6 Simple Steps for Optimizing Your Website for Conversion
You work hard to get visitors to your website. Yet, many companies fail to take maximum advantage of that traffic. The art of optimizing your website to convert visitors into customers is called “Conversion Optimization”. There are many aspects of conversion optimization to consider. In this post, I present some basics that any marketer can follow to ensure they are optimizing their website for conversions.
1) Walk in the shoes of your visitors
People have different ways of shopping. Your website needs to provide the information that your potential customers are seeking. You need to be a bit of a psychologist in helping your clients get what they need. Some of our clients are surprised to learn that the “About Us” page is one of the most popular on their website. Why is that? Because some clients feel very strongly that they need to know who they are doing business with. If your About Us page doesn’t show the people behind your company, then you will likely lose those types of buyers.
Other buyers want to understand the technical details behind a product. Others want to know how the product will solve their problems. Want to understand how people think about your website more fully? Try, “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark” by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg.
Studies show that the way in which you describe the benefit of your product or service impacts the likelihood that people will buy. Read your home page and ask yourself, “If I were visiting this page for the first time, would it be clear to me how I would benefit from using my product?”
Changing this description to stand out in a way that excites a visitor can do wonders for your rate of conversion.
3) Maintain the scent
If you are are using paid search or some other external means to drive traffic to your website, make sure that they land on a page that “maintains the scent”. One of the most common problems with website conversion performance is when a well-crafted ad for, say “Yellow Roses”, drives a visitor to the site only to land on a page that talks about all the different kinds of flowers and plants provided by the business. The visitor is thinking, “What?! Where are my yellow roses?”
If you think of your visitors as bloodhounds looking for a product or service, you don’t want to pay for an ad click only to have them lose the scent when they land on the page. Make sure your page is relevant to the ad or referral that sent them to your website.
4) What’s the next step?
If you brought visitors to your website successfully, now you need to give them a next step. Have a fill-out form or a clearly marked button that explains how they can take the next step. Giving a user a clear call to action, while they are reading about your product and its benefits, can help move more visitors into your sales pipeline.
Consider one of Philly Marketing Labs’s calls to action below, as an example!
Place client testimonials close to an action button or fill-out form to provide additional comfort to the visitor that others have benefited from your product. People are social – and this is a form of social proof. A well-placed client quote just below a call to action can help increase the likelihood that the visitor will continue to move forward.
6) Make Contact Forms simple
Many sales teams want to collect as much information as possible about a prospect. However, every field you ask the visitor to fill out adds friction. Friction is the enemy of conversion. The highest converting forms are going to ask for name and email address. Can you add the phone number? Sure. How about the name of the business or the size of the company or the Website address? All of these are valid things to ask for in a contact form. Each one of them adds additional friction to visitor’s experience and will reduce the number of people willing to complete the form.
Consider starting with a simple form for a few months. If the leads you are getting aren’t well qualified, then you can ask for additional information. You can also change the text above your form to help guide people on the types of clients that fit best with your business. This allows visitors to voluntarily opt out of your offering if they aren’t a good fit.
Need more help on conversion optimization? You can find professional training on conversion optimization from Market Motive and Marketing Experiments. These organizations show you dozens of examples and provide the latest research on conversion optimization.
Don’t have time to go through the training? We’ve gone through the training and have team members certified in the best practices of conversion optimization. Contact us to discuss your conversion needs. We’re here to help!
