8 Simple Ways to Increase Website Conversion
Owning a website is a worthy investment, but if you do not know how to make the most out of your investment, you won’t get any profit from it.
Businesses focus on getting traffic to their websites, but a huge amount of traffic is useless unless you convert your visitors into customers. You have to learn how to maximize incoming traffic in order to reap benefits for your business.
According to Econsultancy, only 22% of businesses were satisfied with their conversion rates in 2016. Another dilemma faces businesses as they try to optimize their conversion rates but end up unsatisfied with the results. What’s going on?
It’s either businesses do not know how to convert their traffic properly or they have executed their conversion optimization technique rather poorly.
In this article, we will help you achieve your goals in optimizing your website’s conversion rate. We will talk about proven strategies that will drive your traffic to take action: these simple steps will focus on email subscriptions, successful form fill-ups, and even making a purchase.
Here are eight ways you can start on to improve your conversion:
1. Focus on improving usability first
The simplest definition of usability in web design comes from Marketing Terms:
“Website usability is not just about making sure everything on the site works, but how quickly and easily visitors are able to make use of the site.”
If your visitors are having a hard time to use your website because they can’t find what they’re looking for, then you need to check on your site’s usability. Pretend that you’re a visitor and create a goal in mind. If it takes you a lot of time to reach your specific goal, or if you haven’t reached your goal through the website, you can check your site’s usability as an issue. Visitors have a hard time navigating through the website because some elements might be missing or misplaced.
Go back and assess if your website solves your visitors’ problems. Note that while usability is important, you should also consider user experience. Do not compromise user experience for usability and vice versa.
2. Make sure your copies engage emotions
The content within your website should be able to touch your visitors’ emotions. Gone were the days of stoic, flashy advertisements. We’re not saying that it should be all drama or comedy; reach out to your audience with your content. Write in a conversational tone, and use simpler words rather than going all out with highfalutin words. Explain your product’s features in a simpler tone. You don’t need to hard sell your product; let them know what they need to know. Provide testimonials that speak the truth about your business. Blog about your industry and other news and announcements.
If you’re wondering how to make these all possible, here’s what you need to know on making great content by the Kissmetrics Blog.
3. Be clear on your value proposition
Here’s a good takeaway from ConversionXL:
In a nutshell, value proposition is a clear statement that
- explains how your product solves customers’ problems or improves their situation (relevancy),
- delivers specific benefits (quantified value),
- tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition (unique differentiation)
It might seem so redundant but having a clear value proposition helps in converting your audience into clients. Again, if they know and understand what you can offer, they can determine if you can help solve their problem.
This will involve your copy and your website’s usability. If they can navigate through the website with ease, if you can deliver what you promised, then there’s a higher chance of converting your visitors into leads or clients.
4. Work on understanding your sales funnel
Marketing your products or services shouldn’t be a hit-or-miss game of chance. Before wasting more money to market your services to a broad market, study and work on understanding your sales funnel. Not all visitors to your website are interested in making a purchase; some of them are lurkers looking for a specific product. Some of your visitors may be new users to your website, and some of them might be returning, frequent customers. Understand the buyer’s journey and plan your marketing efforts accordingly.
5. Commit on landing page optimization
Landing pages are your sales pitches in real life. Whether you need to have your customers fill up a form on this page, subscribe to your newsletter, or make a purchase, this is the first impression that you need to get a visitor’s attention. This page helps “seal the deal”.
Optimizing a landing page seems easy because there are definitive things that you can do to start reeling in conversions. Your landing page must have a clear call to action. A stunning offer will go to waste if you do not have a call to action to convert your would-be leads. When creating a landing page, it should only have one offer to give. Do not parade all of your content offers on one landing page.
Determine an effective headline on your landing page. Concisely narrate the important features of your offer, include stunning, relevant visuals and don’t forget to include proof or testimonials about your offer. Here we compiled three definitive, in-depth guides on landing page optimization:
- Qualaroo: Landing Page Optimization
- Unbounce: 101 Landing Page Optimization Tips
- Quicksprout: The Definitive Guide to Landing Page Optimization
6. Provide the best offer and state it
Now that you’re ready to convert your visitors into customers, it’s high-time to offer the best that you have, and flaunt it.
But how do you come up with the best offer there is?
You can start with brainstorming your buyer’s persona. Analyze your target market, and determine what do they need to know or deserve the most. Again, answer a problem instead of just putting up an offer for the sake of gathering information from your visitors.
Once you determine what works best for your target market, analyze what your competitors have to offer or already offered. Ask yourself these questions:
- Am I offering the same thing as my competitor?
- What can I offer that’s unique and very useful for my target market?
- Can I live up to the expectations that I am setting for my offer?
Once you assess your capabilities in making an offer, give it all you’ve got. If it’s content you’re planning to create, the previous reference cited in this post can help you start with your content offer.
7. Highlight all the elements that increase trust factor
Trust is an important factor in conversions as well. Due to the increase of fraudulent transactions online, people are more cautious on who they deal with online.
Here’s a quick list of what you can do to increase your visitor’s trust on your website:
- Have a contact us page with your real information such as contact numbers, address.
- Create or update your team page. It puts people at ease to know that they do interact with real people.
- Post high-quality photos of your product. Be transparent about your prices. Avoid hidden fees, and let your customers know about your Returns Policy.
- Display Trust Marks on your website. Trust marks such as VeriSign, BBB logo, and more are some examples of Trust Marks. These are widely recognized by many and it signifies that your website is to be trusted.
8. Streamline your purchasing process
The number one problem for e-commerce sites is their abandoned carts. According to Baymard Institute, the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is at 69.23%. That’s a big problem for most e-commerce stores online. Aside from window-shoppers, this chart displays the reasons why people oftentimes abandon their purchases.
Cart abandonment strings from a tedious checkout process that tries to cram everything in one page, or the lack of action and trust signals to go with it. We suggest making your checkout page simple, and ask for the necessary details instead. Segment your checkout into a multiple checkout pages to make it concise; 27% of US online shoppers have abandoned an order in the past quarter solely due to a “too long/complicated checkout process”.
Bonus tip:
Test your conversion optimization efforts.
Wait, what’s the bonus in that?
According to a study by Econsultancy and Marketing Sherpa, 61% of companies run 5 or fewer landing page tests per month. Testing the effectivity of your landing page directly affects your conversion! You should try to figure out and check regularly what works and what doesn’t. There’s no foolproof, failsafe guide in testing and optimizing your landing page. Your results will always be different from the others.
Only 52% of companies and agencies that use landing pages also test them to find ways to improve conversions (Marketing Sherpa). You don’t just leave your landing page to convert itself. Even if you followed the tips we have here, there are some things that you can further tweak to appeal to your audience’s liking.
Conversion rate optimization may intimidate you at first, but with continuous practice and regular testing, you can unlock the limitless possibilities of the Internet has to offer. Start optimizing your website for conversions, now!