You’re getting plenty of traffic to your website, which is great, but maybe that traffic isn’t converting. What gives? There are many tactics you can try out that may help you succeed in converting larger numbers. We’ve picked some that we feel are most effective and recommend you try a combination of a few:
- Make sure your call to action is the star of your website. The design of your site needs to reflect the primary function, the primary way that you are looking for a conversion. First of all, make sure you know what that primary conversion should be. Do you want people to make a purchase? Contact you? Take a survey? If there’s any confusion for you about the goal, that confusion is likely to be reflected on your website. Come up with a hierarchy for conversions, and make sure they are reflected in the design of your site. If making a purchase is the primary conversion, make it easy to do that, but if contact is a secondary conversion, make it simple and intuitive to find your contact information as well.
- Your website needs to look professional and function well. Consider hiring a web designer and/or developer who will understand your goals and who can bring some creative approaches to your ideas. But it’s no use having a flashy website if it’s difficult to use, so make sure everything is in proportion to the goal of your website.
- Remove any obstacles that would prevent your customers from getting to the end goal as quickly as possible. For example, if you are trying to sell a product, don’t force them to make a login or to sign up for your emails, as that will be distracting and may drive away sales, even if you have an exclusive product. Make it as easy as possible to get from the beginning to the end, and offer every convenience that you yourself might expect from a business with really excellent customer service.
- Keep your website secure. If, at any point, your website is hacked, if customer data is stolen, or if someone interferes with your website’s normal activity, it can have a huge impact on your business—even after the problem is fixed. To avoid any security problems, make sure you are using a web host that is safe and secure. If you are hosting your own website, be sure you or an employee is knowledgeable and highly trained on proper protocol. No matter what kind of host and management style you choose, you should implement a website scanner that will scan your site daily for any suspicious activity and take care of any problems before they occur.
- Have answers ready for their questions. Sometimes, there’s just one simple question preventing a conversion, so make sure answers are easy to find. Consider having a FAQ page, or add a web chat window with live support. Offer an email address (and perhaps a phone number as well) exclusively for customers’ questions. Making it easy for your customers to get answers to their questions can spell the difference between a conversion and a failure.
- If possible, use video to bring your product or service to life. High-quality photos are great, but videos are better because people are visual and they like to see what they’re considering purchasing put into action. Make sure you have high-quality video editing software and make a short, but interesting video about your products.
- Have a well-written “About” page on your website. For many websites, the “About” page will be one of the most frequently used pages on the site, so it’s very important that this page provides plenty of detailed and verifiable information about your business, including a physical address as this can make your company seem much more credible and trustworthy.
- Develop your content wisely. Depending on what your call to action is, different types of content will be useful in different ways, so make sure you aren’t trying to fit a round peg into a square hole by using irrelevant content formats. For example, if you are running a craft beer operation, it would make sense for you to maintain a small blog with regular but not overly frequent updates. This can reinforce the idea that your business is local, personal, and interesting. However, if you are trying to run a B2B operation selling factory hardware, you’re probably going to get more benefit out of customer testimonials than out of a blog, so make sure you are planning and choosing your content in a logical and effective way.
- These days, it’s rare that a business can continue to grow and develop without strong, competitive web presence. But simply having a website is not enough. Make sure you are really getting a return on investment for the cost of web development and other website maintenance expenses by increasing your conversions as much as possible.
These days, it’s rare that a business can continue to grow and develop without strong, competitive web presence. But simply having a website is not enough. Make sure you are really getting a return on investment for the cost of web development and other website maintenance expenses by increasing your conversions as much as possible.