Having trouble with your website conversions? If you have products or services for sale online, and people are visiting your website but not buying, there’s a problem. Here are 10 quick ways to improve conversion optimization.
1. Optimize Website Design
First thing’s first: optimize your website design. Speed it up, since a 1-second delay in page loading can cause a 7% decrease in conversions.
You also need to make your website mobile-friendly. Google prioritizes websites based on mobile-friendliness. If you can’t even show up in search results because you still aren’t mobile-optimized, then your chance of converting diminishes.
2. Add Social Proof
Business owners can tout their products or services all they want through copy on a website, but it’s social proof that really matters to shoppers. Social proof can come in many forms, like:
- Testimonials
- Social media feeds showing web visitors which of their Facebook friends reviewed a product
- Starred or numbered reviews
- Press from reliable sources
One study found 50% of shoppers will use their smartphones while they’re shopping to research products before they purchase them. That includes checking product reviews. Make sure you have the feedback displayed online to back up the results you promise.
3. Make Every Page Personal
If customers feel special while they’re visiting your website, they also might be more likely to purchase. As we’ve covered in website design trends, more than 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that makes the shopping experience personal. That can be through:
- Personally acknowledging them, like by displaying their name on your home page with a, “Welcome back, [name]” message
- Recommending products based on past ones they’ve purchased
- Showing them their purchase history at checkout
You can use a personalization platform to display a personalized website experience whenever a visitor who has interacted with your brand comes back to your site.
4. Use Urgency to Create FOMO
FOMO is real. It stands for “fear of missing out,” and digital marketers can use FOMO to create a sense of urgency on a website, which can increase conversions. Some ways to do so include featuring:
- Flash sales
- Limited-time coupons
- Items that are limited-edition or that are only available in certain quantities
- Sign-ups that expire after a certain time
Going back to personalization, even showing people what their friends have purchased from you can create FOMO. Enable social sharing after purchases, so your customers can brag about what they bought from you and make their friends feel like they’re missing out.
5. Offer Live Chat
Put live chat on your website, so that a representative from your brand is always available to be there for visitors. Ways live chat can increase conversions include:
- Nearly 29% of customers prefer interacting with retailers through live chat, more so than email or phone.
- More than 55% of online adults will abandon a purchase if they can’t get a quick answer to a question.
- Customers who use live chat are 3 times more likely to purchase.
Live chat gives website visitors a way to personally interact with your business. Live chat representatives can answer questions, provide information, upsell, and improve brand sentiment.
6. Make Contact Information Prominent
Knowing that interacting with a brand through live chat can increase conversions up to 3 times, it’s imperative to make other contact information easy to find, too. More than 55% of website visitors leave a site within 15 seconds of landing on them. If the visitor has come to your website to get in touch with you but can’t do so, they’ll go to a brand where they can.
Make sure every page on your website has an easy-to-spot “Contact” section. Include an up-to-date phone number and email address, as well as a reliable form customers can use to get in touch right away.
7. Capture Attention Quickly
If you want to convert, you need to capture attention quickly, or customers will leave. Conversion opportunities should be immediately visible on every page. Don’t bury them below the fold (the part visitors have to scroll to in order to see). Include a way to convert on the top half of each page.
Cluttered website design with too much going on or disorganized information will make it hard for the visitor to understand what your brand is about or what you want them to do. Put your value-add up-front-and-center to engage visitors.
8. Add a Call to Action
If you don’t ask for it, the website visitor probably won’t do it. That’s where a strong call to action (CTA) comes in. CTAs boost conversions by:
- Moving the customer along on a meaningful journey.
- Instructing the visitor on what action they should take next.
- Providing value to the visitor in exchange for taking the action.
- Strengthening the relationship a brand has with a visitor through increased interactions.
Make the CTA clear, compelling and action-oriented. When the visitor does what the CTA asks, make sure your website delivers on what it says it will. Make the reward worth the visitor’s time, so they’ll complete more CTAs in the future.
9. Use Heat Map Research
A heat map is an easy way to visualize the prominent spots on your website where people are clicking. You may discover that certain creative elements like photos or copy are drawing website visitor attention. Or, certain CTAs result in far more conversions than others. A heat map is a great place to start to identify popular parts of your website.
Once you’ve figured out your website’s hot spots, you can apply similar design and user experience strategies to other parts of your site. How your site performs on desktop versus mobile may be radically different, as well, and a heat map can clue you in to how to optimize your website design for various devices.
10. A/B Test
A/B testing is crucial for conversion optimization. With an A/B test, you manipulate a single element on a web page, so you now have an “A” version of the page and a “B” version of the page. You let them do their thing, measure the results, and if there’s a meaningful difference, you know which direction to go in with design.
You can A/B test tons of elements to see how they affect conversions, including:
- Headline
- CTA
- Imagery
- Navigation
- Copy
- Offer
Make sure you’re only changing that single element for an A/B test. Otherwise, it’s more difficult to pinpoint the differentiating factor.
Need Help Optimizing Conversions?
Your website should be a tool that increases revenue for your business. It’s the digital storefront for your brand, and its design should drive conversions.
AlphaMind Studios is a website design and conversion optimization agency that can help you. Contact us for a free conversion optimization consultation for ideas on how to start improving today.
