Having a website in today’s market is no longer an option, but different businesses utilize their websites differently. Some use their website for instant revenue generation e.g. e-commerce sites, while others simply rely on their website for lead generation through phone calls or email subscriptions. However, one thing is common for all website owners: you want to use your site to grow your business.
There are a number of strategies business owners can leverage to attract more traffic and build that traffic into leads and eventually conversions through sales. This article provides eight seemingly simple but critical web design strategies that have the potential to improve your traffic, leads, and conversions.
- Find out what elements visitors are clicking and scrolling to
Knowing which areas of the site visitors are clicking and scrolling to will help you to position your offers and CTAs in places where they are likely to attract the highest number of clicks. You can use heat map tools such as CrazyEgg which will show you not only which areas are being clicked on, but also the origins/sources of those clicks. CrazyEgg can also show you how far down your web pages visitors scroll.
Using this tool, you can carry out split testing to identify which locations are most lucrative for your CTA buttons i.e. areas where conversions are most likely to happen. Conversions don’t just come by having CTAs somewhere on the page, gaining insight into what places actually attract your visitors and leveraging that is what brings conversions.
- Site conversion audits
Is your current web design structure optimized for traffic conversion? In reality, many web designers know how to create great-looking sites, but few understand what elements are required to maximize conversions. As a site owner, engaging user experience (UX) expert to perform a comprehensive conversion audit is worth the investment.
Such experts will help you pinpoint conversion hurdles and recommend design changes that will maximize conversions prior to launching your marketing campaigns. In turn, you can deliver optimized targeted messages and minimize the amounts wasted on ineffective strategies and elements. You can learn how to split test different elements of your campaign to determine which are more effective for campaigns. With a strong foundation on your website, all future campaigns will be more effective.
- Trust signals and testimonials
Visitors are more likely to make a purchase or submit opt-in information to businesses that they trust. You can contribute to the development of trust by including real testimonials from previous customers and/or noteworthy industry partners. Showcase any accreditations, recognition, and awards prominently, communicating to consumers that you can be trusted. Stay away from giving fake testimonials, which can be spotted easily and will immediately cause customers to distrust your brand.
- Split testing
The importance of split testing cannot be overemphasized. Very often in website design, small changes, like tweaking the color or wording of CTA buttons can lead to significant changes in conversion. There are a number of simple tools which allow you to create multiple versions of your landing pages with slight variations to determine which ones lead to better conversions. You can do this even if you don’t have advanced coding or development skills.
- Call tracking
Where you rely on multiple sources for lead generation especially relating to phone calls, it’s advisable to have unique phone numbers and dedicated landing pages for the different sources, this will enable you to track which source was most effective in phone call generation. However, given that the call track numbers are all routed back to the main lines, there will be no disruption to the handling of your phone leads.
Almost all call traffic service providers can give you a record of calls made, and you can then use this information to determine which aspects of your campaign are effective in lead generation and which need improvement.
- Google Analytics metrics and data
Google analytics provides valuable information on which sources of traffic are effective in giving conversions and what your traffic engages in prior to conversion. This insight can help you to make significant changes to your layout and strategy e.g. you would know which of your social media traffic is converting and hence be able to direct more resources towards the channels that are leading to more conversions.
Suppose for instance you could tell that most of your successful converts interacted with you on the blog before converting. You would know to focus on generating more high-quality content and utilize available distribution outlets like Taboola and Outbrain to lead even more traffic to the blog.
Your Google Analytics data is a gold mine that can help you get rid of traffic sources that convert poorly and scale up efforts on those sources which have higher conversion percentages.
- Exit popup offers
Getting traffic from any source to your site is no small investment, even if you’re not running pay-per-click campaigns. The time, resources and effort directed towards social media marketing and
Most of the time, visitors who leave are unlikely to return; it makes sense to try and convert them through any way possible. Setting up a popup exit offer can actually improve conversion rates, which over time contributes to a significant boost in your ROI.
- Live Chat
Live chats are not the preserve of e-commerce websites. True, they’re important for providing clarifications that can save sales as well as opening up another avenue for your employees to guide consumers to make a purchase and perhaps cap it with related purchases. However, live chat facilities are useful for other sites as well.
For instance, a restaurant site can use their live chat to iron out details of reservations as well as provide directions on locations for customers. Ensure that your live chat is accessible on mobile devices, given most of such customers may need this information while on-the-go. Cheap to implement, live chat can significantly improve conversions for businesses across the board.
Conclusion
As an entrepreneur, every avenue available to improve revenue collection is welcomed, even embraced. With these simple design hacks, you can transform your website from a liability to a money-making tool in no time.
