How to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate

Website’s Conversion Rate

TechsPlace | The reason why you have a website is not just for the frills or the thrill of having one. Websites strategically get you discovered online so you can get supporters, promoters, followers, patrons, subscribers, or customers. The % of people who land on your website and take the action you want them to make is called a conversion, and the way to get there is through website’s Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO).

Getting a reasonable website’s conversion rate is like mining internet gold, and you succeed by making sure your customers have the best and easiest possible experience when they get to your website. You will not be able to compel customers to take specific actions on your site if their satisfaction rating is abysmal. The only action they would be doing is to get out of your website as fast as possible.

While SEO ensures that factors search engine bots look for are lining up cohesively on your website, CRO centers on the human experience of your website. SEO gets you the traffic you need, and CRO gets your customers completing CTAs (Call-to-Action).

CRO aims to help you optimize your entire marketing strategy. If you just focus on your SEO, then you have a single-winged airplane on the runway running at full speed but unable to fly. CRO is the other wing to your marketing strategy that helps you lift off and soar. The better your SEO and CRO work together, the higher your website performs, and the better your conversions will be.

SEO and CRO
Image Credit: Team Meñez Creatives

For example, producing high-quality content and promoting it in a PPC campaign is SEO work that aims to get people to click your site. Increasing the User Interface (UI) or design of your site, together with improving the rate of User Experience (UX), helps increase conversion possibilities on your website. The more users are happy, the more they’d be back for more.

Marketing strategies need to be patterned around conversion. Conversion shows that digital marketing efforts are working. It shows that your content is indeed considered of relevance by the audience or readers of your website. Conversion is good feedback, so you’ll know which direction to take your campaign further into the future.

How do you boost your website’s conversion rate, then? Here are some steps you can take to increase your website’s conversion rate.

  1. Your Ads Need to Match Your Landing Page

According to Unbounce, a landing page is “a standalone webpage, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign.” It’s basically where your visitor “lands” after clicking a link you provided in a campaign. It could be through email,  social media posts, and other ads.

Converting existing customers and causing visitors to come back repeatedly can be done using landing pages. But wouldn’t you be confused if you clicked an ad or a campaign, and be led to a landing page containing information about a different product or promotion?

Misleading ads or mismatched ads and landing pages can discredit you as trustworthy. Make sure that whatever ad people clicked-through is the same ad they’ll see on your landing page. Make designs and style coherent. You got them to click, but you need to keep them engaged until the sale is closed, or whatever action it was you wanted them to make.

If you used a particular picture on Facebook that caught a customer’s attention and made them click, seeing a different picture with a different design after they are directed to your landing page can be confusing to the customer. They might drop from your funnel because of the inconsistency.

Branding and logo should also be consistent. If you recently updated your logo, for example, make sure it is reflected on your landing page. Some make the mistake of not updating their landing pages and focusing on the ads or campaigns only. It would be jarring for customers to see a discrepancy like this. It also gives the impression you do not care because you couldn’t even update something as crucial as your logo.

For instance, Facebook recently updated its logo, as seen below:

facebook logo

We see this change reflected in everything that is Facebook these days. Do the same for your brand in case you have gone through updates. Make sure that updates and changes are reflected all through-out your pages, ad campaigns, and any other material that links to you and your website.

Here are some tips to make sure your landing pages also convert:

  • Make your offers hard-to-resist so people click-through your landing page.
  • Provide a compelling yet straightforward CTA (Call-to-Action).
  • Make sure your landing page is appealing. Simple yet bold designs stand out more.
  • Keep your key elements and CTAs above the fold it will be visible right away without the need for visitors to scroll down.
  • Make your page navigable, making browsing less fussy for your visitors.
  • Ask for relevant information only, like an email address and a first name. Asking for a lot of information can turn people off, so avoid long forms.
  • Ensure that your landing page downloads quickly. You have around five seconds to grab people’s attention, get them to click and dwell.
  • Your landing page should be designed for a specific part of your audience. If the audience is coming from Facebook, for instance, they may have a different browsing behavior than audiences coming from LinkedIn.
  1. Optimize Your Conversion Funnel

A sales or marketing funnel are the different stages in your campaign, from Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action (Conversion). Your marketing funnel aims to capture the audience’s attention, successfully connect with the target audience, and compellingly convert them to consumers.

sales-funnel
Sales Funnel Vectors by Vecteezy

Discover what makes your targeted audience brand-aware, draw their interest, sways them to consider your product, and converts to consumers.

Make your content dynamic and more valuable, so you give your audience more compelling reasons to sign up for your email list. Provide useful blogs, educational content like whitepapers, evergreen content, and free reports, even the occasional humorous memes or entertaining videos. Be your audience’s trusted advisor and go-to resource. Instead of spreading your website too thinly, focus on being the authority on one or two main topics of interest.

Here are the different stages of this marketing funnel and what happens on each stage:

  • Awareness: At this level, the majority of your efforts center around leads generation. Whatever strategy you use and campaign channel you prefer, get people to “look” at your brand and hook them to click.
  • Interest: After you get people to notice you, follow up by serving them high-quality, relevant content. Sell your story. You need to prove a little bit more at this stage that you are worth their time. As the audience leans in to scrutinize your page, give them a glimpse, and show them what values you can add to their lives.
  • Decision: At this stage, the audience is already deciding between suppliers or brands and considering which one to trust. Hopefully, you are one of their choices, and that there is a significant probability they are trusting their purchase on you. Email campaigns are still reliable in closing deals if done right. You need to have a compelling Call-to-Action (CTA) and a simple check out or subscription system to drive sales or conversions more successfully.
  • Action: This is where your hard work pays off—when your visitor finally makes a decision and responds by doing the action you intended them to make on your landing page. Again, make the process of action effortless and very secure. Provide prompt and valuable customer support and overall positive experience for your new customers. If they like your product and your service, they come back with repeat orders and recommend you to other people. That’s free advertisement right there.

The more times a customer goes through your funnel, the more proof that your funnels and all your efforts work.

  1. Conduct A/B Testing

A/B Testing or Split Testing is a simple way of checking which campaign version will do better with your target market. You can do A/B testing on a webpage, or maybe a landing page, contact form, even email campaigns, and the like. The two variants are sent to different segments of visitors or subscribers at the same time so you can compare which one drives more conversions. Once you find out which version is doing better, you can apply that version as your primary campaign. The goal of A/B testing is to discover which version is converts better.

There are different tools you can use to conduct A/B testing, and it’s good to know that a lot of these tools are free. For example, WordPress plugins may have this feature bundled in without cost. Email marketing campaign tools also have this feature without readily available for use.

There are different reasons why we A/B testing is needed. One of them is discovering the audience’s main points, increasing leads or conversions, and minimizing bounce rates. You can modify different elements in an A/B test, such as:

  • Headings: Content, length, font size, typography
  • Texts: length and content
  • Call-to-Action buttons: Size, shape, text, color, and placement
  • Call-to-Action Texts: Length, content, and formatting
  • Images: static or carousel, size, and placement
  1. Post Customer’s Reviews, Testimonials, and Peer Recommendations to Boost Trust Rating

customer review

Gone are the days when brands just have to claim they are the best as many times over in their campaigns, and people will believe them. It takes more than that to grab the attention of a market that knows how to conduct their product research and must have read several reviews about you and your brand even before visiting your site.

Research shows that Ninety Seven Percent of consumers aged 18-34 read online reviews to judge a local business. The consumers in this age bracket are most likely to trust reviews as much as personal recommendations. On the other hand, 78% of consumers aged 55+ are satisfied after reading 1-6 online reviews.

It’s how essential reviews and recommendations are. Providing a testimonials page on your website can go a long mile. Getting good comments and reviews, even in your social media accounts, can lead people to your website even more. So, update your website routinely and provide new testimonials every month or so. If you are new, connect with your first few customers right away and find ways how to get them writing a useful review for you. You may ask friends or family to test your product and give an honest review or do some free work for in exchange for reviews and ratings.

  1. Add Elements that Build Trust

Visitors must see certain elements on your website that signal them you can be trusted. Make your contacts page easy to see, and provide complete information with a map as well. This way, you give a strong impression of legitimacy and that you want to be found.

Add your social profiles as well, since more than half of internet users are on social media. If you are an e-commerce store, add Payment Assurances and trust badges so customers feeling secured of any transaction they do with you. Try positioning these elements near your Call-to-Action button to help increase conversions.

Other items you can add are professional design, verifiable data, “About Us” page where they can see there are a real company and staff behind the brand. Also, avoid all typo errors and crowding your pages with ads and pop-ups that turn off readers.

  1. Product and Services Transparency

False advertising doesn’t cut it anymore in today’s intelligent and curious market. The responsibility is on you to show people you have quality products and services. Avoid absolutes in your claims, like “the best,” “the finest,” “the only,” and similar blanket statements.

Focus on the main points that you know for sure you are addressing and providing solutions for. The main point is a specific problem that your target market is experiencing. You can focus on how you have added value to the lives of your customers.

Here is a short video explaining the process of identifying the pain, creating solutions, and marketing the results:

  1. Fine-tune your sales copy for any objections that may arise.

No product or service is perfect, and you cannot please anybody. But you can avoid objections as much as possible by doing the legwork before releasing campaigns or any kind of offers:

  • List down all possible hesitations and objections you may encounter, especially from your analytical clientele.
  • Add the data to your sales copy.
  • Explain the problems your product solves
  • Include extra proof like credentials, experience, awards.
  • Include testimonials.
  • Include comparisons with other brands indicating why you stand out.
  • User testings and surveys, if available.

According to Salesforce, here is how you can overcome sales objections when it comes to budget, authority, need, timeliness, and value:

overcoming-sales-objectionsImage Source

  • Budget: Show the unique value proposition of your product right away
  • Authority: Make sure you fluently speak your customer’s language in that specific area of expertise you have and address particular issues competently.
  • Need: Explain extensively, as needed, the problems or opportunities at hand.
  • Timeliness: Give compelling reasons why they need to make a purchase immediately.
  • Value: Itemize how you can further add value to their lives, like money-back-guarantees, referral incentives, and other perks.
  1. Create Compelling CTAs (Call-to-Action)

Your CTA needs to be compelling that drives people to take the course of action you want them to do on your page. It could be a subscription, and actual purchase, and the like.

Good CTA’s are clear, concise, straightforward, and authoritative. It uses bold yet straightforward words that clear, direct readers on what to do next.

Some web developers feeling creative sometimes complicate their CTA’s by making it vague. For example, “Still Curious” is not as compelling as “Learn More.” Yes, you may want to be unique, but experts have discovered that people want to be directed what’s next. They want clear instructions in the sales process. They already know you are offering them something, so there is no need to dilly-dally and waste their time.

If people like what they see, they will click and buy. Visitors and customers want that process as simple as it can be. Remember, your audience does not have all the time (and sometimes patience) to linger and get incredibly lost in a complicated sales funnel.

For e-commerce sites, great CTA’s call for immediate requests, like “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart.”

Whatever your CTA will be, be bold and exciting, always causing readers to take a second look and lean in closer for more.

  1. Remove Distractions

Wordstream suggests that a less busy page can boost the website’s conversion rate by 40%. People value their time. If you waste their time, how do you expect them to value yours? Remove distractions from your page that prevent it from being navigable and accessible.

If you are using any media content, like an image or a video, make sure it is relevant, very impactful, and does not distract the audience from the primary goal of the page, which is to convert.

Adjust designs and eliminate elements if you think they are not necessary to driving conversions straight home.

  1. Learn from your competitors’ strategies

It’s good to listen to what conversion techniques are working for your best competitors. It’s not so you can copy everything that they do. You can check what problems or main points they are not able to cover and serve that. You can also see what the pulse of the market you are sharing with your competitors by looking at what campaigns are working well for other brands. Learn how you can outdo the competition and produce better campaigns.

Conclusion: Optimise Your website’s Conversion Rate Strategies Today

Your aim, to optimize all your efforts into boosting your website’s conversion rate, is to get to about 11.45% conversion rate or higher. If your campaign gets high conversion rates, then it spells success much more significant for you and your website and brand. When your website’s conversion rate is high, it allows you to increase your domain authority without spending much additional budget for ads like PPC campaigns.

Your customer acquisition costs will become lower, and consequently increase revenue per visitor. All of this boosts your business and helps it to grow more robust and competitive for the ever-changing market. So, stay competitive and optimize your digital strategies so you can increase your website’s conversion rate more efficiently today.