Are your conversion rates lower than they should be? If yes, it’s time to take action.
According to statistics, a microscopic 1% of companies think conversion optimization is unimportant.
It doesn’t matter how many resources you’re plowing into marketing and promotion. If your conversion rate is low, this will tank your marketing ROI, and ultimately affect the health of your business.
You could have a killer content marketing strategy in place, a big budget for PPC ads, and a strong social media strategy—but if visitors aren’t converting you won’t be making sales.
Fortunately, if you know what to do, there are many ways you can boost conversion rate numbers.
Don’t let low conversation rates drain the lifeblood of your business. Keep reading to find out how you can maximize your marketing ROI and website traffic with these conversion optimization tips.
Increase Your Page Load Speed
One of the first things you should do to boost your conversion rate is to increase page load speed. Slow loading pages introduce friction, can trigger second thoughts, and even make visitors doubt the legitimacy of your site.
If your site is slow and your landing pages take forever to load, this will drive visitors away quicker than you can say “bounce rate”.
Don’t believe us? Stats show that 1 in 4 visitors will leave a site if it takes more than 4 seconds to load. Not only can this skyrocket your bounce rate (which is an unhealthy signal to Google), but the visitors you lose aren’t likely to return or shop with you.
Roughly 46% of shoppers don’t revisit slow websites that perform poorly. Every 1-second delay reduces customer satisfaction by 16%, and 64% of shoppers who’re dissatisfied with their visit to your site will choose to shop elsewhere.
Having a slow website can also affect your brand image. A lot of consumers gauge how a business is run and the level of care it has for customers by how well its website functions.
If your site is loading at a snail’s pace, here are some tips for speeding things up:
- Compress media files
- Host large media files on other platforms (such as videos on YouTube) and embed the content
- Implement lazy loading
- Get better hosting
- Implement caching
- Remove unnecessary plugins from your site
- Eliminate code bloat (should only be done by professionals)
- Optimize for mobile
Some of these steps you can implement yourself, but unless you have an in-house web design department you should also look into hiring a pro or investing in a site maintenance plan. With a website maintenance plan, you can sit back knowing that your page load speed is getting optimized on an ongoing basis.
Don’t Skip A/B Testing
A/B testing is one of the most popular conversion optimization methods and is something you shouldn’t skip.
A/B testing is the practice of comparing the conversion rate of two different versions of the same page. For instance, you can test the performance of different color CTA buttons.
In version A you could make the CTA button green, and in version B the CTA button could be red. Once you A/B test these two versions, you can then compare the conversion rate of each option.
If the red button increases your conversion rate by a few percent, then this is the color to choose.
You can also use A/B testing on things like headlines, calls-to-action, images, page layouts, taglines, banners, ads, forms, etc.
Just make sure you keep other elements the same and just modify the specific thing you want to test. If you change more than one element at a time, you won’t be able to know which specific changes sparked an increase in conversions.
If you need to, you can precisely test multiple elements at the same time by using multivariate tests. Multivariate tests are, however, more advanced to carry out.
Hone Your Headlines
If you want your landing pages to perform well and convert, you have to hone your headlines. Headlines are a very important part of any landing page. They are your first chance to catch the attention of the visitor and entice them to stay.
If your headlines don’t have impact, this could be directly affecting your conversion rate.
A great place to start when crafting headlines is by focusing on a benefit your offering has, or a problem it can solve.
Once you’ve targeted this, see if you can add a unique hook or twist to keep the visitor engaged or get them thinking. An example of this is VideoFruit’s landing page headline. It says “Want random people on the internet to buy stuff from you?”
This headline hints that if visitors follow the call to action, they’ll learn how to make just about anybody buy from them.
It also has a unique hook, because the term “random people on the internet” has a negative implication in most situations. This gives the reader’s mind a little jolt, gets them interested, and makes the headline stand out.
Most people are exposed to numerous headlines each day. If you want your landing page to convert, the shorter, sweeter, and more unique your headline is, the better.
Headlines are also an important part of content marketing, so the sooner you strengthen your headline honing skills, the better.
Trigger Trust
Another essential part of conversion optimization is taking steps to trigger visitor trust. You should be doing everything you can to let visitors know from the moment they arrive that you’re a trustworthy site.
Here are some of the trust signals you can display to visitors:
- Verification tags
- Images of payment systems you support (such as Paypal)
- Symantec SSLs
- Badges of excellence or any other kind of recognition or accreditation
- Ratings (such as a BBB rating)
- Customer reviews and other social proof
- A TRUSTe seal
Besides displaying these, you can also build trust by including a physical address on your site, a contact us page, an about page, and a privacy policy. Keeping your site well-maintained and updating it with fresh content can also inspire trust.
Leverate High-Quality Media on Your Landing Pages
While you should compress images and media to increase site speed, you should not use low-quality media on your landing pages.
Poor quality media that has a low resolution or bad audio (in the case of video) will make your landing page look spammy. It can make visitors feel like they’re engaging with a fly-by-night seller or a seedy offering.
Avoid this at all costs and make sure you populate your landing pages with engaging media that looks crisp and professional.
Make Your CTA Buttons Stand Out
The CTA button is the last boarding call on your landing page, email, or ad. If you have led readers successfully to the CTA button, the only thing left for them to do is click it and you’ll have yourself another conversion.
However, CTA buttons can be a huge make-or-break factor when it comes to conversions. Hitting a CTA button requires an active choice on the part of the visitor.
Therefore, it is also one of the highest points of friction. To make sure you aren’t losing people at the last moment, you need to do everything you can to make your CTA buttons as click-worthy as possible.
One of the first tips for making your CTA buttons stand out is to play around with color as we did in the A/B testing example. You can also A/B test the CTA text on the button.
Make sure your CTA buttons aren’t too small, especially for mobile visitors. Clicking on tiny buttons while browsing on mobile has to be one of the most frustrating things on the planet. Save your visitors the annoyance, and increase your conversion rate by upsizing that button.
Use Smart CTA Buttons
Another way you can pimp out your CTA buttons is by using “smart buttons.” Smart CTAs are targeted calls to action that change based on “smart rules”. These can be things like:
- Location or country of the visitor
- Lead lifecycle stage
- Contact list membership
- Referral source
- Device type
Why would you want to do this? Well, it turns out that personalized CTAs can perform more than 200% better than static CTAs.
Streamline Your Checkout Process
Lengthy checkout processes can be an absolute conversion rate killer. If your site is experiencing a high cart abandonment rate, it’s time to evaluate your checkout process and figure out where the friction’s happening.
Start by analyzing the time and effort it takes for shoppers to complete their purchase.
How many checkout steps are there? Do shoppers have the option to checkout as a guest? Behind high shipping costs, being forced to create an account is the second biggest reason shoppers list for abandoning their carts.
If shoppers do want to create an account, how much info do you require from them?
If you’re asking shoppers for erroneous info, such as their work telephone number, or making them click through multiple checkout steps, this can drive up friction and chase shoppers away.
Try to reduce the amount of effort and steps shoppers face at checkout. Aim for single-page checkout if possible, eliminate visual clutter, and make checkout as intuitive as you can with easy navigation.
Also, take a look at your payment options and include mobile payments to make it convenient for shoppers to make purchases while on the go. Entering a long card number takes effort and can introduce extra friction if that’s the only payment option.
Ensure Easy Navigation to Shopping Carts
While you’re working on your checkout process, make sure that shoppers can easily navigate to their carts. Heading to checkout shouldn’t involve any effort. If shoppers are left searching for where to click for their cart, this is a recipe for cart abandonment.
Remind Visitors of Abandoned Carts
If visitors do abandon a cart for whatever reason, the conversion rate game isn’t lost yet. Although roughly 70% of shoppers never buy the items they add to their carts, you can turn this number around by sending shoppers email reminders of abandoned carts.
Statistics show that roughly 45% of cart abandonment emails get opened. Out of this, 11% of recipients will go on to complete their abandoned purchase.
If you want to drive even more results, consider sending more than one email. Studies show that sending 3 reminders can trigger 63% more orders.
Reduce Form Fields
Whether you’re trying to get people to sign up to your email list or make a purchase, it’s critical that you don’t confront them with mile-long forms.
Who enjoys filling out forms? Nobody.
The more form fields you include, the more daunting the form will look. It will also take visitors more time to complete. They might leave out of pure impatience, or they might start having second thoughts about their purchase, sign-up, membership, etc.
The average checkout flow has 15 around fields. Ideally, your checkout process shouldn’t involve more than 8 fields.
Forms for joining a mailing list can be even shorter.
Create Urgency
There’s nothing like a sense of urgency for triggering sales and boosting your conversion rate. Ideally, you want visitors to take action now, not at some point in the future.
If a shopper sees something they want to buy on your site, but don’t purchase it immediately, they might forget about the purchase entirely. They might find a similar deal somewhere else, or use their money on a different type of purchase.
You can motivate shoppers to buy now rather than later by creating urgency through things like limited-time free shipping, coupon codes, and specials.
Another way to build urgency is through reduced listed stock levels. If a visitor sees there are only 5 of something in stock, they’re much more likely to take fast action than if there are 30 items in stock.
Do You Need Help With Conversion Optimization?
Conversion optimization is the secret sauce to successful online marketing. If your content marketing strategy and ad campaigns are bearing fruit, but you still aren’t seeing the sales numbers you want, it’s time to start optimizing for higher conversions.
A lot of conversion optimization practices you can implement in-house if you have a web development team on staff. If you don’t, the best way to implement rock-solid conversion optimization is by finding a professional web development service such as DesignLoud.
Here at DesignLoud, We provide expert web design and results-driven marketing strategies. When you sign up with us, you’ll receive a team dedicated to your success.
Contact us today to discuss your optimization needs.
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