If you have a business, you have a website – that’s a given. But is your website doing its job?
A good website design is optimized to convert as many visitors into customers as possible. While there is no one silver bullet to conversion optimization, there are a host of elements that can be tested to improve conversion rates. These small improvements add up to big gains in customers over time, so if you’re just letting your website sit stagnant, you’re missing out on opportunities to add revenue to your business.
Improving the conversion rate of your website doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are 9 practical ways to improve website conversions:
1. Measure Your Conversion Rates
We all know the saying that you can’t improve what can’t be measured. The first step to improving website conversions is to track your current website conversion rate.
Google Analytics is a free website tracking tool that gives powerful insights about the traffic coming to your website – including conversion rates for specific goals, like signing up for a free trial of your product or subscribing to your email newsletter.
Here’s how to set up goals, track, and improve the conversion rate of your website:
- Create a Google Analytics account and add the tracking code to your website.
- Decide on the conversion goal or goals you want to measure.
- Set up your conversion goals in GA. Here’s a simple guide on setting up goals in Google Analytics.
- Run an a/b experiment to test one new variable to your website at a time. Here’s a great video from QuickSprout that shows how to run an a/b test with a Google Content Experiment.
As you make changes to your website, continue to run a/b tests to see how each change increases or decreases your overall conversion rate.
2. Highlight a Call-to-Action
Don’t leave it up to website visitors to take the next step. Tell them what you want them to do with a clear, consistent call-to-action on your website, such as “schedule a demonstration,” “set up a consultation,” “talk to a salesperson,” or “start a free trial.”
Here are a few areas to test to increase the percentage of visitors who click on your CTA:
- Changing button color
- Increasing or decreasing font size
- Adding or changing images
- Tweaking copy
- Moving button and/or form placement
- Adding popups or scroll boxes to your site
Even a super small change, like changing button text from “Order Information” to “Get Information” can drastically affect conversion rates, as demonstrated by these 10 call-to-action case studies.
Just changing one word can impact conversion rates
3. Test Images
A picture is worth 1000 words, and with so many distractions online, images are essential to helping you get your point across to visitors quickly, before they bounce. Images can help visitors understand complex ideas, show off your company’s culture and values, and help potential customers identify themselves as your ideal buyer.
However, don’t assume that your image works. Everyone has a unique perspective, and testing images on your site ensure that you’re connecting with your audience.
A few image tests you can run are:
- People vs. a product
- Man vs. woman
- Person looking at the camera vs. looking at a product
- Illustration vs. photography
- Black & white vs color
This list can go on, but the main takeaway is that experimenting with different images can help you to connect more quickly and more deeply to your ideal buyer, increasing conversions on your website.
For instance, we tested an image of our app vs. an image of a customer. The verdict? The image of the Hatchbuck app unexpectedly converted 14% better than the image of a person. This could be because the image of the app helped website visitors understand that we were a software company more quickly and showed our product right away. The bottom line is that you don’t know what will convert until you test.
4. Adjust Copy
You can have a great picture, but compelling copy is key to get website visitors to convert.
Really great copy is benefit-driven, and instantly conveys to the customer how using your product or service will change their life. The best product descriptions are short and to the point, but don’t leave important information out.
Pro Tip: Use headings to help make your copy easy to scan. Smaller chunks of copy are much easier to digest, while long paragraphs will cause your website visitors to bounce.
Does changing your home page heading help more visitors convert? Are you using the most effective call to action text?
Kissmetrics’ Beginner’s Guide to A/B Testing Web Copy is a comprehensive resource on areas you should be testing your website copy.
5. Add a Video
Viewers of product videos are anywhere between 64% – 85% more likely to buy. That makes video a must-have in your marketing toolbox. Adding video to your website can help you convey complex ideas to visitors and explain the tangible benefits of not-so-tangible products and services.
If you do add a video to your website, don’t leave off pictures, captions, and copy; the video is additional to those other basics.
Pro Tip: Don’t have a video automatically play when someone goes to your site. That can slow down a device, or the volume can interfere with Pandora or another application they are using. The video should only be accessible if the user “opts in.”
Finally, remember that desktop users aren’t going to watch more than 2 minutes of online video – so keep your videos short and sweet.
Kabbage includes customer testimonial videos to their home page.
6. Offer a Lead Magnet
Not every potential customer that visits your website is ready to make a purchase immediately – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get the conversation started. Lead magnets are an excellent way to built trust with visitors to your website so that they’ll think of you first when they are ready to buy.
So, if a website visitor doesn’t bite at your main offer, you can capture their interest with a helpful ebook, checklist, email newsletter, etc.
You can use Google Analytic goals to see which of your resources are converting website visitors into leads at the highest rate.
Less Accounting has a checklist they use as a lead magnet on their website.
7. Install Live Chat
Live chat is a simple tool you can use to quickly answer questions and help visitors convert before they bounce off of your website.
While someone who is reading a blog article is probably just doing research, a person on a product page is likely primed to buy. If you can engage them in conversation on live chat, you can help give them the information they need to take the next steps to become a customer – before they exit your website.
We use Live Chat on the Hatchbuck product tour page.
8. Use Mobile Responsive Design
Users now spend more time on mobile than on fixed devices. So, if you’re sending emails to your audience, sharing blog posts on social media, and are appearing in search engine results, it’s uber important to have a mobile optimized site that’s responsive for all types of devices. You don’t need a mobile app but your site should easily load and look good on all devices.
9. Nurture the Leads You Capture
What you do after a lead visits your website is just as important as their experience on your site. Not every visitor who converts on your website will become a customer…right now. Lead nurturing helps you squeeze more opportunities out of your sales pipeline by staying top of mind with prospects. So once they’ve downloaded a lead magnet, filled out a sales form, made a purchase, or even if they’ve gone with a different solution, you can keep in touch with relevant content and convert these leads in the future – giving further lift to your website conversion rate.
If you need help turning more online leads into customers for your business, check out our free email course, Lead Generation 101.
Finally, first and foremost, the design of your website should be intuitive and therefore, relatively simple. No matter how creative your website is, if it isn’t easy to use, people won’t use it and website visitors won’t convert. Make it simple and easy to use across all devices, then test out images, video, copy, add lead magnets, include live chat help, nurture every new lead and watch those conversions rack up.