As an online business owner, conversion rates are everything. You need a high conversion rate to ensure you’re making enough money to keep everything up and running.
While you’ve tried your hardest to increase your site’s conversion rates, nothing you do seems to increase your revenue to where you had hoped. Luckily, there are lots of techniques you can try to convert more of your visitors to actual paying customers.
Below, we’ll discuss 24 of the most effective ways to increase your website’s conversion rate, from optimization techniques to improving your users’ experiences.
Increasing Conversion Rates Through Optimization
The easiest way to increase your site’s conversion rate is through tried-and-true optimization techniques. All this requires is a little tweaking, meaning you don’t need any flashy plugins or expensive consultants to accomplish it.
Some of the best ways to increase your conversion rate through optimization techniques include:
- Remove unnecessary distractions
- Improve page speed
- Optimize for mobile
- Optimize forms
- Write good copy
- Write good CTAs
- Define and communicate your value proposition
- Localize content
Let’s discuss how you can accomplish each step and what they can do for your conversion rate.
Remove Unnecessary Distractions
Dedicated landing pages are a great way to increase conversion rates for specific products, services, or deals. But, a landing page needs to be designed well to truly increase your conversion rate.
A landing page has one goal — to convince visitors to take advantage of the deal you’re offering. Because it has such a specific purpose, removing anything from the page that could detract visitors from converting is essential.
Landing pages should always include the following features:
- Headings that establish your call to action
- A product or service’s benefits and features
- Customer reviews or testimonials
- Visual aids of the product, service, or deal
As a general rule, anything that does not relate to the four items above can be removed from the page. Any unnecessary links, popups, and other clutter could cause your visitors to leave the page without making a purchase.
Improve Page Speed
We’ve all done it at one point — we’re browsing a website and click onto a specific page. If the page takes any longer than a few seconds to load, we almost always exit out of it and go somewhere else.
Today, people expect webpages to load almost instantly. Studies show that pages with load times under two seconds have the highest conversion rates, and these rates drop significantly with even one additional second.
Check all the important pages on your website and see how long they take to load. If any take over two seconds to load fully, try one or more of the following techniques to improve your page’s speed:
- Compress your images before uploading
- Change redirect links to direct links
- Take extra code out of your site
When your site loads faster, your conversion rates can increase significantly.
Optimize for Mobile
Nearly everybody owns a smartphone these days, and since Google has switched to mobile-first indexing, ensuring your site works seamlessly on mobile platforms is more important than ever. Not only will it increase your conversion rates, but it may also increase your search engine rankings!
When optimizing your site for mobile platforms, be sure to test it out on every device you have available. Pages may load differently on Apple and Android mobile browsers, so check both to ensure a seamless experience.
Optimize Forms
Forms like email and newsletter sign-ups are a great way to reach more people on a consistent basis. When you’re constantly on a potential customer’s mind, it’s more likely that they’ll do business with you in the future.
But, no one wants to spend a ton of time filling out forms. Removing all unnecessary fields and leaving only the important parts could convince more people to take a few seconds to fill them out.
Most of the time, all you’ll need is a first name and an email address. When you only leave what’s necessary, you’ll increase the number of sign-ups you get and build more trust with your target audience.
Write Good Copy
Something as simple as well-written copy can greatly impact your conversion rate. Your website copy is important for many reasons, including SEO purposes.
While you should avoid “keyword stuffing,” integrating relevant keywords into your site’s text can do wonders for your search engine ranking. When more people can find your business online, you’ll get more visitors, and therefore, more sales.
Write Good CTAs
Your call to action, or CTA, is how you turn potential customers into repeat customers. Usually, a call to action will be a clickable button that brings customers to a sign-up page or the next step in the purchase process.
When it comes to good CTAs, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Use strong, creative language
- Apply to buyer’s emotions
- The shorter, the better!
You should integrate CTAs all throughout your website, especially on landing pages. The sooner it appears on a page, the better.
Check how different CTAs are working periodically, and revise them accordingly. Test out different sizes, fonts, and colors and see what works best.
Define & Communicate Your Value Proposition
Your website’s value proposition is the core aspect that sets your offerings apart from those of competitors. Your audience needs to know what they will gain from working with your company specifically, and if this is unclear, you may have a tough time attracting and converting your target audience.
Your website should reflect this value proposition, and you should highlight it on all landing pages. Write your value proposition with your target audience in mind, and be sure it answers the following questions:
- How will this help me achieve my goals?
- What pain point does this product or service address?
- How will this help me solve the problems or frustrations I’m having?
- What are the benefits of choosing this offering over other similar offerings?
Overall, be clear on how your specific, unique product or service will improve some aspect of your customers’ lives.
Localize Content
Almost everyone uses the internet to find new local businesses. Managing your online listings and adjusting your website copy to include local content can help you reach more people in your area, increasing conversions on a local scale.
Make sure your Google Business listing is up-to-date with your physical address, and consider adding a map to your website to allow customers to find you more easily.
You can also add local keywords to your copy to increase your search engine ranking in the area.
Increase Conversion Rates by Increasing Trust & Credibility
Increasing the level of trust between your business and its customers and improving your credibility as an organization are great ways to increase your conversion rates.
Social proof is a great way to do this, and it’s easy to add to your site in a few different ways. The best ways to introduce social proof on your website include:
- Testimonials
- Reviews
- Logos
Below, we’ll discuss the best ways to showcase each on your site.
Testimonials
Customer testimonials are detailed accounts, given directly to a company from the consumer, about how a specific product or service has worked for them. They tend to be more detailed and personal than reviews.
Ask your existing customer base for testimonials, or gather a few you already have. The testimonials you display on your site should definitively show that the customer enjoyed your product or service and working with your business specifically.
On that note, should you need a good testimonials widget to add to your website or store, take a look at Common Ninja’s Testimonials Slider Widget.
Reviews
Like testimonials, reviews are customer accounts of how well a product or service has worked for them. Unlike testimonials, reviews are typically submitted to a third-party site rather than directly to the company itself.
There are many plugins available that will allow you to pull reviews from third-party sites and display them on your own. Common Ninja’s Google Reviews plugin is always a great choice.
When people see that others trust and enjoy working with your company, they’re much more likely to feel comfortable doing so themselves.
Logos
You may have visited a website in the past and noticed a carousel of logos at the bottom of the page. Knowing that other brands you trust have worked with the company you’re considering working with increases a website’s credibility.
Contact other businesses you’ve worked with and ask if they would be open to adding their logo to your site. If they agree, use Common Ninja’s Logo Slider widget to embed them into your landing pages easily.
Increase Conversion Rates Through Testing & Analysis
After cycling through the steps above, you may want to run some tests and conduct a few analyses to see if anything helps your conversion rates.
Some of the testing and analysis processes you can run to increase your conversion rate include:
- Conduct A/B tests
- Test different offers
- Track how people use your website
Let’s discuss each of these three testing methods.
Conduct A/B Tests
A/B testing is a great way to test two variations simultaneously and see which works best to increase your conversion rate. Before you conduct an A/B test, however, you need to understand your customers’ pain points.
Conduct polls or surveys asking customers what about your website they think needs to be improved the most. Find the most pressing issue the majority of respondents face, then plan your test accordingly.
Some of the things you may want to test include:
- CTAs
- Copy
- Headlines
You can test things like tone, language, and length to see which is most effective at increasing conversion rates.
Test Different Offers
If a particular landing page is not converting well, the product or service you’re offering may not align with your target audience. A big part of testing and analysis is periodically trying new offers and seeing what clicks with your target market.
Whether or not an offer is appealing to your target audience has possibly the biggest impact on your conversion rates. When deciding what offer to focus on, ask yourself the following questions:
- Is this offer compelling?
- Is this offer unique?
- Does this offer make sense for my target audience?
If you can’t seem to get a page to convert after trying multiple optimization techniques, try a series of new offers until you find something that works.
Track How People Interact with Your Website
Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes can help you learn how they interact with your business online. Many tools, such as Hotjar, will show you heatmaps of every page of your website.
These heatmaps will tell you where cursors are hovering, what buttons are being clicked, and what’s being avoided altogether. Heatmaps can be very helpful in identifying what’s working and what’s not so you can remove all unnecessary components from a page.
Possibly the most important question heatmaps can answer is, “when and why are visitors leaving my site?” Once you understand the typical user journey, you can fix what’s not working and boost your conversion rates.
Increase Conversion Rates by Improving User Experience
A good user experience is essential to boosting your conversion rate. When your website is easy to use, visitors are much more likely to spend more time browsing. If they browse long enough and like what they see, they’ll probably convert into customers.
There are endless ways you can enhance user experience on your site, including:
- Add live chat
- Add WhatsApp, Telegram, and Messenger chats
- Meet your audience’s expectations
- Offer a money-back guarantee
- Enhance the purchasing process
- Incorporate multimedia elements into landing pages
- Post-purchase upsell
Let’s talk about how you can improve user experience through each method.
Add Live Chat
These days, very few people want to wait on hold with customer service or wait days for an email response. That’s why some of the best websites now include a live chat feature.
Live chat allows you to engage directly with users who have a problem or complaint in real time. Because they can get their issues resolved so quickly, they’re much less likely to get frustrated and leave your site without exploring everything you have to offer.
In addition to customer service, live chats are great for tracking the issues people are having with your site. If enough people have questions about the same features, they may be worth taking a second look at.
Add WhatsApp, Telegram & Messenger Chats
The more ways your potential customers can contact you, the better. In addition to traditional contact methods, like live chat, email, and phone, consider signing up for third-party messaging services and adding them to your contact methods.
Some of the apps you may want to include are:
- Telegram
- Facebook Messenger
Not only will this give your domestic audience more ways to contact you, but it’ll also introduce you to an international market that may not be able to contact you using traditional methods, such as via phone.
As a side note, Common Ninja has these widgets available to be added to your website: WhatsApp, Telegram, and Messenger.
Meet Your Audience’s Expectations
Your site and landing pages must deliver on the promises you make in an ad, social media post, or search engine description. If your pages don’t meet your audience’s expectations, they won’t convert.
If a page isn’t converting well, check the materials you’re using to advertise to ensure it delivers on what you promise. If not, adjust accordingly.
Offer a Money Back Guarantee
There’s nothing worse than wasting your money on a product or service that doesn’t meet your expectations. Buyer’s remorse is real, and many people are hesitant to purchase things online for this very reason.
One of the easiest ways to convince those on-the-fence visitors to take the next step in the buying journey is to offer a money-back guarantee. When your customers know they can get their money back if their needs or expectations are not met, it removes a lot of hesitancy from the equation.
Enhance the Purchasing Process
Once your customer fills up their cart and is ready to checkout, they should have an easy time doing so. Limit the steps involved in the purchasing process as much as possible, and ensure all fields and buttons are easy to see and click.
If someone is sitting in their upstairs office and realizes their wallet is all the way in the kitchen, they may abandon their cart and swear to come back to it later. But, later may never come!
For this reason, it’s a good idea to have multiple payment methods available. In addition to traditional credit or debit card purchases, customers should be able to checkout using:
- PayPal
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
The more options they have available, the more likely it is that customers will actually follow through with the purchasing process.
Incorporate Multimedia Elements into Landing Pages
Although your landing pages shouldn’t include anything unnecessary or excessive, things like videos and photos of your products can make the page feel much more trustworthy.
If you want to go a step further, consider incorporating some video testimonials from satisfied customers. These can be even more convincing than traditional text testimonials!
Post-Purchase Upsell
Upselling will not necessarily increase your conversion rate, but it will increase your revenue. Upselling and “cross-selling,” or convincing a customer to purchase an additional item, are great ways to get some extra sales.
After customers complete their checkout, offer them an upgrade or additional item they can add to their order with a single click. It could be a premium version of what they just bought, or even something like a travel-sized version. Always choose something that would go well with a customer’s existing order for the best results.
Increase Conversion Rates by Using Powerful Tools
Adding powerful tools that further entice people to convert is a great way to increase your website’s conversion rate.
Some of the best tools to add to your site include:
- Popup windows
- Countdown timers
Let’s discuss the best ways to incorporate these two tools into your site or store.
Add Popups to Your Website or Store
While popups can be annoying, they can be a great way to increase your conversion rate if you do it right. You could add a popup that appears after users browse the site for a few seconds, or an “exit-intent” popup.
Exit-intent popups track a visitor’s mouse movement and appear to entice them to stay on the page if it seems like they’re going to leave soon. You could offer a discount when users sign-up for emails or texts, or you could share a promo code customers can use on their first order.
If you do add a popup to your site, make sure it’s easy to close. You may also want to set your site’s cookies so it only appears once per user.
Common Ninja has a series of wonderful, powerful, and case-specific popups that are easy to use like the Coupon Popup, the Notification Popup, and the What’s New Popup — try them out!
Use Countdown Timers to Create Urgency
Sometimes, there’s nothing more powerful than the fear of missing out. If you’re only offering a deal for a limited time, or if stock for a particular item is limited, let people know.
If you want to countdown to the end of a sale, consider adding Common Ninja’s Countdown Bar widget to your site’s code. When time is running short, people are more compelled to convert at the moment than return to it later.
Create Cart Abandonment Email Campaigns
Have you ever filled up your virtual shopping cart, then left without making a purchase? If you’re like most people, you probably know what we’re talking about.
When this happens on your site, you can send what’s known as a “cart abandonment” email reminding them of what they’ve left behind. If the customer is still interested in the items, they may return to your site to complete their purchase.
Time your cart abandonment emails correctly to ensure the highest conversion rates possible. Usually, around 24 hours after their last site visit is a good time to send the email. To entice visitors even further, you might want to offer them a personalized discount.
Conclusion
If the pages or offers on your site aren’t converting as well as you’d hoped, rest assured that there are many ways to increase your conversion rate. Try out new things, see what works, and remember — as far as landing pages go, less is always more!
