Website traffic is attractive, but traffic alone won’t get you any sales. Traffic won’t pay your bills nor will it bring you success.
No matter how good it feels to get high traffic, at the end of the day it remains to be a vanity metric. Traffic doesn’t show you the real picture of how your business is doing.
Imagine traffic as window shoppers who never stop to buy. It’s what you do with that traffic that makes a difference. Think conversions and sales.
In this post, I’m going to show you 11 effective ways you can optimize your business website to increase your conversions.
1. Reduce your form fields.
Does your landing page ask a lot of information from your visitors? Perhaps you require people to enter too many details about themselves aside from their name and email address – birthday, location, phone number, and more. The more form fields you have, the higher the friction. Make it easy for people to take action. Less friction = higher conversions.
2. Segment your email list.
Email list segmentation is the process of splitting your subscriber list into several groups depending on factors like age, interest, purchase history, and geographical location. According to Neil Patel, segmenting your list can increase your open rates by over 200%. Remember that your subscribers are unique. When you do email segmentation, you can better deliver relevant and more personalized content that provides massive value.
3. Write benefit-driven headlines.
David Ogilvy said, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” Headlines create first impressions. It’s important that every headline that you use must paint a picture that describes the problem being solved.
4. Leverage social proof.
Highly effective marketers know that social proof is the best marketing strategy to use to capture people’s attention. Over 60% of consumers are more likely to buy from an online store if it includes product reviews and ratings. To win over your audience’s trust, incorporate social proof on your site such as testimonials, media mentions, case studies, and certifications/badges.
5. Perform A/B or split testing.
Split testing or A/B testing is the process of comparing two versions of something to see which one performs best. You can split test anything on your site before it goes live to ensure that it generates conversions. Start split testing your headlines, call-to-action button copy, landing pages, and font style/size.
6. Improve your website speed.
Online users are impatient. They want fast loading web pages so they can make payments faster and easily access online reviews for travel websites. Amazon.com mentions that a delay of one second leads to a 7% drop in conversions. To speed up your business site, make sure to reduce the size of your images, decrease the number of your plugins, and minify your website code. Moz outlines specific recommendations by Google to increase page speed.
7. Write content that resonates with your readers.
Do you write your blog posts in a way that connects with your target audience? Any website copy becomes interesting and relevant if it educates readers, uses simple language, presents a problem (that they care about) and tells them what to do. Your copy must be tailored according to your audience’s specific needs. Make sure to know what they want. Start by creating a detailed buyer persona.
8. Use video.
Creating video content should be part of your overall marketing strategy. The fact is that almost 1 in 3 Millenial consumers would purchase a product if they watched a video tutorial about it. It has also been predicted that in 2017, video will make 69% of all consumer internet traffic. People love videos because videos include visual and auditory elements which make them more genuine – consumers get to see and hear you and this increases trust.
9. Make sure your website looks professional.
The fact that humans are visual creatures makes website design a critical factor that influences conversions. People make quick judgments on how your site looks. Assess your site now and evaluate whether your theme, images, colors, and typography matches the nature of your business. Your site must be well-structured and readable for everyone.
10. Address objections by using standard guarantees.
One surefire way to increase your conversions is to include guarantee statements when marketing your offers. Whether it’s a satisfaction guarantee, risk-free guarantee, or money-back guarantee, guarantees help minimize people’s risk of buying and not being satisfied for what they paid for later. Consumers want assurance from credible sources and a guarantee gives them what they need.
11. Offer live chat.
Live chat gives your business a competitive advantage by providing real-time feedback and support to customers who are experiencing problems or need immediate advice. By using live chat, you are adding a human element to your business site and this allows you to establish real relationships with your customers. There’s nothing more assuring than talking to someone who’s readily available to answer all your concerns while you’re making a purchasing decision.
Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for boosting your conversion rates. Try and test several methods to figure out what works for your brand. If you can add more tips, share them in the comments below!
