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.

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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.