There’s a topic that’s been cropping up time and time this year so thought it was time to talk about conversion rates. Whether you have an e-commerce website selling products or you’re a service business, great conversion rates are what you’re after. The ultimate goal of any website, turning website visitors into customers.
Conversion rates, what are they?
Conversion is how good your website is at turning visitors into customers. That means something different for each business and website, you might sell online so a conversion would be someone buying something. Or if you’re a service business, it might be someone downloading a guide or filling out your enquiry form. There could be many other actions you would define as a conversion too. It’s good to make sure you know what your conversion is, set some KPIs and start tracking. You can’t manage what you don’t measure!
Why are conversion rates important?
It all comes down to your return on investment. You’ve probably spent a lot of time and invested financially in your website so it’s time to get the most out of it. That’s one side of it but it’s also a great benchmark for understanding how well your website is meeting your customers’ needs – their user experience… that’s a whole other blog topic I feel brewing but get the gist of why it’s so important.
Moreover, if you want more sales you might be thinking that you need more traffic. You’d be half right. Why not optimise for the traffic you are getting. So before you spend more money and time driving more traffic to your site, let’s see what we can do to improve the conversion rate first.
Four tips to improve conversion rates now
Site loading speed
How fast does your site load? If it’s not near enough instantaneous people aren’t going to wait all dang-day to get what they need or want. You have to optimise your site’s loading times, server speed and make sure it’s as fast as lightning. Word on the web is that slow websites have lower rates of returning visitors, think about that for a moment.
Google Page Speed and Pingdom are two quick ways of analysing your site’s performance. You can then work with your web design agency to optimise code, use caching, install a CDN. There’s also lots you can do to ensure images are web resolution and optimised for size to get your speed loading times down. Make sure this is a priority.
Help your users find what they are looking for
Whether it’s a product or service, you need to make it as easy as possible for users to to find what they are looking for. You could implement a search, make sure that your navigation is clearly designed and rationalised. There’s a bunch of things that can be done in this space.
Before making changes, take advantage of user experience testing to identify where there are usability bugs are on your site if any. Dive into your Google Analytics to find out where drop offs are, that’s one quick and easy place to start. There are also services like HotJar where it records sessions and you can watch what people are doing on the site. It’s always good to stop once in a while and do a little spring clean of your website, this can really help remove any distractions and get your users to where they want to be with the least amount of friction.
Quality is queen
Apart from having a speedy website and a good design that’s easy to navigate, quality is key. If you sell products, the imagery needs to be outstanding and product descriptions spot on. The founder of Airbnb Joe Gebbia attributes quality images as the top reason for their success when they launched for the sixth time. Seriously!
If you’re talking about services, the propositions needs to be clear and compelling. Try using video, it’s another way to be convincing and compelling. Quality isn’t just important for your users. We know that SEO in 2019 will focus on security, page speed, mobile friendliness and above all, quality content and code. You can’t afford not to invest in making everything polished and pristine.
Clear and compelling CTAs
One of our little bug bears is button titles. You shouldn’t have to guess what’s going to happen or where you will go if you click a button. Make sure it’s crystal clear what the action is, what you want users to do and what will happen. Amazon is a fab example of how clear their buttons are – buy now, add to cart and they’re designed in a specific way and colour so your eye is drawn to them directly.
Why not grab our ebook on getting an ROI from your website. There are loads more tips and actions to work through to get the most from your website.