Getting potential customers to your website is one thing, but actually converting them to paying customers proves to be a challenge for even the most established businesses. That’s why we’ve created this quick guide to help you audit and improve your website conversion rate.
Define the Primary Goal
One of the most common things we see is a homepage that does not have a clear primary call to action. Consider Paypal’s hero image:
Their landing page includes one primary action: Get Started with their referral program.
It’s common to see companies provide multiple calls to action in the Hero section of the website but data consistently shows that multiple CTAs significantly decrease conversions.
Also, If you thought it was a little weird that they want me to refer a friend rather than sign up, good catch, we’ll discuss that more below.
Adjust your mindset
The way you convey product or service from the outset will drastically affect your conversion rates. Too often brands center content around their business rather than centering around customer needs. Shift your point of view away from your personal feelings about your product or service and get laser focussed on how your customers feel.
Our advice: talk to your existing customers!
Ask them why they chose and continue to use your service or product. Then, use their responses as the foundation for your copy and watch your conversion rates soar.
Simplify Copy
We know the attention span of the average customer is not very long, yet we continue to write copy that is so wordy it becomes a slog to get through.
Check out this real-world example. According to Design For Founders, simplifying this banner for Humana increased the click through rate 433%.
Less words. More impact.
Ease Concerns
As the customer journey is moving towards conversion, the goal of your user experience should be to address as many of their concerns as possible. There are 2 quick and easy ways to accomplish this with very little page restructuring:
Social Proof
Customers subconsciously rely on Social Proof to make purchasing decisions, so don’t leave them searching for reassurance.. Put relevant and insightful reviews and testimonials into the most challenging portion of the customer journey.
For example, placing reviews near the “request a quote” form can increase the likelihood of submission immensely, simply by providing reassurance for the purchase decision.
Guarantees
What’s a better way to ease concerns and increase conversions than offering a full guarantee on the experience?
While this is not always possible depending on the service offering, we’ve found that a satisfaction guarantee with the proper stipulations is possible in nearly all cases, and will increase buyer confidence and, in turn, your conversion rates.
Simplify Form Fields
A Quick and easy, but often overlooked, adjustment; restructuring intake forms can drastically improve your conversion rates.
The first step: remove any field that is not 100% necessary. Be aggressive about this. Remember, it is easier to collect additional information from someone who chose to engage than it is to try and re-target someone who left your site completely.
Next, shrink the available space and move everything into one column. This will make forms easier to navigate which will mean more conversions.
Lastly, if your form includes several key fields, consider showing only 1-2 at a time, and creating steps in your form. These multi-step forms are proven to increase follow-through and can also be used to capture user data early, in the event that the entire form isn’t submitted.
Personalize the Experience
Personalize your user experience based on what you know about the user. Proper web tracking allows brands to know a lot about a web visitor and allows you a lot of opportunities to optimize for conversions.
For example, remember the Paypal CTA I mentioned above, that prompted me to refer my friends? Even though I wasn’t logged in, Paypal knew I already had an account, and so their primary goal, specifically for me, was not to get me to sign up but to help sign others up through their referral program, essentially converting me from a customer to a brand advocate.
How do I know?
Checking the same page with cookies disabled shows a completely different CTA.
Getting Started
Conversion optimization tactics can drastically shift depending on the service, price point, locale, and target audience. While optimization is not a one-size-fits-all solution, the items outlined above can make a significant impact on your conversion rates, and ultimately, your bottom line.
Ready to go all-in with conversion rate optimization? An approach fit to your customer journey will produce the best results and we can help.