Do you own a website and you are worried about how to increase conversion rate optimization? Or you are just setting up your website and you want to know how to optimize your conversion rate so you can get the best result from your website?
I want you to bear in mind that as a business either small scale or large scale business, that wants to grow with digital marketing, it is important for you to know that having a website is as important as the name of your business, and so you must have one.
You can also have a website and not know how to optimize it well enough to get conversion not to mention to increase the conversion optimization rate.
In this article, I will be showing you
- What is conversion rate optimization
- Why conversion rate optimization is important
- How to optimize your website for conversion in 7 steps.
If you will read through it till the end, I will show you how to successfully optimize your website to give you your desired result. The goal of every business is to make sales and get profit from the sales they made.
You will wonder, “what is the relationship between making sales and website conversion?”, right!
Remember, having a website is one of the most important strategies if you want to grow with digital marketing?
So, when you have a website, visitors can visit and see what you do and after seeing it, you expect them to click the call to action button, when they do, they are already going through conversion and the conversion ends when they finally make the decision to purchase.
This is where we have what is called a sales funnel. A sales funnel is the channel through which a person has to go through to become your customer. And in the sales funnel, there is something we call awareness.
One of the ways you can create awareness for your business is through having a website and how to optimize your website to ensure these visitors can be converted to leads and end up making the purchasing decision when they visit your website.
[bctt tweet=”Making a purchasing decision lies entirely in the hands of the customer, but the business owner also has a role to play so as to be convincing enough for the decision to be made.” username=”dmsinstitute”]
This is what we will be discussing in this article.
Before I go further, I will like you to see this video from one of our students who took our 90% practical digital marketing course.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ0qwex_bMA[/embedyt]
You should register for this course!
Moving forward, let’s talk about the definition of conversion rate optimization.
What is conversion optimization?
Conversion optimization is the process and actions directed at increasing the percentage of visitors to your website. It involves having an in-depth understanding of how internet users navigate through your site, the actions they take, and also what stops them from completing the goals you want to achieve- buying.
When you understand how this works, you will know what to put in place to ensure that your box is ticked each time a user visits your website.
Your goals can be in form of signing up for a service, filling a form, or purchasing a product, regardless of what your goals are, you should take note of how internet users navigate to your website.
In other words, conversion optimization is the process of understanding what drives, persuades, and stops your users, so you can leverage on this to improve and give them the best user experience and this, in turn, makes the convert and at the end improves the conversion rate of your website.
You will ask, what is conversion?
Conversion is what happens when the goal of a website is achieved and this ultimately depends on the goals of your business. What you intend to achieve with your business defines what you intend to achieve with your website as your website is a part of your digital marketing strategy.
We also have what is called conversion rate.
Conversion rate is the number of times a user completes an action, which is later divided by the number of traffic on your website. To get the traffic you have to make sure your website was well optimized.
Conversion rate optimization benefits Search engine optimization, and these benefits include;
- It improves customer insights as it helps you to have a better understanding of your target audience and you can identify the right language with which to communicate with them.
- It lets you grow without running out of resources and prospective customers, when you are able to convert more internet users to buyers, you will be able to grow your business without running out of potential customers.
- It allows you to know what works and improving on it to ensure a better user experience for your potential customers. When internet users enjoy their visit to your website, they stay longer and even share their experience with their friends and family
Why is conversion optimization important?
1. It allows you to lower the cost of customer acquisition as you can get value from the visitors and that have already.
2. It increases profit for your business.
3. It increases your traffic and beats the competition.
4. You can make decisions based on proven data and facts and not your gut. By checking for results, you can make better decisions because you have the information you need.
4. It enhances trust between the business owner and the potential customer. Before a person can share the details of their email address, credit cards, and all other personal information, they would have seen something that shows your credibility.
Your website is your virtual office, and so it should be professional, courteous, and available to answer the questions of potential customers just like a physical sales team.
Steps to carry out conversion optimization
1. Identify your target audience
A target audience is a group of persons or individuals to whom you direct a product or content to. We can also say that they’re the people you should have in mind when creating a business strategy.
They are the people you want to sell to and you can sell to them, if you don’t know them or who they are. You should identify your target audience so that your website and content can speak their language and they would understand.
When you know what they like, you can avoid what they don’t like. And, you know, when your target audience is satisfied when they see your content or your website, your conversion rate increases because you can meet their needs and so they will buy from you.
For instance, if your business provides services for professionals, and you decide to ignore the part where you identify your target audience and then you create a website and content that can only appeal to high school students, you just lost.
To be frank with you, your conversion rate will go down the drain because it is obvious that you are not prepared for what you claim to do.
Identifying your target audience will help you to reach them with the right content and you get an increase in your conversion rate.
2. Research and analyze your results
Researching helps you to expand your knowledge base, gives you the latest information, and lets you know what you are up against. the same thing applies to conversion optimization.
When you research, you can put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Take yourself through the process of getting your product, record it or take a screenshot and see from the perspective of your intending customers.
Also carry out a customer survey any way you want either through emails, calls or on the website. Hear what they have to say and their experience from using your product in their words.
You can identify what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong to improve on to get a better user experience.
Record all your findings, and the data you have collected, and you can proceed with the next steps to achieve an increase in conversion rate.
3. Create a professional website
After you must have curated results from your research, you can go ahead to implement the necessary changes on your website and if you don’t have one, you would have to create a professional website for your brand that would represent what you do and how you get it done.
A website that is appealing, engaging, and exciting has the prospect to increase your conversion. As you must have noticed when you made the research, you would have identified the gaps and loops missing in your conversion process.
A website design that is not professional enough and doesn’t provoke emotions, can make your visitors abandon your website and not proceed with the conversion process.
If you can’t design a professional website on your own, you can outsource it to someone else and that saves you time although you might have to spend more, but remember you want to put in your best so you can get the result you desire.
4. Include a short video
Regardless of the product and services that your business offers, you should include a short video demonstrating how your product works or how the services you provide will be useful to your audience.
According to Hubspot, 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video. And also, 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.
So you see that having a video on your website is one strategic step to increasing your conversion rate.
Ensure that your video is no longer than 2-3 minutes because you want to pass a message across to your audience and not everyone has the patience to sit through a long video. Keep it precise and short.
5. Relevant images
Alongside having a video on your website, you should have relevant images that make it visually appealing to see. These relevant images should be able to describe what you do and must be relevant.
Your goal is to increase the rate of conversion, use high-quality, relevant, and meaningful images where necessary on your website to capture the attention of your target audience.
Avoid using images that would send out wrong information about your brand.
6. Responsive website
Website responsiveness means that your website should be built to respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on the screen size and orientation.
It is wrong to assume that your visitors would only be desktop users or that they will only access your website on a desktop, you just shot yourself in the foot.
For instance, if you have a real estate business website, and a potential client searches for you on a desktop computer and finds you and has access to your website and listed product and services.
What happens when that user decides to use a smaller screen size like an Ipad or a mobile phone? Your website won’t be accessible and that particular visitor cannot be converted because they lost interest on the way.
So, if you want to increase your conversion rate, you should ensure that your website has mobile responsiveness.
An example of a mobile responsive website
In our 90% practical digital marketing course, we will teach you how to create a website that is mobile responsive for your business.
7. Improve the loading speed of your website
The loading time for your website should be fast because 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if the page loading takes longer than 3 seconds.
Many potential customers won’t bother to wait to see what you have to offer even if what you’re offering is what they need, well, they can’t see it so how will they know?
You lose conversion and sales if you do not take note and improve your website’s loading speed. And remember, your goal is to increase the rate of conversion and in turn increase sales.
there are several tools that you can use to measure the loading speed of your website. Tools like;
An example of a website loading speed measuring tool.
2. Pingdom
5. Etc
8. Be customer-centric
Bear in mind that your target audience is a human being like yourself, so tailor your products and services in a way that shows you are interested in them and not just the money they will spend.
People rarely care about you and your business, they are more concerned about themselves, and they want to know how your product or services can benefit them.
From the copy you write down to every other thing you create, it should focus on how they can benefit from patronizing you.
9. Include a blog
Having a blog on your website is a great way to drive traffic to your website and also increase your SEO. The more content you have on the blog, the more content the search engines can crawl through and index.
This signifies that your website is a source of information for people to access.
When more people access your website through your blog, you gate more leads that can be converted and thereby increasing your conversion rate.
With a blog included on your website, valuable articles posted are one effective way to keep visitors coming back for new insight.
10. Include testimonials on your website
People want to see what results you have been able to achieve with your products and services, they want to be assured that they can trust you with their money.
You can get your existing customers to give reviews about their experience with your product and have it on your website for visitors to see and know that you are credible and reliable.
Don’t add fake testimonials, you want visitors to know you can be relied on, don’t just pick up a name and image and create a fake testimonial.
Your potential customers may decide to verify on their own and then it would turn out that the name you used exist and they never had anything to do with your product or services.
Adding real testimonials on a website has been considered to be one of the most effective conversion optimization tips, you cannot and should not ignore it.
Tools for conversion optimization
To achieve all we have discussed so far and even beyond, some tools can be used. They include;
And many others…
Conclusion
Conversion optimization should be one of your priorities in growing a business either as a small scale business or as a large scale business, it doesn’t matter.
It is a strategy in business that should not be ignored. It helps you improve every aspect of your product, service, marketing, and sales. Any minor improvement has the potential to cause an increase in your conversion rate and of course, you get more sales.
This is why in our 90% practical digital marketing course, we teach our students how to increase the conversion rate of their website, create websites that are well optimized for conversion alongside other aspects of digital marketing.
More articles for you to read
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13 Ways To Reduce Bounce Rate If You Want High Website Conversion Rate