Optimizing your Website for Better Conversions

Here are some fantastic tips, compiled from several articles, on optimizing your website to achieve higher conversion rates.

^[1]Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of optimizing your site or landing page experience based on website visitor behaviour to help improve the probability of the visitor taking desired actions (conversions) on the said page.

In today’s world, online traffic is highly inconsistent. If you’re unable to get visitors to enter your conversion funnel in the first go, the chances of returning and performing the desired action are pretty low. This is nothing but an opportunity lost for your business. The best way to improve your options and get more conversions is by running effective conversion rate optimization campaigns.

A good conversion rate optimization campaign not only means saving high on your time, money, and efforts but also exploring new growth strategies that were unknown in the past. In other words, conversion rate optimization helps you understand your website’s usability better while giving customer behaviour insights and tips on making your UX better to meet your goals.

At a strategic level, conversion rate optimization or CRO is an ongoing process of learning and optimizing. Unfortunately, the” “ongoing” aspect often gets ignored while discussing conversion rate optimization and its elements.

What are the six primary elements of conversion rate optimization?

CRO is a comprehensive process that sprawls across a multitude of stages. A successful CRO campaign uses in-depth data to analyze results, runs multiple tests, tweaks content to make it more relevant to the visitors, and draws necessary conclusions. Throughout the journey of a CRO process, a marketer will encounter six primary elements that can be optimized.

Landing page design

Landing page design is the first and foremost element that defines the usability and success of a website. The more aesthetically designed a site is, the more traction it will get! Let’s understand this using an example most of us may be familiar with. Assuming that most customers landing on any of amazon’s product pages come with the pure intention of buying its product(s), understanding the importance of design in driving conversions (how it can make or break a deal for the eCommerce giant) is essential. The giant has strategically designed each product page to make even the minutest of details prominently visible to its customers. For instance, when on a product page, customers can instantly add the product to their cart by conveniently clicking on the “Add to Car” button (in a colour that’s prominently visible – Orange) placed right next to the product information column.

Website copy

While a well-designed and aesthetically pleasing website can get more website traffic flowing on your site, words can verbally hook your visitors and convert them into potential leads. Writing relevant and engaging content that emphasizes the product’s persuasiveness can make the difference between visitors staying on your website and taking the necessary actions and visitors leaving your site without taking any action.

Call-to-action

A call-to-action (CTA) is exactly what it sounds – a request or call for customers to take the desired action. This action could be anything – from subscribing to a newsletter to booking a slot in a webinar, making a purchase, availing of service, and so on. The firmer and crispier the CTA, the more leads it can generate.

But is it this simple? Please take a look at some of the industry’s best CTA strategies, and you’ll see that they all make use of introductory psychology to define their CTAs.

Quoting an example here, ADT, a Tyco International company, was able to increase its conversion rate by 60% by simply changing the primary text of its CTA button – from” “Book a Free Surve” to” “Get a Free Quote.”

Navigation and site structure

Your site’s structure must focus on building an experience that’s easy to navigate. Site structure, at its core, is typically a graph of how different pages of your site interact with each other.

You typically start navigating from the homepage, then explore its series of categories and subcategories until you’ve found what you were looking for. If this entire process is fluid, as explained in the graph above, then your users will not have an issue navigating through your site. But, if it’s unstructured, they’ll be lost in the process, ultimately abandoning your site.

To accomplish this, one must ensure users are easily and quickly able to move between important sections of the website and find whatever they need to achieve their goals in the fewest clicks possible.

In other words, creating a fluid, easy-to-navigate website is the key to increasing conversions as well as your brand’s reputation.

Forms

Forms are crucial to most companies, especially if they’re a part of their sales funnel. Optimizing these critical customer touchpoints can extensively help improve the conversion rate. While many theories follow on building a good and practical form for your website, these may or may not work equally for all. In some cases, having a comprehensive form may work wonders, while in many other cases, concise forms may be enough to get the conversions going up the graph. The secret ingredient here is always to maintain a balance between lead quality and volume of leads that brings the best ROI.

Page speed

Page speed or page load time has a significant impact on the overall performance of your site. It directly affects a user’s experience, the conversion rate of the site, and its ranking on the search engine. For example, according to a blog published by Semrush, if a site loads in 1.7 seconds, it’s comparatively faster than 75% of the web. While on the other hand, if it loads in 0.8 seconds, it’s shorter than nearly 94% of the net.

^[2]How to calculate conversion rate

Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions (desired actions taken) by the total number of visitors and multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage.

What is the average conversion rate?

Depending on what you read, the average conversion rate is anywhere between 1% and 4%.

But let us come out and say it: this figure is meaningless, since:

• Conversion rates differ wildly depending on the conversion goal (ad clicks, checkout completions, newsletter signups, etc.)
• Every website, page, and audience is different.
• Most people don’t share their conversion data publicly anyway

Averages may be helpful as starting points for benchmarking, but what do they have to do with YOUR website?

There is no actual, ultimate industry figure you can rely on or compare yourself against with 100% confidence. Obsessing over an average percentage figure, and trying to squeeze as many conversions as possible to stay in line with it, is not the best way to think about conversion rate optimization. Once again, you’re better off focusing on developing an in-depth understanding of what matters to your users so that you can give it to them—and then, conversions will naturally follow.

Conversion optimization best practices—and why they’re dangerous

In the world of digital marketing, a CRO best practice is a commonly-held belief that a particular optimization action will guarantee an increase in conversion rate, for example:

• Use an intense colour for all CTA (call-to-action) buttons
• Place CTAs above the fold
• Use urgency (e.g., time-limited offers) to drive sales
• Always display testimonials
• Use fewer form fields on your forms

Are these best practices good for improving YOUR conversion rate? Debatable.

First of all, best practice is—by definition—past practice: it’s something that worked in the past for someone else. So you can’t guarantee it’s going to work today.

Second, just because it worked for someone else doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you.

Blindly applying existing best practices puts companies in a perpetual state of playing catch-up—while more progressive and experimental businesses are busy improving and making the changes that will be recognized as best practice” in a few years.

^[3]Examples of conversions

Macro-conversions:

• Purchasing a product from the site
• Requesting a quote
• Subscribing to a service

Examples of micro-conversions:

• Signing up for email lists
• Creating an account
• Adding a product to the cart

5 Ways CRO benefits SEOs

While not necessarily directly related to attracting organic website traffic or ranking on a search engine results page (SERP), conversion rate optimization has distinct benefits for SEO. Those include:

Improved customer insights:

Conversion rate optimization can help you better understand your key audience and find what language or messaging best speaks to their needs. In addition, conversion rate optimization looks at finding the right customers for your business. Acquiring more people doesn’t do your business any good if they’re not the right kind of people!

Better ROI:

A higher conversion rate means making more of the resources you have. By studying how to get the most out of your acquisition efforts, you’ll get more conversions without bringing in more potential customers.

Better scalability:

While your audience size may not scale as your business grows, CRO lets you grow without running out of resources and prospective customers. Audiences aren’t infinite. By turning more browsers into buyers, you’ll be able to grow your business without running out of potential customers.

Better user experience:

When users feel smart and sophisticated on your website, they tend to stick around. CRO studies what works on your site. By taking what works and expanding on it, you’ll make a better user experience. Users who feel empowered by your site will engage with it more — and some may even become evangelists for your brand.

Enhanced trust:

To share their credit card, email, or personal information, they have to trust the site genuinely. Your website is your number-one salesperson. Just like an internal sales team, your site needs to be professional, courteous, and ready to answer all of your customers” questions.

Conclusion:

There are several website optimization tools, and the above-compiled articles are an excellent start to optimizing your website. If you need help, give us a call.

Article compiled by hughesagency.ca

Article reference links:

1. https://vwo.com/conversion-rate-optimization/ ↑
2. https://www.hotjar.com/conversion-rate-optimization/ ↑
3. https://moz.com/learn/seo/conversion-rate-optimization ↑