A website can be a tremendous asset to a business if it converts, but does very little if it doesn’t result in sales. Improving website conversions is an integral part of your marketing and can skyrocket your revenue when done well. In this article, you’ll find seven tips for improving website conversions.
1. Show customer reviews on your website
Good customer reviews are a big part of building trust. Trust, in turn, ensures customers buy with little resistance. Think of reviews like recommendations – the more you get, the better your reputation is. Review management software is an easy way to manage your reviews, helping you build a good reputation and showing your prospective customers that you’re to be trusted. Take the time to learn more about review management software if you want to make collecting reviews easier.
2. Keep it simple
The most important thing to keep in mind when improving website conversions is to keep it simple. Don’t use large blocks of text when a few sentences will do. Label buttons clearly so that people know where they take them, make sure all important pages are accessible from the main navigation, and make sure everything is where the user expects it to be. Web designers can get very creative when designing a website, but creativity doesn’t always result in the best usability. If people have to search to find what they’re looking for, there’s a good chance they’ll leave or go to a competitor’s website to buy.
3. Make sure everything important is above the fold
When you first open a webpage, everything you see without scrolling is ‘above the fold’ while everything you have to scroll down for is ‘below the fold’. Your contact information and a call-to-action should always be above the fold, to ensure people can see it straight away. The easier it is for visitors to take the action you want them to take – whether that’s ordering a product or giving you a call – the better a page will convert.
4. Use a call-to-action
A call-to-action clearly shows visitors what they should do next. It makes sure they never spend a second longer than necessary without knowing what to do to complete the action you want them to take. This action can be something as simple as sending you an email or registering for a competition, but could also be to call you, or to buy a product on your website.
5. Keep an eye on the size of your buttons
People don’t read as well on screens as they do on paper. Website visitors scan pages instead of reading, according to research by NN Group, which means white space, images and large headings are preferred. Buttons should also be made a little bigger than usual, since this helps them to stand out. If you look at the websites of a few large companies, you’ll soon find that most of them have text and buttons which are surprisingly large. This is because this has shown to improve various website metrics time and time again.
6. Make everything 10% easier
If you can cut a page out in the ordering process or simplify an answer to a question on your blog, it’s usually worth doing. The less effort your visitor has to put into getting the information they need, the better your website will convert. Take some time to look through each page and think about how you can make it easier for your visitors. If you make all actions on your website 10% simpler, this will lead to large returns!
7. Optimise your website for mobile
Optimising for mobile should be a top priority for every website. The majority of people use their mobile phone to surf the web, so having a website that doesn’t work well on mobile is almost certainly harming your conversion rates. Also, it’s well-known that search engines – Google, in particular – now rank websites on the quality of their mobile version, rather than their desktop website.
Make sure your website is not only fast enough to be viewed on mobile, but also that buttons and fonts are large enough to be read easily. Always double check on a variety of different screens, because what works on one device won’t necessarily work on another.
Improving website conversions can have a significant impact on your bottom line. By improving conversions, you ensure that your marketing spend isn’t being wasted when potential customers are taken to your site. However, you must test all the changes you make to see if they’ve had an effect. Be sure to make changes one-by-one and measure what the results are. If you go ahead and make changes without measuring, some of the changes may be detrimental without you being aware. You can use free software like Google Analytics to track the impact of your changes on your key user metrics such as conversion rate, bounce rate and pages per session.
