5 Tips to Improve Your Conversion Rates
When you implement search engine optimization strategies on your website, you’re creating avenues so potential customers can find you easier. But that’s only one part of what you need to do in order to generate sales. In order for your business to thrive, the visitors to your site need to take an action. The action can be a purchase, a download, an opt-in or more.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take an action after landing on your site. A great conversion rate will maximize your profits, grow your business and expand your database of customers interested in your brand.
Here are five easy tips which will improve your conversion rate:
- Design Your Site with Conversions in Mind
Good design will improve your conversion rate. At the same time, poor design will hurt your conversion rate. Visitors don’t become customers if they have a hard time navigating your site.
You want your site to be clear, clean and user-friendly. Avoid distractions such as multiple calls-to-action and non-essential information. Web analytics are also a useful tool here. You can identify drop-off points where customers step out of the conversion funnel.
- Give Your Visitors a Reason to Trust You
Building trust is one of the most important elements in converting customers. Obviously, customers have a problem buying a product or a service from a business which they don’t trust. You need to show them why they can trust you.
Insert as much of the following into your content:
- Credentials
- Case Studies
- Security Badges and Certificates
- Testimonials
You also want to make sure your privacy policy is prominently featured on your site. When your customers give you their personal information, they want to know you’re not going to give that info to anyone else.
You also want to display clear contact information. Consumers are wary of businesses which are hard to get ahold of. You want to list a contact form, employee bios, company email, phone number and an address. Even if your business is entirely virtual, consumers are reassured when they know where you’re located.
- Reduce Barriers to Conversion
Customers will “abandon ship” if the call to action is too confusing or lengthy. Avoid multi-step check-out procedures or overly complicated sign-up forms. You want every action taken by your customer to always be as simple and easy as possible.
- Nurture Leads
Not every lead is a customer willing to take action today. Sometimes, you’ll need to nurture your leads by addressing their concerns over time. To do this, you’ll want to use email and marketing automation. This lets you communicate with your consumers at the appropriate time during the sales funnel.
Identify the various touchpoints customers reach before they make a conversion. You can learn which parts of your conversion funnel appeals to your customer persona and which parts do not. Not every visit will result in an immediate sale. But with email and marketing automation you can stay in contact with leads over a longer period of time, which will greatly increase the chances of conversion.
- Use Metrics to Make Changes
Never make changes to your conversion funnel based on gut feelings. Instead, you’ll want use objective metrics to measure the conversion rate of each different funnel. Google analytics will provide a variety of customer data to help you.
Generally, you’ll want to run a split-test campaign. This is when you run two separate campaigns and compare their conversion rates. You’ll want two entirely different campaigns with different graphics, headers, content, calls-to-action, offers, layout and more. As you analyze each component, you’ll be able to determine which elements lead to the most conversions.
Wrap-Up
A large quantity of views on your website is great. But conversions are the backbone of your brand. You want to create an easy-to-use, trustable presence online. Also, you’ll want to use email and marketing automation to reach customers who have expressed interest in your brand. Soon you’ll notice a dramatic increase in your conversion rates.