How to improve your conversion rate

It’s all about the conversions, people. 

The purpose of building a website is to get visitors to purchase your product or service at a high rate. If visitors aren’t doing this, you’ll need to change your strategy. When customers do what you want them to, that is called the conversion rate. 

By having a website that is structured approach where areas are tested, simplified and easy to follow, you’ll be much more effective.

Read this: What social media platforms are best for your website?

What’s a good conversion rate?

According to a 2012 Marketing Sherpa Report, conversion rates vary by industry.

But rather than being concerned about your conversion rate compared to other industries, focus on improving your own current ROI. Keep performing tests to see what works best.

Tips to improve conversion

1. Make your unique value proposition clear: When visitors get to your landing page, make the benefit of your website and why they should do business with you clear.
   
   
   
   For example, Schwann, who has a conversion rate of 41.7%, makes the the advantage clear for first-time orderers by simply joining their email list. By consumers receiving this email list, they are likely to keep up with Schwann’s for future products to purchase.
2. They test their call-to-actions: From the words, to colors used, to the amount of white space surrounding it, to its size, sites with high conversion rates do A/B testing to find what is more effective.
   
3. They test their headlines: Just like call to actions are tested, so are the headlines to see which ones are more compelling.
   
   Highrise, a contact management tool to help businesses stay organized, tested two headlines/subheadlines using A/B testing. They ran the test for 4,000 page views to see which one generated more “Sign up” button clicks.
   
   The headline below received 30% better conversion than the original one above.
   
   The headline below received 37% better conversion than the original.
   
4. They have short forms. Many customers don’t want to take the time to fill out a lot of information on themselves to get what they want, whether it’s a newsletter, eBook, or free gift in the mail. The less information they have to fill out, the better.
   

   Read this: Why your website has high bounce rates

   Take a look at Men’s Health’s 4 Week Fat Shredder newsletter. This pops up as soon as you visit the website. All that’s required is an email address. Simple.
   
   
   
   So, in general, fewer fields produce higher conversion rates. In other cases, having more fields in a form can improve your conversion rate. That’s why, again, it’s important to test it to see what works best.
5. They offer free shipping. Shipping and handling fees are the number one reason why online shopping carts are empty. When Saul Torres, marketing analyst at Global Healing Center, heard free shipping would increase his conversion rate, he put it to the test. He sent 50% of traffic to one page offering free shipping and the other 50% to another page with the standard $2.99 shipping rate. Torres discovered a 20-25% increase in conversion rates on his products.
   
   

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Why is your website "bouncing?"

If you had to choose between visiting one of these two websites, which would you prefer?





The Stanford Daily is much cleaner and easier to navigate. The SF Gate article is way too busy and not as user-friendly. When lookers visit websites like SF Weekly, they can be immediately turned off and not even bother looking through the website. Instead, they’d rather go to a website like the Stanford Daily to find the most recent news.

Unfortunately, websites like SF Gate probably experience high bounce rates, meaning visitors leave your website after only being on it for no more than a few seconds. No conversions are made.

It is not good. It’s the kiss of death for your website.

The average bounce rate for websites is about 50%. This means that half of those who visit your page leave and don’t come back.

The ultimate goal of a website is to create conversions. The more time visitors spend on your website, the more likely they are to convert and act as you would ideally like them to, whether it’s buying a product, signing up for a newsletter or making an inquiry. If they aren’t doing any of those things, you’ll need to revisit your content marketing strategy.

Let’s explore more about bounce rate, shall we?

Read this: What social media platforms are best for your website?

What's the average bounce rate?

Bounce rates can vary based on the type of website. According to Hubspot, here are some averages:

• Content Websites: 40-60% 
• Lead Generation: 30-50% 
• Blogs: 70-98% 
• Retail Sites: 20-40% 
• Service Sites: 10-30% 
• Landing Pages: 70-90%

What's wrong with your website?

1. Poor website design. Is your website poorly designed? It is hard to navigate? A poorly designed website can make your website hard to navigate. Visitors can get easily frustrated, and rather than spend time looking for what they’re specifically seeking, it’s easier to just go to another website instead (Hall, 2012).
   
   To encourage visitors to click around and convert, make sure your website looks professional and is and functional. Add colors and patterns to your headlines to make it look more exciting and draw your readers toward important information on your page.
2. Not responsive for web. If a visitor is viewing your website on their smart phone, but the text is too small, they’re not likely to stay. Make sure your website is easy to read on any device, whether it’s desktop, tablet or smart phone.
3. Lack of compelling content. Go through your pages with high bounce rates and see if your content is too long, wordy, passive, or in big blocks of text. Improve the content by making your messaging more punchy and clear. Break up large paragraphs into smaller paragraphs. Use sub-headlines. Fix any typos. Turn some of your points into bullet points. These could make a difference!
4. No visuals. Do you have any photos, audio or multimedia on your website? Visuals help tell your company story better. Embedding visuals, like a short video, can keep your visitors on your site longer. Add photos; just make sure they’re optimized for web to prevent your website from taking too long to load. Slow-to-load websites can lead to high bounce rates as well.
5. No internal links. If you don’t have any text hyperlinked to other pages on your website, this means the visitor will either have to search around your website blindly for it themselves, or find another website instead. Internally linking your webpages will cause visitors naturally and conveniently click the link and read more information on other pages. 

Read this: How to improve website conversion rates

References:

Hall, S. (2012, October 2). 7 reasons your bounce rate is high (and how to reduce it). Crazy Egg. Retrieved January 24, 2015 from http://blog.crazyegg.com/2012/10/02/reasons-bounce-rate-is-high/

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