8 Best Ways to Increase Conversion Rates

⏱ Reading Time: 10 minutes

In the world of online advertising You build it, and they will come is anything but a given. There is, however, one caveat.

Creating a site that will both engage and convince potential buyers to click the “Pay Now” button.

Interestingly, some of the essential things you must do are the same as your goals for visitors to your site. It begins with awareness.

🚀Read: Customer Experience Guide: How to Put your Customers First? 🚀

It means knowing how your website is performing, along with gleaning a better understanding of the user experience which can lead to more conversions and greater sales. 

Let’s begin with your site’s analytics to provide the necessary background.

Tips to Increase Conversion Rate

1. Know Your Numbers

They say you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been. Truer words were never spoken for conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Website analytics can provide valuable insights into how visitors reach your site, what device they use, and which elements appeal to them—or not.

These data give you the road map towards creating a better website, customize your site and influence its traffic.

2. Create Brand Awareness With Blogging

It’s not enough to have a web presence. Increasing your conversion rate depends on putting faces to a business, sharing stories and giving advice.

Having a blog is imperative. 

However, it’s equally critical to keep the content current. Nothing says “Apathetic” than a stalled blog.

Picture 1. Your blogs can play an important role in the buying process

3. Give Your Potential Buyers Something – for Free

Visitors are well aware of the fact that you want sales. It’s one reason that consumers go online first before visiting a brick-and-mortar store.

Therefore, an excellent way to build trust and loyalty is to give site visitors something for free with no strings attached.

It’s still an opportunity to generate interest and boost conversions. Offering free troubleshooting advice, for example, allows you to share your expertise and provide a service to potential buyers.

Read Customer Relations: What Is the Road to Loyal Customers?

4. Get Social

The statistics about online advertising tell the story. The average conversion rate for Google Adwords is 4.4 percent with an average cost of $56.11.

Compare these figures to Facebook, the industry leader with over 50 percent of social media visits.

Its conversion rate is 9.21 percent with an average cost of $18.68.

A social media presence is just as vital to a business as a website. It allows you to engage with visitors in real-time, get feedback, and understand the users’ expectations.

5. Optimize Your Website

It’s imperative to think of your website as a living thing. It should adapt to visitor usage. There are a few things you can do right away:

• Rework pages with a high bounce rate. 
• Update parts with new data and figures.
• Add high-quality images that are optimized for websites.

A study by Tuch et al offers some compelling insights into visitor preferences. The researchers found that sites with less visual complexity and more prototypicality appealed to users more. 

In other words, a website with a more minimalist design that shows what people typically associate with a product or service is more pleasing and can lead to more engagement and thus, more conversions.

Likewise, make sure your website sends the right message with your choice of design elements and colors. Think about what you want the visitor to think when viewing your site.

Green, for example, suggests tranquility and stability. That’s a good thing if you’re selling garden ponds.

Yellow, on the other hand, symbolizes energy, but that can backfire if overdone.

There are two other areas where you should focus your attention:

Landing Page With a Clear CTA

The best way to increase your conversion rate is to keep visitors on your site with interesting content. After all, you have less than a minute to make it happen.

That’s why it’s essential to have ad-driven landing pages with a clear call-to-action (CTA) that specifies exactly what your marketing goal is.

It’s not enough to direct them to your site’s home page.

You must make the message evident, whether it’s signing up for your newsletter, requesting a free quote, or booking a table.

However, it’s not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Experiment with different CTAs. Use different wording. Set a positive tone by beginning the text on the button with “Yes.”

Read How to Create a Landing Page?

Simple Forms

Contact forms are an effective way to channel visitor inquiries and avoid spam on your end of the potential conversion. However, it’s crucial to keep them simple.

Take an email sign-up form. The goal is to get that address to send newsletters with targeted CTAs to increase your conversion rate. At this point, you’ve piqued their interest. Don’t give them a reason to leave.

Limit your forms to three fields, tops. Also, keep things optional. Is it really necessary that you know both an individual’s first and last name? And certainly don’t ask for their age, unless it’s a confirmation that they are over 21 for certain purchases.

There are numerous services that offer temporary email addresses. Savvy visitors use them to a free download and avoid signing up for a newsletter.

If you’re going to give something to the user, give it to them outright.

6. Engage Your Site’s Visitors With Videos

Videos offer an excellent way to humanize your business. It’s an effective technique for building trust. It’s also an opportunity to give something free to your visitors.

If you sell products that require assembly, include an installation segment.

In case your service solves a consumer problem, show them before and after shots of how it can help them.

If using your product isn’t intuitive, create a video explaining how to use it with plenty of free tips. 

7. Harness the Power of Reviews and Testimonials

The words of other buyers have a dramatic impact on purchases for both online and brick-and-mortar purchases.

A report by PowerReviews found that a whopping 97 percent of shoppers consult reviews before they buy.

The fact is that people often trust each other before they will a seller hawking their goods and services. They have no skin in the game. As the reasoning goes, some may find their comments more honest.

It also presents another opportunity to build your brand with verified-purchase reviews and testimonials. Likewise, it’s a vital strategy to address negative feedback on social media.

It’s also a wake-up call to ditch the sale-y language and write accurate descriptions that don’t overpromise or oversell the product.

There aren’t shortcuts to building this rapport with your visitors. Unscrupulous sellers will pay for positive reviews, but the wise user consults sites like FakeSpot.com for fraudulent testimonies.

An area you can also focus on is the checkout process.

Make the Buying Process Easy

The number one rule of business, whether it’s a brick-and-mortar store or an e-commerce platform is:

Make it as easy as possible for someone to give you money.

The more barriers or the more pages a person must click to get to the checkout are risks of cart abandonment. They account for nearly 75 percent of online would-be sales.

Sending an email nudge is one way to try to convert the sale—assuming it went far enough to get their email address. Another approach you can take is to nix registration requirements.

Some online shoppers prefer not to set up an account for one-off or first-time purchases. There are also privacy and security concerns in light of the risk of data breaches.

Offer a variety of payment methods including Paypal, Google Pay, or Apple Pay. Make sure to back up your products.

Satisfaction Guarantee

Let’s face it. Buying online carries throughout the entire process from paying for your purchase to receiving it.

That’s why it’s imperative to reassure shoppers with a 100-percent, satisfaction guarantee. Using language like “No Questions Asked” offers further proof that buyers won’t have to argue with customer service about a refund or replacement.

It also makes a powerful statement about your business. It says that you believe in your product or service. 

That could make the difference between checkout and an abandoned cart.

Read How to Achieve and Measure Customer Satisfaction

8. Foster Brand Loyalty With Rewards Programs

Another key feature of increased conversion rates is repeat sales. That’s part of what makes reward programs such a powerful tool.

The essential thing to remember is to keep the threshold attainable.

If you set the bar too high, you’ve defeated the purpose with some negative backlash at risk. You should also consider upping the ante for different levels as businesses like Total Wine do. Members in the Grand Reserve status get a free subscription to magazines such as “Wine Spectator: or free in-store classes.

Higher points translate into better perks, which leads to greater conversion rates.

There are other ways to keep them coming back for more.

Subscriptions

Many products such as water filters offer opportunities to capitalize on repeat business with routine maintenance. Think filter replacement. Amazon has an exceptional example of this model.

For purchases of this type, users can subscribe to receive replenishments automatically. The benefits to the buyer are evident with a set-it-and-forget-it solution, along with a discount with this option.

It is the proverbial win-win where the initial conversion builds on its ROI.

Brilliant!

The key is giving the consumer choices. They pick how often they receive a shipment. They have the option to modify it as necessary. Yet, they continue to get the benefit of a reduced price no matter what they choose.

Mobile or Desktop? That Is the Question

Optimizing for mobile or desktop is complicated. A lot of it stems from how users interact with each platform.

The stats are telling.

Smartphones have the lion’s share of internet traffic. It’s easy to see when you consider how much people use their devices for a wide spectrum of uses from shopping to texting to browsing.

It’s a different story when you drill down to conversion rates and sales.

Hands down, users on desktop usage beat out mobile users with buying 0.7 versus 1.65 between looking and hitting the “Buy Now” button.

Several reasons can account for the difference.

It might rest with how people use different formats. Smartphone usage covers a wider range of tasks that don’t involve buying.

Desktop and laptop users research products and services, often with the benefit of broadband versus a data plan. The larger format gives them a better view and can help sway decisions. It certainly helps that websites are most often optimized for this use instead of mobile devices.

That’s why it pays to know how people come to your site. Then, you can optimize your content and web design to match their needs.

In an ideal world, you’ll do both. Your site will have minimalistic with fast-loading content for smartphones and high-quality images for desktop viewing.

Read Top Email Marketing Trends for 2021

Picture 2. Conversion rate depends also on whether your site is optimized for mobile and desktop

Final Thoughts About Optimizing Your Conversion Rate

The best way to increase your conversion rate is to know your target audience and tailor your content and its display to their needs.

You already have their interest if they’ve clicked through to your site. Your mission is to keep them looking and convince them that your product or service is what they need to fulfill a need or solve a problem in the most affordable and effective way possible.

Luckily, tools like Google Analytics make that possible with data that can help you understand user behaviour. The only thing you need to do then is to deliver the goods.

However, it’s not a one-time task.

It’s imperative to continue to look at the numbers and finetune your site to the current user trends. Things change. Fads emerge out of nowhere. Visitor traffic will likely reflect the changing online ecosystem.

Think of your website as a work in progress. Let it evolve with your users. It’s the single best way that you can ensure continued success and a conversion rate that reflects your efforts.

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Annabelle Carter Short is an experienced writer, editor, proofreader, blogger, teacher and photographer. She likes to cook, sew, and she’s very passionate about healthy food that tastes delicious. Annabelle writes for Seriously Smoked.