As Marketing Managers, it’s our job to generate quality new leads and sales for the business. We have a number of tools in our arsenal to do this, but now more than ever, our websites are an invaluable part of our toolkit.
There are 2 main ways to increase the number of enquiries and sales we generate online: increase visitors and increase conversion rate. In this article we’ll be covering 5 simple ways to increase your website conversion rate so you can convert more website visitors into customers.
1. Create specific landing pages
The most effective user journeys don’t start from the homepage. Rather, they start from deeper website pages that are aligned with the intent and search query of your visitors. Homepages are designed to provide an overview of who you are and what you do which by their nature, makes them in-specific. A homepage is perfect if a client has met you at an event or has been referred by a colleague and wants to find out more. In other words, the homepage is for branded searches. So where do we send everyone else?
When a visitor is looking for something specific, the strongest user journey will offer specific content in line with their search query. The best way to achieve this is through the creation of landing pages that are optimised for your specific products and services. In this way, you can reduce the number of clicks required before conversion, reducing the opportunity to lose customers along the way. By being much more specific than your competitors, you can achieve greater alignment, reduce bounce rate and improve your website conversion rate.
2. Reassure your visitors
Whether you are a B2B or B2C business, it is important to recognise that a proportion of your visitors will not know much about your business and the work that you do. This is particularly the case if you have effective organic and paid visitor channels. Efforts must be made throughout the user journey to build trust and reassure customers that you are a good fit for businesses and individuals like them, having solved similar challenges. Adding reassurance elements such as product guarantees, reviews, testimonials, case studies and even client logos is relatively simple but can have a huge impact on your conversion rate, giving your customers the confidence to get in touch or make that purchase.
3. Improve website speed
Website load speed is a common culprit for poor website conversion rates. The likes of Amazon and ASOS invest heavily in website speed and have trained us to be impatient online. Adobe found that 39% of website visitors will leave if the content takes too long to load, demonstrating the impact that a sluggish site has on your visitor-ship.
If users are bouncing from your website without engaging, Google will pick up on this pattern of user behaviour and will start to move you down the rankings, favouring the sites that offer higher levels of engagement. On the flip side, improving load speeds can help you climb the rankings and improve conversion rate. Deloitte found that a 0.1s mobile speed improvement increased retail conversion rates by 8.4% and average order value by 9.2%.
4. Use clear call to actions
Call to actions and user signposting are at the heart of all user journey mapping. A considered user flow aims to lead users through the website to a conversion point that is mutually beneficial to both your website visitor and your business. Along the way, you’ll need to align visitors with your business, help them qualify you as a suitable option, validate that you have done this before, reassure that you’ve been successful, before finally prompting the conversion.
Call to actions come in many formats, but are most effective when they are easily visible and draw attention when a user is skimming through content. 1 or 2 primary to actions per page is optimal to ensure the next action is always clear.
Above the footer is a common place to feature a call to action to prevent a hard stop once the user has reached the bottom of the page. Check out the seamless page load animations we’ve used on Minale + Mann and Vungle to provide a continuous and uninterrupted user experience.
5. Be contactable
Most of us work with our websites day in and day out and whether we love them or hate them, we’ve got to know them quite well. Try to take a step back and look at your website with a fresh pair of eyes. If you were landing on your website for the first time, how easy are your contact details to locate and use? Using click to call and click to email contact details are helpful, particularly for mobile users. Equally, shorter contact forms have higher conversion rates so try to slimline these as much as possible to maximise conversion rate. We recommend asking friends, clients and colleagues to navigate your site and provide honest feedback. The more contactable you are, the more enquiries you will receive.
If you’d like some help to improve your website conversion rate, contact our digital agency on [email protected] or by calling 0203 0111 641.
