Conversion is one of the biggest challenges faced by online businesses. So, what is it?
A conversion rate is the ratio of total visitors to your site put against visitors who perform a specific action (e.g. making a purchase or signing up to your mailing list). Getting users to pull the trigger and convert can make or break your online success.
For many, conversion rates are a constant hassle. Right now, only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates. Unfortunately a one size fits all formula to a website that converts is elusive. However, when it comes to advice, there’s a lot of material out there to help you prompt visitors to interact with your site. Sadly many solutions can often seem overwhelming.
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#1. Call to Action
If you’re looking to increase your conversion rates, one of the best places to start is with a clear call to action. A CTA is a tag, button or link that users can click to perform an action. For example, a CTA on an ecommerce site would be something like “Buy now” or “add to cart”. A CTA makes it easy for a user to interact with your site and complete a purchase or signup.
It’s a good idea to test your call to action and change it around to see what gets the most results. You could stick to old-fashioned CTAs like “buy now” or jazz them up with some unique lingo of your own. The most important part is to make it as easy as possible for your user to go from a visitor to a conversion.
You want to make your clickable options the path of least resistance. Experiment and even book a writer to create some exciting and creative CTAs. Consider your audience: what would appeal? Is humour appropriate? Should you show personality? A CTA is the sucker punch and you need to consider its use very carefully. ‘Buy now’ may be exactly the wrong note to hit.
#2. Create The Right Layout!
When a business makes the transition to the online world one of the first things most owners do is commission a web designer. They are often looking for a fancy website layout. Yet all too often this confuses visitors and adversely affects conversion rates.
A landing page is designed to tell your visitors everything they need to know about your product. It’s not just for showing off your creative vision! Remember, put yourself in other people’s shoes and understand what they need to understand about your product, brand or service. It’s not all about what you know!
Abandoning complex layouts in favour of something simpler can make it much easier for users to digest the on page information. Websites with an engaging user experience show off their style without obscuring the substance of their brand proposition (And their CTA!). Users need to have a solid grasp of who you are before they decide to do business with you. Critically you don’t have long to make a good impression. Playing around with your website layout is a good way to assess how your audience responds. Test it, interrogate it, ask people their opinions. Your own opinion may not really count in this process.
#3. Test your Visitors!
If you really want to take your conversion rate up a notch, you need to stop going by your intuition, and adopt a scientific approach. Testing your visitors is a great way to quantify how effectively your site engages users. You can test your visitors to see how long they spend on your site, what pages they view and what bounce rates you’re achieving.
Testing is the best way to generate real time feedback on your site. You can A/B test all the pages on your site. So if your traffic is too low for you to compare conversion rates effectively, you can test your pages and see where customers are dropping out (Maybe they make it to putting in their personal details but get frustrated by your clunky forms!) Consider what frustrates you about visiting websites. Then look at your own site and apply the same criteria. It might well be illuminating.
#4. Communicate Your Value
Though it’s always important to consider your layout and testing, it’s vital your site communicates your value to potential customers. After all, even the most optimized sales funnel will fall flat if the site doesn’t communicate value to the customer. The key to doing this is to empathize with their concerns and expectations.
The more you understand what your customer is looking for, the better you’ll be able to tailor landing copy towards them and answer their questions. If they don’t trust in the authenticity of your brand voice your visitors won’t convert. The best strategy is to take some time thinking about what’s important to your target audience and try to find a way to use your product to help them.
We have worked with clients, spending hours on just a few phrases. The result of our work was a 17% uplift in purchases. It is really worth booking in a specialised writer to help you communicate what really matters to them while also achieving your business goals.
#5. Start Investing in CRO!
If you want to take a more serious approach to increasing your conversion rates, then you need to start investing in CRO. A 2014 survey revealed that 58% of companies spend more than $10,000 on web analytics (27% of those spend between $50,000 to $500,000). Investing in a CRO service can help you to take a detailed look at your site. After which, you can make the necessary changes to make you profitable.
If you’re hesitant to put money down there are plenty of free CRO providers out there. Well known CRO providers like Optimizely provide a wealth of tools to get you started and formulating a plan to boost your sales. Picking the right platform can help you to take a solid look at your visitor data and provide insights to help you improve your website performance.
Start Small, End Big
The key to increasing your conversion rate over time is to start small. Many companies fail to increase their conversion rates because they find the prospect daunting and fail to implement a long-term plan. Though it can be immensely frustrating to spend hours refining your site only for your conversions to stay stagnant, you need to treat conversions like a work in progress.
There is no quick fix for improving your conversion rates. Committing to a long-term strategy is the only way to ensure that you make gains over time. If you’re consistently paying attention to your visitor data, at the very least you’ll be generating a lot of user feedback that can be used to improve your site for the next set of visitors.
However, if you do need help then why not contact us and we can help you develop your website to better serve potential customers. Collaboration with VKN Digital will transform your business in 2018!
