If you’ve been employing SEO best practices, you’re probably doing a pretty good job of getting visitors to your website. But once they get there, is your design simplistic and clever enough to entice them to stay? If the answer is no, you need to work on improving your website conversions.
Why Your Site Conversion Rate Matters
If you’re new to website analytics metrics or need a brief refresher on why your conversion rate is relevant and important, here are three key points to keep in mind:
- The hard part’s already done. If you ask any online business what the most difficult part about internet marketing is, they’ll talk to you about driving traffic to their website or landing pages. The good news is that improving your conversion rate has nothing to do with generating traffic or acquiring leads. You already have the traffic – and they’re a captive audience – you simply need to make that traffic convert.
- The sales process gets easier. By increasing conversion rates, you’re able to get better quality traffic and simplify the backend of your sales process. In other words, you can weed out the customers who are actually interested in your products and services and focus on the ones that matter to your bottom line.
- Paid advertising is expensive. Finally, as the cost of paid advertising increases, so does the importance of improving your conversion rates. You can’t afford to waste money on low converting traffic anymore.
5 Ways to Improve Your Site’s Conversions
Without further ado, here are some of the top tips for increasing your website’s conversions and extracting more value out of the traffic you acquire:
#1. De-clutter and simplify: The problem most companies have is that they want to showcase everything they have to offer. As a result, they try to cram as many images and as much text as possible into the home page. Instead of impressing site visitors, this almost always confuses them and ultimately encourages them to leave. Have patience and learn to love simplicity. Convey a single, clear value proposition on the home page and encourage visitors to click on internal pages for more in-depth information.
#2. Make speed a priority: Nothing’s more frustrating than slow page loading times. Work closely with your site developer and designer to ensure your site is operating at its optimal speed. Even a fraction of a second can make a difference when it comes to something as important as conversions.
#3. Use clear CTAs: Don’t assume anything when you’re dealing with site visitors. Clearly convey your goals by establishing visible call-to-actions on every page. However, it’s best to limit each page to a single call-to-action, as opposed to using too many.
#4. Don’t require registration: One of the biggest turnoffs as a customer is being forced to register prior to checking out. In fact, this is one of the leading causes of shopping cart abandonment. It’s best to allow for guest checkout options in addition to a complete registration option. If you absolutely must have customers register, enable social login feature to streamline the process.
#5. Perform a third-party audit: Finally, if your conversion rates are low and you can’t seem to improve them through your own efforts, it may be worth your time and money to invest in a third-party audit. Sometimes you need an outside source to tell you where you’re going wrong and what you’re doing right.
PitchMeHigh – Change That Matters
At PitchMeHigh, we believe every business – regardless of industry – needs a quality website that attracts, informs, and converts. If you need help with website development, social media marketing, web design, SEO, or anything in between, please don’t hesitate to contact us today. We would be happy to help you learn more about our dedicated services, cutting edge technology, and commitment to long-term client relationships.
