Building a powerful website and generating lots of traffic to it is great. However, if that traffic doesn’t convert into sales, then it is almost useless. Nothing is worse than having a great product or service, yet you are facing a difficult time in convincing people to buy from you. Apart from careful planning, overall good user experience is something that you need to keep in mind in order to optimize your website’s conversions.
To successfully do that you need to come up with proven strategies that will boost the conversion rate of your website dramatically. This is a process where you follow certain steps to increase the percentage of your website visitors who complete a particular action that is inclined to your business goal. This particular action could be anything like filling out a form, handing over their email address or making a purchase.
So on that note, let’s have a look at 5 such effective ways to increase and optimize your website’s conversion rate.
Run A/B testing using the collected data
A/B testing is simply a split testing technique for increasing the website’s conversion rate. Suppose you have two possible titles for any page and you couldn’t decide which one to use to attract more visitors. In that case, you could easily run an A/B split test to see which one works better and creates more conversions.
The things you can improve by running A/B tests:
- A page title or headline – Play with different words and emotions to create a strong and convincing title that promotes your main content.
- Page layout and navigation – Include images, bullet points and move various sections around to check which page-layout works the best.
- Your offers and discounts – Include your product price, discounts, and bonus offers to improve your conversions.
- Test videos – Test by adding a video to communicate key points.
These are just a few simple yet effective examples of A/B tests that you can start with. Think A/B testing as scientific experiments and keep testing until you can maximize the number of conversions. Every small and insignificant change can generate surprising growth in your overall conversion rate. So your goal should be running A/B tests at any given time on your site to learn about what works and doesn’t work. By repeating this test multiple times you can narrow down things until you get a massively high-converting page for your website.
Create a clear value proposition
The value proposition is the primary reason why a potential customer should buy from you. Customers do not only want to know which products or services you sell but they are more keen to know the reason why they should buy from you instead of your competitors. Many marketers try to improve their conversion rates by altering various page elements like font size and colors, images, buttons, and so on, but the first thing you should really be focusing on creating a compelling and clear value proposition.
When people visit your site they should know exactly which product or service you are offering. There is no room for creating confusion here; your value proposition should be both crystal-clear and attractive. However, only having a powerful value proposition is not enough, it must be communicated effectively with your ideal prospects to achieve optimal results. You need to constantly refine your value proposition until you can describe your service in a single credible sentence.
For example, you may be the best fitness trainer in your locality, but visitors won’t know that if your proposition isn’t clear and attractive. This is why a clear and strong value proposition is so crucial to test how it resonates with your ideal prospects and ultimately increases your site’s conversions.
Work on trust elements of your site
The ability to build trust and credibility in the eyes of your visitors is the main thing, especially if they visit your site for the first time. Understand the social signals and psychological factors that make people believe in you – which are the fundamentals of converting your leads.
Testimonials and reviews are extremely beneficial when it comes to gaining credibility. In fact, 92 percent of online consumers not only read reviews, but 88 percent of them trust reviews as much as personal recommendations. So make sure you are visible on credible review sites that are relevant to your business.
Apart from reviews and testimonials, you can add various other trust elements on your website. Some of them are:
- Provide contact information (Phone number, email address, live chat, contact page, etc.)
- Add social sharing buttons
- Offer guarantees
- Use pictures of real people
- Show payment security (various payment methods, trust certifications, SSL, etc.)
However, while writing your content, keep in mind that the majority of people dislike self-promotional content. So focus on providing value to your visitors by answering their questions or writing about a recent news or industry trend.
To put it simply, your Call to Action button needs to be the point of attraction that captures your visitors. When it comes to the placement of your CTA buttons, perform extensive A/B testing to find out the most effective location of your buttons on your home page, blog posts, or landing pages.
You can either use a strong verb to describe the action your visitors should take (ex-“Sign Up Now!”, “Download now!”) or make it more results-oriented (ex- “Show me how to boost my website’s conversion rate”). Always use the active voice and make good use of strong words to strike on visitor’s emotions and compel them to click through.
While the placement and copy of CTA buttons are important, you also need to keep your attention on its visual appeal. As with other aspects of marketing, psychology plays a huge role in creating compelling CTA buttons. For instance, the psychology of color is a simple yet powerful way to make your customers convert. So before creating CTA buttons refer to your buyer persona to find out the effects of different colors on your audience.
Speed up Your Website to Improve User Experience
Studies revealed that even one-second delay in page loading can reduce your website’s conversions by 7 percent. According to statistics, 47 percent of consumers expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less. These numbers may sound crazy, but this is how consumers surf the web.
So if your site loads slowly, they will probably just leave your site without even waiting to see what you have to offer. To help you curb your website’s loading speed, here are 3 free tools that will help you improve your page speed.
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- GT Metrix
- Pingdom
Page speed not only affects how customers interact with your website, but it also has a direct impact on their likeliness to purchase. So if your site has speed issues, there’s no doubt you are losing a huge amount of potential customers on your website and thus many sales. Therefore, improving your website’s loading-speed can help you increase both traffic and the conversion rate.
Final Thoughts:
Every website’s needs are different and there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for achieving optimal conversions. The key to a high converting website is regular experimentation and carefully analyzing what is actually working for your website. So try these five simple yet effective techniques to successfully convert your visitors into loyal customers.
