While many of the suggestions around increasing your website conversion sound simple, it’s surprising how many businesses miss out on the obvious steps. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the design of your website, lured into subscribing to apps and plugins, but what many companies fail to do is listen to their customers.
Customers are the backbone of a website; if you don’t impress them, they’re not going to convert. Thankfully, there are four easy ways you can increase your website conversion right now!
1. Create a good user experience
Many businesses either create or pay for someone to build a website for them. What they don’t do is get users to test whether the experience is actually good for website visitors or not. Every day people are the customers you want to impress, so if they can’t navigate your website well, or it’s impossible to find the right information, you’re never going to get them to convert.
There are plenty of UX testing tools available at your disposal. You can either do this yourself by dedicating time and effort to testing your website in its entirety or see how people are interacting with your website. This enables you to analyze how people are using your website, how much time they are spending on certain areas, and whether or not they actually convert.
Remember, conversions aren’t just about sales; conversions apply to completing a task like signing up for a newsletter, filling out a form, etc.
Some useful UX testing tools include:
You can also integrate heatmaps with your website to see how people are interacting with your website, such as Hotjar.
2. Write good sales copy that converts
Your website is essentially a tool that can sell your products or services.
However, many people make the mistake of not telling their website visitors what they actually offer through clear and punchy headlines.
Many websites will detail the features their products and services offer, but fail to mention the benefits, or forget to include a clear call to action (CTA).
Tools like Five Second Test by UsabilityHub offer valuable information on what people can recall from your web pages in just five seconds. If users aren’t able to answer questions like ‘what do you remember about this page?’, it’s clear that nothing stands out.
Users spend a matter of seconds on a page before making a decision on the website they’ve landed on, including trust in a brand, what products or services are on offer, and whether or not they want to proceed with what they came for. It’s essential to invest in sales copy that will work; you want your customers to understand what your business is offering in one easy glance in order for them to convert.
3. Build trust through social proof
Building a brand that people trust is a sure-fire way of getting your website visitors to convert.
Granted, trust is built over time, however, you can integrate tools on your website that will fill your users with confidence, resulting in them converting and even revisiting your business again and again.
People are more likely to purchase from a website if it has a good reputation.
A good reputation is built by your users providing feedback on their experience. Let’s look at it this way; if you were stuck choosing between two restaurants to eat at, would you choose the one that’s completely empty or the one that has a bustling vibe and a queue of people waiting to get a table. I’ll bet it’s the latter. Why? Because people trust in other people and follow suit if they have no prior experience.
Social proof tools include small pop-ups on your website highlighting recent purchases, new products, and recent reviews, e.g. ‘John Doe recently reviewed his purchase of Brown Shoes with 5 stars!’.
They are, in most cases, inexpensive and incredibly easy to integrate with your website, without the need for any coding experience.
4. Never stop testing your website conversion
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) doesn’t ever stop. If digital marketing trends are anything to go on, it’s clear that you’ll need to continually tweak your website to increase your conversions.
Having a goal in mind is the first step to a successful CRO. You can use tools like heatmaps and Google Analytics to analyze your website’s success, market trends, and A/B split testing.
If something isn’t working or producing the results you want, you need to make a change. There are a plethora of tools available at your disposal, all of which can be cost-effective. You should run regular tests on your website to ensure you are meeting your goals and the requirements of your customers.
In summary: Website conversion
While there are many ways to increase your website conversions, many businesses fail to follow the four easy steps outlined above. Ultimately, customers are the way to increase conversions; it’s about learning what they want and offering them an easy way to convert.
Rather than throwing money out the window on website designs, plugins, and apps, it’s imperative to knuckle down and get to the core of what you want to achieve and make a plan of how you’re going to achieve it.
Remember, the keys to website conversion are:
- Create a good user experience
- Write eye-catching sales copy
- Build trust with your customers
- Never stop testing how your website converts
