Do you feel like your website is well-designed, yet consistently falls flat when it comes to conversion rates? Thousands of businesses in hundreds of markets experience the same problem. While it can be tempting to make excuses and lose hope, it’s important to dig below the surface and discover the underlying issues. By maximizing your website’s conversion rate, you’ll be capable of steadily increasing sales and growing your business.
Why Conversion Rates Matter
Conversion rates are largely misunderstood by many business owners. In essence, a conversion metric can track anything you want it to. From how many visitors purchase a select item to the percentage of customers that stay on site for longer than five minutes, a conversion rate is completely customizable. Even better is the fact that an increase in conversions essentially provides you with additional benefits at no added cost. You’re simply capitalizing on traffic you already have.
Tips for Increasing Conversions
Finding ways to implement the following tips may help you increase your site’s conversion rate over an extended period of time:
Include social proof. When a customer visits your site, he or she wants to build trust with your brand, services, or products. Providing social proof in the form of customer testimonials, case studies, and third-party reviews can emphasize the trustworthiness of your offerings.
Explain difficult concepts. For companies that offer very technical products and services, it can be helpful to offer descriptive videos that explain specific procedures and concepts. Titan Power, a critical power and air solutions provider, is exceptionally good at this. They offer an array of informative videos so clients can understand how technologies work on a practical basis.
Appeal to the customer. Companies with extremely low conversion rates should first consider whether they even understand their target market. If you’re getting visitors to your site and they’re leaving without taking a specific action, something is missing. In most cases, it’s a poor understanding of what the consumer wants. Invest in up-front research and tailor content and design to your findings.
Use split testing. A/B testing can be an extremely valuable tool for analyzing the underlying issues related to your low conversion rates. You can then use the knowledge you gather to better optimize your site for higher conversions. As always, remember to be diligent with A/B testing and to carefully track control elements for best results.
Improve content quality. While flashy displays and vibrant visuals can initially catch a visitor’s eye, they don’t hold their attention for long. Your site needs high-quality content that’s engaging. It should add value to the consumer and lead them through the sales funnel.
Make it easy on them. Are you making it easy on your site’s visitors? If you’re looking to increase sales, is your ecommerce shopping cart intuitive and readily accessible? Don’t make them work for conversions if you want to increase percentages.
Putting it All Together
While there is no standard solution for increasing website conversion rates, these tips have proven to be helpful for companies in various industries. Start implementing them one at a time and track your results over time using analytics software and other tools. Eventually, you’ll find a happy medium where costs are efficiently maximized and conversion rates are high.
Originally posted on February 16, 2015 @ 11:00 pm
