Shopify: A Robust E-commerce Powerhouse —Start free trial
Shopify is one of the most renowned e-commerce platforms globally, trusted by over a million businesses. It’s known for its robust set of features and tools designed to make online selling a breeze.

1. Ease of Use
   Shopify prides itself on its user-friendly interface. Even if you have minimal technical knowledge, you can create and manage your online store with ease. The platform offers a drag-and-drop website builder, making it simple to design your site and customize its look and feel.
2. Features
   Shopify comes packed with a wide range of features, including:

Payment Processing: Shopify offers its payment gateway, Shopify Payments, along with support for numerous third-party payment providers.

Inventory Management: Easily manage your products, track stock levels, and set up automatic alerts for low inventory.

Marketing Tools: Shopify offers various marketing features like email marketing, SEO optimization, and the ability to create discount codes.

App Store: You can extend your store’s functionality with thousands of apps available on the Shopify App Store.

3. Customization
   While Shopify provides many customization options, it may not be as flexible as some other platforms. However, if you’re not a tech-savvy person and want a straightforward solution, Shopify’s themes and customization options should suffice.
4. Pricing
   Shopify offers various pricing plans to suit different business needs. The most popular options include Shopify Basic, Shopify, and Shopify Advanced. Prices range from $29/month to $299/month, with additional fees for using external payment gateways.
5. Scalability
   Shopify is an excellent choice if you plan to grow your business. It can handle a high volume of sales and traffic without significant performance issues.

Wix: The All-in-One Website Builder
Wix is another popular website builder that offers e-commerce capabilities. It’s known for its simplicity and versatility, making it a great choice for beginners.

1. Ease of Use
   Wix excels in terms of ease of use. Its drag-and-drop website builder is incredibly intuitive, allowing you to create a visually appealing online store without any coding skills.
2. Features
   Wix provides a decent set of e-commerce features, including:

Payment Options: Wix supports multiple payment gateways, including PayPal and credit card payments.

Templates: Wix offers a wide variety of templates, catering to various industries.

App Market: Similar to Shopify, Wix has an app market where you can find additional features and functionalities.

3. Customization
   Wix offers a high level of customization, allowing you to create a unique online store. You can freely position elements on your site and choose from various design options.
4. Pricing
   Wix has a range of pricing plans, including a free plan with limited e-commerce capabilities. Paid plans for e-commerce start at $14/month and go up to $49/month.
5. Scalability
   Wix is suitable for smaller e-commerce businesses. While it can handle moderate traffic and sales volumes, it may not be the best choice for large-scale enterprises.

Which One Should You Choose?
Choosing between Shopify and Wix ultimately depends on your specific business needs and preferences:

Choose Shopify If:

You need a robust e-commerce platform with advanced features.
You plan to scale your business significantly.
You’re willing to invest in a slightly higher-priced solution for greater functionality.

Choose Wix If:

You’re a beginner or want a straightforward, user-friendly platform.
You have a smaller e-commerce business with moderate traffic and sales.
You prefer a more budget-friendly option.

In conclusion, both Shopify and Wix have their merits and are suitable for different types of businesses. Carefully assess your requirements, budget, and long-term goals before making your decision. Regardless of which platform you choose, a well-designed online store can be a powerful asset for your business in the digital marketplace.

Positive points
Easy to use: No programming knowledge required, much more user-friendly than a free content management system (CMS) such as Joomla or WordPress.

All-in-one: Everything is included – hosting, the authoring software used to build your website, blog or online store, and automatic updates.

Low price: It is very rare that an online website editor is more expensive than what a hosting package with the same amount of web space would cost you. There are often free packages where only certain additional features, such as a domain name, are charged.

Anyone can use it: creating a website is almost as easy as creating a Facebook or LinkedIn profile.

Many features: A good provider is constantly developing its online editor. Updates are performed automatically.

Security updates: Your provider also installs security updates, avoiding the serious problems that have plagued some free CMS (notably WordPress). When using an online editor, all you have to do is choose a secure password.

No unavailability in case of traffic peaks: If you host your site yourself, be aware that a significant increase in traffic can make your site unavailable (this can happen if a very famous site publishes a link to yours, for example). This will not happen if you trust one of the online editors we recommend. This is because these tools can handle a lot of traffic, as their hosting infrastructure allows for load balancing on the server.

Drag and Drop Integration: Widgets, such as video and audio player integration, Google AdSense, PayPal, forms, etc. – almost anything can be added.

Support: Technical support is provided via email, chat or forums, depending on the provider.

Negative points
Limited flexibility: This is the ultimate question to ask yourself. How much flexibility are you willing to give up? For example, if you need to use a very specific design, you may find that an online editor is too limited. The only way to find out is to try.

Depend on one provider: It is important that the provider you choose is financially sound, because if they go out of business, you could lose your website. Therefore, as a general rule, it is recommended to choose a well-established provider.

Data control: Your data is stored off-site. Some providers may be based in your country, others in Europe or elsewhere in the world.

Server-side installation: This is not something programmers will like! In an online site editor, no access to PHP, Java and SQL. But anyway, if you use these programming languages, it is unlikely that you will use an online editor. On the other hand, there are far fewer add-ons than in open source systems.

Large web projects: These systems are simply not suitable for large or complex web projects.

Use of databases: It is impossible to use a database with a search function (like on a real estate website, for example). For this, a solution like WordPress would be much more appropriate.

The steps are considerably simplified. However, the experience can quickly become complicated if you do not use a quality web editor. So we have put together a top 3 list of the best website builders so that you can find the one that meets your needs and fits your budget.

1. Wix 

Wix has become the reference in website creation. Since its inception in 2006, Wix has gathered more than 150 million users worldwide. This success is explained by its powerful solution and its very interesting prices

Wix offers a website management service with an integrated web builder. The hosting is included in the solution, it is not up to you to find one. The reservation of a domain name can also be done directly from Wix.

As we have seen in our Wix review, it is possible to create a multitude of sites including blogs, storefronts or online stores starting from a template. With more than 500 different templates, Wix offers the largest catalog, especially since they are all free. Wix differentiates itself with responsive templates designed by design experts. The result is very aesthetic and minimalist.

If Wix is ranked first in this comparison of the best website builders, it’s mainly because its integrated web editing tool leaves room for great creative freedom. Good SEO options are offered as well as analytics tools to track your performance and traffic. There is even the possibility to add an online booking system and a multilingual site. The Wix App Market allows you to install additional applications to customize your site and optimize its management. This is a plus that is not found in all providers.

The other non-design aspects of your site can be found in your dashboard. Despite the many features available, the tool is still easy to use.

2. Zyro

Zyro is a website creation platform launched in 2019. In a short period of time, the brand has managed to develop a high-quality service. Zyro is a very accessible solution – whether it’s in terms of price with plans offered from €2.61 per month or the simplicity of its site editor designed for beginners.

With Zyro, you can create a website, a blog and even an online store without coding knowledge. Web hosting is provided by the highly reputable Hostinger (parent company), so you don’t have to do anything.

Its templates are modern and well designed. Its complete editing tool allows you to obtain a quality site in less than an hour. To customize the template and get a site to your image, nothing could be easier. Its site editor works on the drag and drop principle. It is very easy to find your way around because the interface is intuitive. You will also have access to a design grid to easily align the elements of your page. And this aspect can sometimes be missing in other providers.

If this provider is so high in the ranking it is also because it integrates many free additional tools: logo creator, text generator, tool to resize images and improve their quality or the heatmap.

Zyro also supports its users by offering powerful marketing tools (ad campaign creation, detailed performance reports…) and advanced SEO options to improve the ranking. All of these elements allow you to optimize the construction of your site and make it attractive to your visitors.

Zyro stands out once again by offering an efficient and easily reachable customer support through a live chat. The teams even make the effort to answer in French which is particularly appreciable.

3. Jimdo

This ranking of the best website creation software continues with Jimdo. The company was founded in 2007 in Germany. Today, no less than 25 million sites have been created via Jimdo.

The Jimdo service costs between 9€ and 39€ / month depending on the package chosen, which is still very reasonable. As with its competitor Wix, Jimdo also offers a free version with basic functions. Jimdo is aimed at individuals, small businesses and e-merchants who want to create a website in a simple and guided way.

With its new artificial intelligence tool, the creation of a website can be done in less than five minutes using a series of questions that will help identify your preferences. The site proposals will be adapted to your project and you will only have to select the model that you like the most. It is also possible to directly select a template from the 100 available and customize it later.

In any case, you will see that the integrated web builder software is very intuitive. You can easily add and remove sections with the drag and drop function and the sample layouts. Unlike WordPress and Wix hosting, Jimdo does not offer extensions in its system. Rest assured, there is plenty to do with the available features. You probably won’t need any additional applications.

Jimdo provides an automated SEO option to help you get your site listed on search engines. The Jimdo tool is well thought out and perfectly suited for beginners. In case of problems, users can contact Jimdo support by leaving a message in the chat window or the contact form. The advisors are usually quite responsive.

E-commerce has been growing steadily over the years. In France, the turnover achieved by the e-commerce economy reached 112 billion euros in 2020. This represents an increase of 8.5% compared to 2019.

Easy to use website builder 50% discount

In just one year, 17,000 new e-commerce sites have been created. The competition is increasingly tough and it is crucial to be visible to buyers.

You will have understood: the success of your e-commerce store depends directly on its referencing in search engines.

So how can you do it? How can you improve the natural referencing (SEO) of your e-commerce store? Here are 5 tips to follow!

1 – Make sure your e-commerce site is fast and responsive
To optimize the user experience (often called UX for User eXperience) on your e-commerce site, you must respect two crucial points:

First, make sure that your pages load as fast as possible.

The longer it takes for the page to load, the more visitors and potential customers you will lose. They will not take the time to wait for the content to load completely and will leave your online store.

To check the page load speed of your e-commerce site, you can use free tools like GTmetrix or Google’s PageSpeed Insight.

Next, you need to make sure your site is responsive. This term means that it will automatically adapt to the resolution and type of device used to view your pages. This is especially important for smartphones, which have very different screen sizes than computers, and which are mostly used in portrait format for web browsing.

Contrary to what happened for years, Google’s algorithm now refers websites based mainly on mobile versions and not their desktop version.

The robots now crawl web pages by simulating a navigation on smartphone. They will check if the site is mobile-friendly by assigning scores on its mobile accessibility. Buttons or links that are too close to each other, elements that are too heavy (photos, videos, animations…) or content that is too small or displays poorly will all be negative signals that impact the SEO of your e-commerce site.

The technical quality and therefore the SEO of your site also depends on the way it has been designed. The choice of CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal…) will influence the technologies and features that you can integrate or not on your site as well as its scalability.

It is important to study in advance the different solutions available to you, their advantages and disadvantages. Especially when it comes to e-commerce sites for which the question of the payment management platform is obviously crucial. Some platforms like IONOS even offer to take care of all these aspects to facilitate the creation of your online store.

2 – Streamline the navigation of your e-commerce site
The navigation on your site is a crucial point and not only for the natural referencing. The quality of the navigation will directly affect your sales.

You have probably been regularly confronted with shopping cart abandonment? To limit the number of shopping cart abandonments on your e-commerce site, you must offer your visitors a simple, fluid and user-friendly navigation. Don’t forget: every click that separates your customer from the order validation reduces your chances to close the sale.

For the good referencing of a website, the architecture is a central element. Your pages must be well connected and well organized. It is a good practice that each page of a website should not be more than 3 clicks away from the home page.

By ensuring that your navigation is optimal, you will give an excellent signal to Google regarding your SEO!

3 – Go link hunting
A well-referenced e-commerce site is first and foremost a popular e-commerce site. For Google, the popularity of a website is mainly measured from the number and quality of links pointing to this site.

To get links to your e-commerce store, you can contact bloggers/influencers in your field of activity to ask them to write an article about your store directly on their website.

You can also establish partnerships with websites in your field of activity or complementary e-commerce stores. Finally, within the limits of reason and taking care to check the quality beforehand, you can register your e-commerce store in directories.

These links will not only allow you to improve the natural referencing of your e-commerce store but also to attract more qualified traffic and thus develop your sales. We give you more tips to work on your netlinking on this dedicated article!

4 – Create (good) content
The key to good SEO of an e-commerce site is the quality of its content. You will have to create a maximum of content to position a maximum of pages of your e-commerce site in search engines.

Attention, it is not about creating low-end content simply to place your keywords. You must write content with high added value.

A content with high added value is a content that brings something to your consumers and prospects. To do this, make sure that the content you create for your site fulfills at least one of these purposes: inform, educate, solve, entertain.

In addition, remember to optimize the content of your product sheets. Especially avoid copying and pasting descriptions and images provided by your supplier!

Google and search engines hate duplicated content, which is not relevant enough. If you copy word for word the descriptions provided by your supplier to fill the pages of your e-commerce site, you can be sure that you will have the same content as dozens or even hundreds of other platforms that sell similar products!

Finally, if you publish very high quality content, you have a great chance to see it quoted on other websites and therefore to gain new links essential to good SEO, as seen in the previous point.

5 – Analyze your traffic and the behavior of your visitors
Improving your referencing is not done in one go. It is a continuous work. That’s why you need data to make decisions and implement effective actions.

For this, use Google Analytics and Google Search Console, two free tools that will provide you with enough data to optimize your website’s SEO.

Google Analytics will provide you with information about your visitors’ behavior: number of visitors, time spent on the site, number of pages viewed, most visited product sheets, bounce rate, acquisition channels…

With Google Search Console, you will have data about your performance in search engines, and therefore a visibility on your referencing. You will find the keywords that bring you the most traffic, the search volume of the queries on which you are positioned and the number of visits they bring you.

Thanks to this, you will be able to detect opportunities of queries really typed by users on which you position yourself thanks to quality content. You will also identify the keywords on which your e-commerce site is not well enough referenced and will be able to set up actions to improve your referencing.

Do not forget that the referencing of an e-commerce site is a long term work.

You will not see your number of visits explode overnight nor immediate results on your turnover. However, you can be sure that all the SEO actions taken today will have a considerable impact on your business in the long run!

75% ! That’s the average cart abandonment rate. Impressive, right?

As online shopping continues to grow in importance, it’s important to stand out from the crowd to reduce cart abandonment and maximize your revenue.

How do you convince users to complete their conversion? Check out our tips and sample follow-up emails!

Tip #1 – Offer multiple payment methods
In B2B as in B2C, buyers appreciate having a choice in the way they pay for their purchases. 48% of B2B buyers will not make a purchase if their preferred payment method is not available.

One might think that the preferred payment method is the credit card. However, while 86% of buyers use this method to make online purchases, 77% want other payment options. 50% even prefer to use an alternative payment method when possible.

76% of B2B customers have experienced a problem with an online credit card purchase.
79% of those who do are disappointed after the transaction.
Following a credit card payment, invoices and receipts are difficult for buyers to find and download.
The risk of fraud is higher, which could jeopardize the company’s cash flow.
Credit cards are often declined due to suspected fraud or expiry dates.

What payment methods should be offered on an e-commerce site?
Apart from the credit card, the main purchase options that you can set up are :

Bank transfer
There is even a more secure version called ACH (Automated Clearing House). This money transfer system facilitates the sending of large amounts of money. It is particularly suitable for business-to-business transactions.

PayPal
The main advantage of PayPal is that it locks the transaction by avoiding disclosing bank details. Individuals and SMEs alike often find it an easy way to pay online.

An additional advantage is that PayPal offers the possibility of making ACH transfers!

Direct Debit (SEPA)
This payment method is relevant if you offer an online service with a recurring direct debit. It can also help reassure the B2B buyer in terms of accounting facilities.

Tip #2 – Be transparent about additional costs
There is nothing more frustrating than discovering an unexpected surcharge at the time of payment. This “surprise” is often prohibitive for buyers and will cause them to abandon their shopping cart.

This is especially true for B2B buyers who do not make impulse purchases. They have specific needs, precise requests and a predefined budget. So it’s important to avoid unexpected hidden costs that can hinder the deal.

Be transparent from the beginning of the buying journey. Provide all the ancillary costs of your product and services: taxes, shipping costs, currency conversion, etc. These details can be listed directly on the product page or calculated by asking for the customer’s zip code.

There are tax calculation extensions that you can add to your e-commerce site. The objective is to quickly inform the buyer about the taxes and shipping costs related to his location.

This is a good practice, especially essential if you manage an international business!

Tip #3 – Communicate your delivery times, shipping options and return policy
Delivery is an essential element in e-commerce. Customers expect to have shipping options tailored to their needs.

In B2B, timely delivery is critical. Especially if you sell raw materials. Your buyers are counting on you to be able to make their own products and satisfy their customers.

As for hidden costs, be transparent (and don’t hide anything, that is). If there are delays in delivery, make it clear to customers. Buyers who can wait will do so, others will avoid having a bad experience with you and will come back to your site another time.

Tip #4 – Work on the user experience (UX)
Nearly 60% of shoppers abandon their purchases if the checkout process takes too long. In addition, 40% of business buyers are frustrated by inefficient websites.

Put yourself in the buyers’ shoes to make it as easy as possible for them to purchase. You should pay particular attention to:

Page load time
More than half of the visitors leave a web page that does not display within 3 seconds.

The fluidity of the payment process

The shopping cart
It must be displayed throughout the visit and be available at any time. Buyers must be able to modify it easily, both in terms of the quantities ordered and the products themselves.

The product sheets
They must be clear and detailed. All the information needed to make a purchase decision must be available in one place.

Mobile compatibility
Now that mobile traffic has surpassed desktop traffic, think about mobile users by offering them an optimal experience!

To the ability to create a quote
In B2B, this option can make a difference. Professionals sometimes need a quote to validate the purchase internally before placing an order online.

A social proof
Don’t hesitate to place reassurance elements in key places (product page, shopping cart, payment page…). You can for example integrate reviews that you will have previously collected from your most loyal customers.

To the security of payments
This is one of the critical points of the purchase decision. So if you use payment security solutions on your e-commerce site, it’s time to display these badges on your commercial pages.

To distracting elements and your CTAs
Once the user has entered the checkout process, you will want to prevent them from leaving the checkout page to perform another action.

To do this, identify all the elements that are not essential on these pages. Also work on the positioning of your call-to-actions in order to help your visitor get straight to the point, i.e. to confirm their shopping cart and purchase.

Tip #5 – Offer quality customer service
Customers place a high value on responsive and efficient customer service. 55% of them give a high priority to a 24/7 customer service.

Even at the end of the buying journey, buyers may have a few questions. So you need to be prepared to answer them to avoid losing them at the last moment.

For starters, clearly display your contact information: email, phone number, WhatsApp handle, contact form… If a potential customer wants to get in touch with you quickly, they should immediately know how to do so.

Also provide a detailed FAQ page to answer any last minute questions about your products. Not to mention questions related to delivery times and costs, purchase costs, taxes, after-sales service, user support, etc.

Last tip to avoid shopping cart abandonment: equip your e-commerce site with a chatbot. It can automatically answer common questions, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It can even help the professional to choose the product or service that fits his needs.

And yet, it is the easiest to correct!

What usually happens when you add an image to your site?

1 – You look for or create the ideal image to illustrate your point;

2 – You upload it on your site and integrate it to your page;

The end.

In fact, you only need to add one step to your process: compressing the image. And it’s not complicated at all!

When we talk about image compression, it means that we will try to reduce its weight as much as possible, while keeping an optimal quality for the display on the web.

We will not go into technical details that do not interest us here. But you should know that on the web, the difference in quality between a compressed and uncompressed image will often be imperceptible to the naked eye.

I have already seen web pages that integrated photos or GIFs of more than 10Mb! That’s shooting yourself in the foot in terms of SEO!

Fortunately, there are tons of solutions to compress an image easily, it’s up to you to find the one that suits you best:

Graphic design tools
If you work with graphic designers, illustrators or photographers, chances are they use a tool like Photoshop or Illustrator.

Well, you should know that these tools have options that allow you to save images in predefined formats for the web. Don’t hesitate to tell them your needs, they will provide you with an optimized visual!

If you are the one using these tools, have a look at the export options or consult the online tutorials!

Online tools
Here again, many solutions exist: TinyPNG, Compressor, Optimizilla, Imagify…

No matter which tool you choose, the operation is the same: import your images and launch the compression. In a few seconds you will obtain an image between 60 and 90% lighter!

You will then be able to serenely integrate this visual into your web pages!

Plugins for your CMS
You use a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Shopify or Prestashop?

Add a compression plugin that will do the job automatically! When you upload an image in the media library, it will first be compressed by the plugin before being added.

As the WordPress plugin catalog is more extensive, you will find many more plugins dedicated to the platform like WP Smush for example.

But solutions like TinyPNG, available online, also offer plugins for the main CMS on the market.

Don’t forget to resize your images!
Compressing is good, but compressing a resized image is even better!

And yes, we tend to easily forget this logical step!

Let’s take the example of this blog page. At the moment I’m writing this article, the display width of the content is 650px. If I integrate a 1200px wide image, it would still be displayed at 650px.

This means that if I resize this image from 1200px to 650px wide, I would already have a much smaller file before I even run the compression!

2 – Streamline the design and the UX
When you create your website or when you want to redesign it, you may be tempted to focus on aesthetics rather than user experience (UX).

I’m sure you’ve already visited a website that uses a lot of visual effects (animations, superimposed content blocks…). You may have found it beautiful, but the slowness of the site and the navigation difficulties spoiled your visit.

This is what you must avoid on your pages. Try to keep only the essential or useful elements for the visitor. The rest is superfluous.

If you still fall for the superb hover animation you saw on a site that caught your eye, be careful not to overdo it.

The risk is even greater with turnkey themes proposed by designers for your CMS sites like WordPress. These themes are certainly very beautiful, but often poorly optimized in terms of loading performance.

Be sure to ask before you buy. Do you really need all the widgets and features offered? Will you need to add extensions to meet your other needs? Are the user reviews good? Also, don’t hesitate to test the performance of sites using this theme with the tools seen above!

Anyway, the best practice to follow is to stay sober on adding elements to your web page. Each of them will be as much weight in the code and potential additional requests when loading the page.

3 – Compress, minify and cache the code
This is a much more technical action, but don’t panic!

If your site has been developed by an agency or internally, you will have to check with the people concerned that all these actions have been implemented.

If you use a CMS, there are plugins that will take care of this part for you!

But let’s see how it works:

All the files and lines of code used to display and run your website have a weight that will play on the loading time of your pages.

The challenge is to compress these HTML and CSS files. We will try to make sure that the user has to download as little data as possible during his visit.

Another highly recommended optimization is the minification of the code. This means that we will try to eliminate unnecessary characters for the proper execution of the code of a page.

With minification, it is also possible to pack different files in order to create as few requests as possible for each page load.

Finally the last step of this part will be to cache the resources of your website. Concretely, this means that we will ask the visitor’s browser to temporarily store a certain number of elements on his device.

Thus, the next time the page is consulted, it will load faster because some elements will not be downloaded again!

4 – Sorting through extensions and plugins
If you are using a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Shopify or Prestashop, then it is likely that over time, you will end up with a LOT of extensions and plugins.

You should know that some extensions will add requests (elements to load) on the pages on which they are active. They contribute to make your pages take longer to load. And sometimes they are even present on all the pages of your site!

This can be the case if for example you use a plugin for the management of the consent related to the cookies of your site. Or if you use a chatbot. Or if you use marketing automation solutions to display forms and retrieve visitor data.

Of course, some extensions are essential in your marketing strategy and you can’t do without them.

On the other hand, there are surely some that you no longer use or that you have replaced with alternatives. Think about deactivating or removing them.

5 – Choosing the right hosting
This last point is not directly related to your site itself.

Your site is necessarily hosted on a server somewhere in the world. This has several consequences on the loading speed of your site.

Indeed, each provider offers different hosting options. If your site is on a shared hosting, then it will be from a technical point of view less performing than a site running on a dedicated server.

You will also hear about CDN, SSR and other such acronyms. But their usefulness or not depends on your site and your activity. It’s up to you to compare the different offers and to see the solutions that the providers propose to you!

You should also know that if you only work with prospects and customers based in France, then it is better to have a hosting in France rather than abroad. The geographical proximity impacts to some extent the speed of loading of your pages depending on the location from which they are consulted.

Your homepage plays a big role in conversions. In just 8 seconds, your visitors have already formed their first impression. They decide whether to continue browsing on the homepage or go elsewhere.

The first thing to know is that the content of your homepage should give them a clear idea of who you are, what you do and what your values are. This way, you’ll encourage them to keep exploring… until they convert.

By the way, the first important thing is that you need a good hosting for your website. Click here to find a nice performance with good price web hosting.

How do you create a striking homepage that will dazzle your visitors? Here are our tips!

1 – Avoid clichés from image banks
Pretty smiling people, brightly lit backgrounds, fake situations… Photos from image banks are not very convincing and hardly elicit an emotional response. On the contrary, they can damage your credibility.

Use original and authentic visuals to captivate your visitors. Opt for real images of your team, on your premises. If you market products, highlight them with high quality images.

2 – Segment your targets
Upon arriving on your homepage, the visitor must immediately visualize the help you can provide. Even more so in B2B! The potential buyer has no time to lose, he wants to know if he is in the right place or if you have an offer specifically dedicated to his needs.

Here are the answers to show on your homepage:

Do you help companies of his size?
In his sector of activity?
Do you have offers for different professions?
It’s simple, effective and easy to understand for visitors. They know immediately if the solution corresponds to them and where to click to continue their visit.

3 – Present your value proposition
Your value proposition answers the question of why. Why should a visitor choose you over your competitors?

To answer this question, play on feelings and emotions. What can a user feel before and after using your product or service? Emotion is a powerful trigger for action.

4 – Provide evidence and credibility
Do you know what social proof is? It’s about providing evidence of user satisfaction. According to Hubspot, 88% of Internet users trust reviews from other customers as much as they trust recommendations from their friends and family.

Surf on this need for prescriptions to improve your homepage. For example, you can:

Incorporate statistics, testimonials and short case study summaries into your homepage content.
Use namedropping by adding the logos of your best-known customers.
Indicate awards obtained from legitimate and recognized sources.
5 – Present your offer in less than 2 minutes
The idea here is to make a product demo or introduce your team in a short way, right from the homepage. The best way to do this is through video.

Give an overview of how your product can help the customer, in a video of less than 2 minutes. Beyond that, attention may wane and the visitor may leave the site.

If your service can’t be put in video, you can always opt for an animation.

6 – Include contact information
Most customers use the website, during the initial research phase (the awareness phase in the online buying journey), to evaluate potential providers, suppliers or products.

After their research (and thus their navigation on the site), they may be tempted to contact you. To do so, they will return to the home page! So make sure that this information is visible and actionable.

7 – Promote job offers
Are you hiring? Post it on your homepage. Firstly: this increases the number of applications, and therefore your chance of finding the rare pearl.

Second: a company that is hiring is often growing. If it is growing, it means that it offers quality services. This sends a positive message to visitors and improves their first impression.

8 – Direct visitors with call-to-actions (CTA)
Like a hotel lobby, you need to guide visitors. Where should they go according to their needs? Think about adding call-to-action buttons adapted to each step of the conversion tunnel.
Make sure your call-to-actions are clearly visible. If they blend in too much with the design of your page, they may not be clicked. Use colors that attract the eye, while integrating with your graphic charter.

Beyond the design, work carefully on the texts of your CTA. A button that simply says “Contact” or “Contact Us” is not enough incentive. Try more engaging phrases.

For example, at SLN you can find call-to-actions like:

“Get to know the SLN Team”.
“Download your Free Guide”.
“Your Free Inbound Marketing Audit”.

9 – Personalize the content
From the home page, the customer must know that your site is designed for him, and only for him.

Work on your design in a dynamic way, so that the entrance of the site changes according to the type of visitors (prospects or identified customers), their origin (social networks, sponsored ads, organic traffic…) or their previous behaviors.

It’s likely that you can’t implement this level of personalization yet. Still, make sure that each visitor type feels taken care of with adapted content. Use the terms and jargon used by each target audience in a section dedicated to them.

This multiplies your chances of keeping them on your website.

10 – Avoid aggressive pop-ups
To convert visitors into leads, they need to leave their contact information, that’s a fact. But if you ask them for their email address as soon as they arrive on the homepage, they will run away.

Instead of a pop-up that opens immediately, add a CTA directing to a landing page to download your latest white paper or subscribe to the newsletter. You can also set up an exit pop-up, which is only triggered if the visitor wants to leave the site.

11 – Avoid sliders and carousels
Sliders and carousels have been trendy for several years. But this is not the case anymore! While they allow you to present all your offers, they weigh down the loading time (an important SEO factor, you know).

Moreover, they display too much information in a short period of time, which can create confusion.

The solution? A clear and relevant call-to-action! Present your value proposition, what sets you apart from the competition and invite visitors to learn more.

In this example, QuarksUp does not detail all the features of its tool. The company presents, in one sentence, its solution and encourages users to directly request a demo.

12 – Optimize the footer
Often forgotten, the footer acts as a safety net! It catches visitors before they reach the bottom of the homepage… and decide to leave the site.

Very effective in helping users find their way, optimize it by including your most important sections: request a quote or a demo, contact, main products or services, etc.

13 – Simplify navigation
Simplicity is often the key word when it comes to the homepage. This is also true for the menu! The visitor must quickly identify the tabs and information that can help him solve his problem.

Avoid proposing a too deep navigation and prefer to highlight the most consulted pages, through a striking and intuitive design.

In general, try not to put too much information on your homepage. You can be easily tempted to present everything you offer in detail on your homepage.

This is not its role! Think of it more as a mix between the introduction and the summary of your site. The homepage should be used to redirect each visitor to the right section of your site, according to their profile and their needs.

14 – Integrate keywords
The work concerning keywords is different in the context of SEO for the homepage. You need to go beyond a single term approach and avoid those related to your business.

The solution is to extend your reach with several thematic phrases, containing your location and/or your main services.

Include them in your business descriptions on your homepage, in titles and subtitles, in meta descriptions as well as Alt attributes of images.

Give Google a global view of your site’s thematic by using a large part of the semantics of your activity sector.

15 – Choose a strategic title tag
The title of your homepage is the ideal place to highlight the value of your business. Ideally, address a need, while including your company name.

This allows you to capture both prospects who don’t know your company and those who are specifically looking for it. In any case, the objective is to interest a mature and qualified target.

Acquisition
This stage corresponds to the fact of developing the traffic of a website by attracting qualified visitors. For this we can combine several marketing levers (natural referencing, emailing, social networks, ads campaigns…).

The conversion
This second step aims to convert website visitors into leads. That is to say, transforming an unknown visitor into an identified and qualified prospect. We can then make him mature with various actions before creating a commercial relationship with him and make him a customer.

We often see that companies only work on their acquisition, but neglect the conversion part.

If they work correctly, they generate visitors, but they don’t do anything with them. They visit pages on the site, but are not encouraged to take action and leave as they came.

Why do they do this? Because there is no conversion point, no landing page on their site!

I can hear you behind your screen: “yes, but I have a contact page with a form! Ok cool! And how many contacts do you generate with it?

The contact page is not a real effective conversion page because it doesn’t have a specific purpose. It doesn’t meet a need of your visitor and doesn’t provide any particular value to them.

(No, your visitors don’t want to be “contacted as soon as possible” by Jean-Mi, your sales representative, to praise your offer)

A poor quality landing page can ruin your marketing efforts. All by itself.

You can create the best content in the world, optimize your SEO, communicate on social networks and even advertise online… If your landing page is not good, you will not get results.

So yes, you’ll increase the number of visitors to your website but that’s not what’s going to increase your sales.

What is a landing page and what is it for?
Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re all talking about the same thing and agree on what a landing page actually is.

A definition of a landing page
For those who didn’t skip their English classes, the landing page can be translated as “landing page” in good French.

It’s a bit of a mouthful, you might say. But this translation helps to illustrate the concept.

The landing page is exactly that. It’s the page you want to take your visitors to, the final step of their stay on your website in a way.

And just like during a trip, this is where you will collect the visitor’s contact information and where they will check in with you.

What is the objective of a landing page?
We saw it just before. Creating and adding this type of page on your website will allow you to generate leads.

These leads are obtained by transforming simple visitors into identified prospects that you can then convert into customers, and therefore into sales.

If you hope that your visitors will contact you on their own because they have been impressed by the quality of your content, you are mistaken.

You need to set up a real conversion tunnel to guide them step by step towards your goal: to get their contact information with your landing page.

How to convert with a landing page?
Converting clicks from your ad campaigns
If you use the marketing lever of advertising campaigns on Google or social networks, the links of your ads must lead to a landing page dedicated to each campaign.

This is an excellent way to quickly capture new leads in addition to or while waiting for your acquisition strategy via SEO to be fully operational.

The best practice here is to always make sure that the landing page is consistent with the message, visual and promise of your ad.

It is about putting the visitor in the best conditions to perform the desired action. They should not have clicked on an ad promising content and arrive on a landing page that tells them about a completely different subject.

Nurturing your existing prospects
Another use case for the landing page is when you already know your prospect.

If you have started a lead nurturing process, then you can send them targeted emails that will incite them to visit a specific landing page according to their level of maturity and the interest you have identified in them.

You will then be able to collect additional information (budget, project status, main objective…). This information will allow you to better evaluate the commercial potential of your prospect and identify the right time to contact him.

Converting your website visitors
As we have seen before, in most cases, your landing pages will be used to convert your website visitors into leads. This is part of the inbound marketing methodology.

You’ve certainly heard it, from us or elsewhere. To attract visitors to your website, you need to create search engine optimized content.

But be careful! It’s not about writing about anything without any objective. You want to attract qualified visitors, right?

So write content that responds to their problems, at each stage of their buyer’s journey.

But now, how do you send these visitors to your landing page?

With call-to-actions!

Call-to-actions (or CTAs) are buttons or banners that you integrate into your content to encourage readers to visit your landing page.

But here’s the thing: the visitor doesn’t know you. You’re not going to convince them with just a button and a message that says: “hey please visit my landing page”.

You have to offer him something in exchange. And this something in marketing is called a content offer.

In fact, the idea is to trade a high value-added content for their contact information by filling out a form on your landing page.

It’s a win-win.

The visitor gets content that he perceives as having a high value for him. You get their contact information and you make them think about buying.

What content offer to propose on a landing page?
Now you know what a landing page is for.

Normally, at this stage you ask yourself what type of content to offer.

So I see you coming with your big shoes here. Don’t go sticking all your brochures in landing pages and telling yourself that it’s good stuff and that it will convert a lot.

It’s all about being a little more subtle and especially about following the steps of your prospects’ buying journey.

Let me explain.

Not all your visitors are at the same level in their buying process.

Some are already mature and may be receptive to “Decision” type content such as brochures, customer case studies or demos with your sales representatives for example.

But in reality, 99% of them are in the “Awareness” or “Consideration” phase. They don’t want to talk to you directly and are just becoming aware of their problem or are still looking for a solution.

What is the average conversion rate of a landing page?
The average conversion rate of a landing page is 11.5%.
You read that right, 11.5%.

So why am I talking about 70% in the title of this article? We’ll come back to that.

For the sake of your reflection, if you are wondering what the average conversion rate of a landing page is, it is important that you keep in mind that this indicator varies depending on the traffic sources.

Unsurprisingly, the conversion rate of a landing page is higher for a visitor coming from natural referencing than from paid referencing.

The channel that offers the best landing page conversion rate is email, 13%, but we are still clearly below the 70% I promised in the title.

The reason is quite simple: when you ask yourself about the average rate of a landing page, you are asking the wrong question.

The relevant question to ask yourself is what is a good conversion rate for a landing page.

The majority of companies I meet do not manage to generate
return on investment with their website. The average conversion rate of a landing page is measured from their (poor) performance.

11.5% conversion rate on a landing page is clearly not enough and the causes are very simple.

What is a good conversion rate for a landing page?
Let’s ask ourselves this question.

To determine what is a good conversion rate for a landing page, we just have to look at things in an ultra-basic way: when a visitor arrives on a landing page, he has only two options.

Either they fill out the form or they leave.

In other words, it’s a coin toss. A 50/50 chance. A 50% chance.

If your conversion rate is less than 50% it is for at least one of the following reasons:

The path that brought the visitor to this landing page is not good;
The design of the landing page is not effective;
The value you offer is not sufficient;
We will come back to these points when we will see concretely how to create an effective landing page.

But here again, I see you coming. Yes, 50% is not 70% as I promised you.

In what context to create a landing page?
Here we will make it short: you must create a specific landing page for each of your digital marketing campaigns.

I regularly see companies that create a landing page to which they send their visitors or prospects at the slightest opportunity. I’ll give you a very common example:

Many times, companies only have one landing page on their website. The contact page.

So, when they do a Google Ads campaign, they refer to this landing page.

When they offer a demo or request a quote, they link to this landing page.

When they publish on social networks about a specific topic, they propose to continue the exchange by referring to this landing page.

It’s no wonder that these companies have an average conversion rate of 11.5% on this landing page.

Here are the cases in which you should create a landing page:

Signing up for your newsletter;
Signing up for a webinar;
Downloading a content offer such as a white paper;
Requesting a demo;
Free consultation;
The traditional product/service sales page;
Needless to say, the return on investment of your Google Ads campaign will be nil if you send your ad to the homepage of your website.

No one will sign up for your webinar if it is necessary to make a written request from the contact page form.

Every marketing action has a landing page. That’s rule number one.

The 5 purposes of a successful landing page
To create a landing page with an optimal conversion rate, it’s essential to understand its main purposes.

After all, do you really know why you should create a landing page?

You’ll tell me you want to generate leads. Yes, that’s fine. But how? Why is the landing page crucial for your website’s ROI?

1 – A good landing page attracts attention
2 – A good landing page holds interest
3 – A good landing page creates desire
4 – A good landing page inspires action
As you may have noticed, these vocations are based on the AIDA copywriting technique.

But that’s not all, there is one last key vocation for an effective landing page:

5 – A good landing page collects strategic information