Are you looking for ways to increase your conversion rate on your website? Perhaps you’d like more sales, downloads, social media followers, or email subscribers. Whatever conversions you’re after, it’s possible to give your site a big boost.
The average website sees a 2.35% conversion rate, but many companies are achieving 10% conversion rates plus.
How do they do it? The answer isn’t a simple formula, but you can adopt these nine key elements to help increase conversions.
If you’re after conversion rate optimization, you need a beautiful website with a simple, yet pleasing design. Simple, beautiful websites convert better for several reasons:
It's not necessarily what you might think. You can create an aesthetically pleasing website that makes users mad the moment they try to interact. This type of experience will negatively impact how visitors view that website. A beautiful website looks good, but where websites are concerned, beauty is rooted in usability. When a website is easy to navigate, it's going to be perceived as more aesthetically pleasing than a website that has a difficult navigation system. When a website has easy-to-read text, it's going to be viewed as more beautiful than a site cluttered with beautiful graphics that impact the function of the site.
It’s not necessarily what you might think. You can create an aesthetically pleasing website that makes users mad the moment they try to interact. This type of experience will negatively impact how visitors view that website.
A beautiful website looks good, but where websites are concerned, beauty is rooted in usability. When a website is easy to navigate, it’s going to be perceived as more aesthetically pleasing than a website that has a difficult navigation system. When a website has easy-to-read text, it’s going to be viewed as more beautiful than a site cluttered with beautiful graphics that impact the function of the site.
Have you considered hiring a professional copywriter? If not, this item should be at the top of your list. A professional copywriter isn’t just someone who has mastered the art of storytelling. They’re someone who knows how to use words to elicit specific responses from website visitors. They know how to persuade people with the written word and will craft effective, persuasive sales copy for your website.
Whether you need convincing product descriptions, sales pages, articles, or anything else, hiring a professional is the way to go.
Conversion rate optimization is directly tied to the effectiveness of your copy. Even if you target only visitors who are ready to buy and want to buy from you – you still have to persuade them to take that final step, pull out their credit card, and pay.
Ideally, all of your visitors would be ready to buy from you. In reality, you’re going to get visitors who are in all different stages of the buying journey. It’s important to have the most persuasive copy possible in order to capture and hold your visitors’ interest. They might not make a purchase today, but in three weeks they could decide to come back to buy from you. Some will find your site and sign up for your mailing list and won’t buy anything until you’ve sent out a few emails.
If you don’t hire a professional copywriter, you’ll have to settle for mediocre copy that may or may not support your desire to maximize conversions for a given landing page. Sure, you’ll get some conversions with basic copy, but if your goal is to maximize your site’s conversion rate, you’ll want to hire a pro.
Power words trigger an emotional or psychological response and are therefore used on web pages (with a focus on headlines) to influence conversions. Power words and phrases make lead magnets more appealing, and they also make products sound more useful.
We recently published a list of several hundred power words and this is an excellent reference if you’re writing your own copy. Some of these words include:
It’s important to note that not all power words will be positive. The idea is to elicit an emotion and sometimes the emotion that needs to be elicited is a passion against injustice or an inferior product.
Make sure you always perform split testing for call-to-action landing page words and/or phrases.
Although it’s best to hire a professional copywriter, you might have reasons you’d rather write your own content. Many people do this, and while it’s not easy, it’s not impossible. However, before you write your own copy, at the very least you’ll want to get a little training under your belt.
Most importantly, if you’re going to write your own copy, you need to study persuasive writing. Becoming familiar with the power words listed in the previous section is a good place to start. It’s also critical to understand the art of persuasion so that you can use those words effectively.
Persuasive writing is designed to trigger a response, usually emotional, that inspires the reader to take a specific, desired action. Getting that response can be accomplished with a variety of elements like empathy, building rapport, shock, and more.
While there are many elements that will elicit a response, nothing works better than empathizing with your audience’s situation. Whatever you’re trying to sell to people needs to come with convincing words of empathy for the reason people are looking for a solution.
For example, if you’re selling a product you advertise as the best space heater on the planet, you’ll want to empathize with people who are tired of being disappointed with the space heaters that don’t last or don’t work well.
Since your main point is that your space heater is the best, you’re going to attract people who are looking for something that will finally work. Their past will be full of frustrating experiences with previous units, so empathy will go a long way to gain rapport with those people.
It’s not hard to learn the art of persuasive writing, but it will take time and dedication. Most of the popular course websites offer classes on persuasive writing and you can also find free resources online.
Skyrocketing your conversions will depend on how well you can build trust with your visitors. At the end of the day, people don't do business with brands they don't trust. However, people do buy from new and unfamiliar brands when those brands can quickly earn their trust.To maximize your conversions from people who are just finding out about your company, focus on building trust (that's what Google E-A-T is all about). Explain why your brand is trustworthy. For example, you might want to offer a money-back guarantee. Most businesses that see any kind of massive success do offer this kind of no-questions-asked guarantee. This makes visitors feel confident that if they aren't happy with your product or service, they won't be out any money.Consumers tend to trust businesses that want their customers to be happy above keeping all their profits. When a business has unhappy customers and doesn't offer them a way to get their money back, those customers will talk about their negative experiences, which will diminish trust for your organization in the marketplace.
Color plays a major role in how people make decisions and how they feel. A well-known, often-cited marketing study found that between 62-90% of a consumer’s assessment is made based on color alone. Colors can either draw people in or push them away – it all depends on how they’re used.
To skyrocket your conversions, all the colors you use on your website, in your emails, and in your paid ads need to conform to basic color psychology. For example, blue tends to elicit feelings of trustworthiness and yellow tends to make people happy.
Color psychology is excellent when you know your demographics because it does vary by culture. However, when you know your demographic, you can use the basics of color psychology to your advantage.
Since word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising, some of your conversions will be the result of what other people say about your brand. In this way, you can generate a higher conversion rate just by developing a positive reputation.
Be the brand that customers enjoy communicating with, buying from, and provide the kind of support that makes people talk. For instance, go above and beyond when someone has an issue. If you provide a refund, let them keep the product – don’t make them go through the trouble of a return. Offer extras to people who aren’t fully satisfied and ask them how you can make things right in their view. Be the company that wants customers to feel satisfied with their entire experience, even when they aren’t satisfied with your product.
One of the most misunderstood components in skyrocketing conversions is the concept of generating traffic. The myth is that to get more conversions, you should generate more traffic. This isn’t usually the case. Usually, businesses with a low conversion rate have a high bounce rate and will continue to see a low conversion rate after generating more traffic. In fact, that low conversion rate usually drops even further with an influx of traffic.
If you’re already generating traffic that doesn’t convert, you’re either generating traffic that isn’t part of your market, or your website isn’t optimized to convert visitors. If you work hard on optimizing your website and don’t see much improvement in conversions, the most likely scenario is that your visitors aren’t your target market.
Instead of focusing on generating mass amounts of traffic, focus on converting your existing traffic first. This is accomplished through optimizing your website’s landing pages, sales copy, layout, and navigation. Once your site is optimized to the best of your ability, then start looking at where your traffic is coming from. If it’s coming from sources that aren’t giving you your ideal customers, cut off those sources and start generating targeted traffic.
For example, if your PPC ads are targeting the wrong demographic, cut those campaigns and start new ones with the correct demographic. You’ll probably need to research your ideal target market (likely in tools like Google Analytics) a little more in-depth to find out exactly who you should be marketing to online. You’ll likely need to also look at how a particular call to action is or is not working. Don’t guess at who your market is – always verify your market through research.
Not counting eCommerce site sales processes that simply sell products, if you’re running a website designed to share in-depth information about products through affiliate marketing, product reviews, or anything similar, consider expanding your content. It’s possible that some of your visitors already know the information you’ve published on your site and they’re looking for something more in-depth.
One of the biggest secrets to skyrocketing conversions is being an expert in your industry. You can give this impression by expanding the content you publish to include in-depth articles that will fulfill your visitors’ expectations and even delight them with new information.
In other words, don’t just publish a website that is a copy of all the other basic sites in your niche. Make the effort to stand out by publishing content nobody else is publishing and give visitors a reason to come back frequently and trust you enough to make a purchase.
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