Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Tips - Via UpdraftPlus
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
CRO – or conversion rate optimization, uses the traffic you already must drive
conversions, instead of increasing traffic to your website. This is the best
way to get the most bang for your marketing buck and once you have a
higher-converting website, you can start investing in driving traffic again.
Here are eight
practical and proven ways to improve website conversion rates:
1. Use pictures
Image optimization can help instantly
communicate your value proposition better than most copy. Rarely does anyone
have time to read your product descriptions in full, but if you’re lucky enough
to find a picture that tells all, you can change their mind and convince a
potential customer to buy your product from a host of rivals.
If you have an
online video conferencing service for example, you can show a potential
customer how they would look during a web meeting. Such an image will help
engage the visitor further and allow you to guide them down the sales funnel
with further engagement.
Here are some tips
for choosing images:
Ø Choose
images of people using your products and not just an image of your products.
Ø Don’t
use stock photos, use Google advanced image search. Or better still create your
own photos.
Ø Edit
your photos to get the best optimization and loading speed
Ø Test
images for landing pages
Ø Choose
responsive images that attract attention
2. Include reviews, links and
ratings
Customer
testimonials, star ratings and reviews all play an important role in
influencing buying decisions. This is due to the phenomenon of social proof,
whereby consumers believe more in a product if others are also buying, using
and enjoying it.
Leveraging social
proof can be one of your biggest assets to increase trust in your brand and
ultimately increase ecommerce traffic and sales.
Ensuring your brand
story has social proof to support it is essential to building credibility.
Incorporating social proof into your web design is a fail-safe marketing
strategy.
Add customer
testimonials next to your product descriptions to show potential customers that
your product has been used and highly rated by others.
Customers tend to be sceptical by nature, adding the element of social proof
increases their confidence and can help convince them that your brand is worth
investing in. Social proof on your landing pages can also be a big source of
conversions and can enhance engagement on your website.
3. Make conversions smaller
commitments
It’s a busy world
and if you have a higher bounce rate, it could be because the actions needed to
convert are too time consuming.
Understand that
time is money and people have short attention spans. People are commitment
averse; they would rather put 10 items in their shopping cart than immediately
buy one.
Ask your customers
for smaller commitments, especially if you have a service company or sell expensive
products that require special consideration.
Changing your CTA buttons to softer alternatives to immediate purchases can
work wonders.
For instance,
changing a “Buy now” button to “Book a free consultation” is much friendlier
for the commitment-phobic because it reassures the user that a conversation is
the next step, not an ultimate purchase.
A recent test found
that simply changing a main call to action to “Contact seller” from “Buy now”
increased conversion rates by 73%.
4. Optimize UX design
and copy
UX design or the
user experience of your web design is perhaps the biggest decider of where a
user will land. Make sure your website can be navigated smoothly and
seamlessly. A great UX design is essential to increase
website conversion rates.
The copy of your
website goes hand in hand with your UX. Use active language and provide
clickable options so users can go where they want without too much work. Always
expose primary navigation items, so people can move through the website at
will.
5. Reduce fields in contact forms
One of the primary
ways to gain leads is to have people sign up via contact forms. Filling out
these forms though can be a hassle. If your form has too many fields, people
might skip signing up altogether. Remove as many barriers as possible.
Let a potential
customer know the benefits of filling out a form. Set out expectations so you
don’t fall short. Make sure your contact forms are conversational and friendly.
Forms with too many fields are intimidating and people are often wary about
giving out too much personal information.
Stick to fields
that are necessary for conversion and do away with all the fluff that makes
form filling a hassle. You should hopefully then find that your contact form
submissions will increase.
6. Optimize customer support
Customers are more
likely to buy when their concerns are addressed during their initial “buying”
period, which is usually under a minute. You should have a support team
available to handle queries via live chat and other channels, and have an
automated system like automatic call distribution that can send the queries and
questions to the relevant departments in the case of any phone calls.
Interactive voice
response (IVR) is another tech example to consider supporting any phone-based
customer support. IVR is a form of speech recognition technology that allows
customers to interact with an organization’s contact centre with the minimum of
fuss.
7. Optimize for mobile
Given the amount of
traffic that is now sourced from mobile phones, it is important that you have a
dedicated mobile format for your website. Failure to do this could result in a
huge chunk of your potential customers being lost.
It is important
that your mobile website is responsive and optimized for mobile use, which
means button sizes and font sizes should be designed to work on mobile devices.
Remember to be creative with mobile marketing – if done right and integrated
with social media apps, it can help improve your conversion rate.
Make sure to also optimize any newsletters, e-mails and anything that goes
through an SMTP for mobile, as they can result in new leads if formatted
correctly.
8. Strengthen your ‘call to
action’ point
The following
guidelines can help create call to actions (CTAs) that will increase website
conversion rates, as the right CTA can be all that’s needed to set you
apart:
- Have
a clear and bright CTA on the landing page.
- Keep
your CTA simple and use active language to communicate value and urgency.
- Personalize
your CTAs – Personalized CTAs perform 202% better than basic CTAs.
- Don’t
use multiple CTAs on each page.
- Attract
attention to CTAs by using pop ups. But remember not to be intrusive or
disruptive to the customer experience.
Test before you launch
The eight examples
listed above can all help boost your site performance, but all updates and changes
to your site need to be tested after implementation.
Perform A/B testing
on every change you make. Web design requires you to be on your toes and make
changes every so often to optimize the content, while resolving any ‘pain
points’ customers may be experiencing.
When embarking on
your continuous conversion rate optimization (CRO) journey, using process discovery could also be invaluable.
It can help you discover processes you may be able to automate in the future to
improve the user experience of your website to reduce bounce rates, gain more
leads and enhance conversion rates.
Once you have
reached the point where your website resonates with your target audience, you
can use a SaaS retargeting strategy to directly tackle those
that do not convert. This method targets that part of your traffic that bounced
and shows them ads to help drive them back to your website and hopefully
convert.
If you follow all
the advice above, test as you go and investigate how tech can assist you along
the way, your conversion rates should improve accordingly.
Original Source and Credit: https://updraftplus.com/8-ways-to-boost-your-wordpress-website-conversion-rates/