of Perfection
- Connection of Site Architecture With User Experience
- Advantages of a Simplified Website
- Offering Utility Can Improvise Website Architecture
- Clarifying Value at Every Stage
- Good Architecture Improves SEO Performance
Website architecture: The Base of Perfection
Site architecture refers to the whole genealogy of the pages/sites within your website. Architecture tells how different parts of your site are connected and works in a combined form. While different websites have different aesthetic and functional requirements, many sites generally share the same hierarchical architecture.
There is a mandate home page that provides a window to all your entire site. Keeping it simple and clean is the main task. And then the whole website would be divided into categories and subcategories where you would find specific content.
You need to plan out good architecture before you go on with the construction of the site. Otherwise, it could be a lot of work for revamping the site. Let us now see how site architecture can help you.
Connection of Site Architecture With User Experience
User experience is arguably the most important aspect of CRO. A report tells that just by correcting small user experience flaws in their site, they can increase 75% conversions! Also, there is a 112% increase in revenue by improving usability.
With the right architecture, you can create great user experiences. The great user-experience leads to accurate and trackable conversion testing.
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Advantages of a Simplified Website
One of the main points of building a website is to make it easier for users to use. With great architecture, you can make your website simple to understand and navigate. If the user finds your site complex and heavy, they are going to bounce back.
Also, many studies have indicated that one of the reasons for cart abandonment is the complexity of making the checkout. If you make the website simple and streamlined, you save the loss of many conversions!
Another benefit of simplicity is that they can increase the speed of your site. Site loading speed is the first impression of your site. And is also an important factor that determines conversions. Slow site speed can increase bounce rates, decrease average session lengths to decrease the reputation of your site.
Offering Utility Can Improvise Website Architecture
With having a neat and simple architecture, you can provide great utility to your user. That is, the user can use your website for something valuable. It may be getting some genuine and helpful knowledge and insights.
For instance, if you have a business that sells books. The books will belong to different categories. Ignoring other complex functions, the basic intuitive flow of thought for a user visiting your website would be - Once they visit your store, they will see the category of books they wanted and buy your book.
If the menus are properly organized and each menu describes what is underneath them, then it becomes intuitive and easy for the users. Thus your site increases their search and user experience. If the things are not organized properly, chances are your user will bounce with the heaviness of the site. The key is to make the site seem lightweight but to be heavy with information. Just the way your mom keeps the kitchen.
Clarifying Value at Every Stage
Not all users that land up to the landing page of your site. Some may land on a particular page from search results. If your user won’t be able to access the proper information in less than 8 seconds, they leave the site.
By using elements like proper permalink structure and breadcrumbs, you can easily help the user in navigating his requirement precisely. So that they can start exploring from there. Also, an architecture showcasing works you have done or the products you have; gives users a sense of credibility.
Good Architecture Improves SEO Performance
If you had noticed, some of the things we discussed above do not only help to improve CRO performance but SEO performance too. By speeding up your site, your bounce-back rate decreases. The average session length could increase. All these factors are having a great effect on your SEO rankings.
Other than that, by having good reviews and reputation your search engine ranking boosts. The main thing that good architecture does for SEO is that it makes the site easily crawlable by the “web crawlers”.
That is, by having good architecture, the crawlers can easily crawl through different pages on your website. As this is also considered a sign of a proper website, your SEO score will increase.
Bottom Line
So to conclude, we can say that a good architectured site increases conversion rate by providing a great user experience. By making the site simple, neat, clean, minimalist, user-friendly, and clear, CRO increases. It can also increase the traffic coming to your site by improving SEO. This ultimately leads to more conversions for your business.
Thirumalesh Prasad C G (Thiru) is an entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of Inboundsys. He has over 22 years of experience working for various multinational IT products and services companies in India and abroad. He was a significant member and worked as a user interface architect, designing the user interface for many web applications and products. In addition to running Inboundsys, he is an advisory board member in various other design studios and digital marketing agencies. He is a passionate blogger who loves writing on digital marketing, inbound marketing, lifestyle, philosophy, positive thinking, and motivation.