Smart site owners know that the sure path to improving conversion rates are through ongoing testing and incremental changes. Conversion rate optimization is an ongoing practice, not a one-time event.
That said, we know that many small and medium-sized businesses often have limited budgets to invest in CRO.
We have great news! There are a number of proven ways you can increase your conversions on your own with limited resources. Here are our top 5 recommendations for tactics you can begin using today.
Tactics to Increase Conversion Rate
The first thing to do to increase your conversion rate is to eliminate speed bumps and increase speed. You want your visitors to have a smooth and speedy path to sales, and you want to provide plenty of opportunities for prospects to travel along those paths.
Here are 5 proven steps to make that happen:
Step 1: Work out your technical problems
All the marketing in the world can’t keep visitors on your site if it loads slowly or doesn’t display properly on their preferred devices and browsers.
Make sure you take the time to:
- Add caching plugins to decrease page size.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to ensure fast loading resources
- Optimize images for quick loading
The target load time is 3 seconds or less. This is a tall order for a large landing page, but it is attainable using the tools available to you. Other technical features (opt-in boxes, for instance) should look good and perform flawlessly.
Step 2: Find areas of frustration
No one knows your products and services better than you do. The sales path is obvious to you, but it may not be so evident to your potential customers. Believe it or not, some e-commerce managers and/or SEM managers have never personally walked through their own check out procedure. They think they know what’s best for their customers, but they’ve never been a customer of the company their working for.
Do your best to look at your website and sales process through the eyes of your potential customer. Make a purchase. Ask real prospective customers to interact with your site and offer feedback on speed bumps they encounter when buying your products or services.
There are tools available that will allow you to observe user experience testing in action. For help in finding free and easy-to-use solutions contact User X.
Step 3: Make each page serve a single purpose
Your home page and supporting pages (about, contact, etc) will contain information about your company and services/products. However, you should focus your attention on “landing pages”.
Landing pages are the targets of your ad campaigns and calls-to-action within the site. If you’re going to succeed in boosting your conversion rate, landing pages should adhere to these fundamental rules:
- The landing page should never be the homepage of the website
- The landing page must continue the conversation or make good on the promise the ad/CTA introduced
- The landing page should have one specific job and one CTA
The landing page is an important tool and should be looked at as an entry point into the site. A user searching for your product or service will most likely land on a landing page first.
Step 4: Create urgency
Your offer can’t last forever. The price will go up or stock will run out. These aren’t contrived issues, they are true. The more you help your visitors understand the urgency, the more sales you will generate.
Countdown timers, “left in stock” indicators, and “while supplies last” messages can help get the point across. Tools and tactics like those are always important, but when your aim is to improve conversion rates, they’re essential.
Step 5: User better bait
Special discount coupons, giveaways, and contests can help draw attention to your offer. Be super careful, though, to make sure you’re bringing in qualified prospects and not just click-throughs. Make sure the prize or free item is something your target audience would love to have but isn’t all that exciting to others. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a whole lot of clicks, but few sales.
How to Improve Conversion Rates
Once you’ve had a taste of what can happen when you pull together tips like these to get boosts in sales, you’ll want to find ways to take these steps more regularly.
This is just the starting line. To go further faster, you’ll need to consider more user-driven designs and strategies, expand user experience testing, and more. One way to do this is to take advantage of our low-cost Site Audit and let User X find the speed bumps and roadblocks in your site.
The next time you need a quick boost in sales, try these tips. Then let us know how it goes! We love to hear your success stories.
Now get out there and start converting!