Congratulations, you have created the world’s greatest new product or service. You have hired a world-class sales team, found product market fit, worked hard to obtain paying customers, and are distributing content via email and social to the ideal audience.
There is just one thing. You haven’t optimized your website’s sales conversion rate.
Houston, we have a problem. The website is your modern storefront. You can have the greatest of everything else with your business, but you will never generate the revenue you should if your store is:
- Difficult to find.
- Outdated.
- Hard to navigate.
- Missing key information.
- A poor experience.
Conversion optimization is vital to your business. Done properly, it will yield amazing results in brand exposure, inbound lead generation, and revenue growth.
10 Conversion Optimization Tips to Increase Your Sales
If your website needs an overhaul, here are the 10 places to start. These surefire tips will raise the ROI of your digital marketing and sales efforts, guaranteed.
Tip 1. Improve Personalization of the Landing Page
Website optimization starts with personalization. Your website should not be one-size-fits-all. In fact, according to Monetate, 94% of marketers agree that online personalization is critical to their business.
Personalize the content and headlines you show website visitors based on the distinguishing characteristics that matter to them as buyers, such as geography, device and browser, search terms, demographics, and so forth.
Website personalization may sound complex, but it can be as simple as:
- Personalizing client logos based on industry.
- Recommending new content based on previously read content and search terms.
- Showing reviews from buyers in the same city.
Platforms like Evergage and Dynamic Yield make the personalization process easier than one might think.
Tip 2. Add Credibility and Social Proof to the Website
Social proof is one of the most powerful conversion mechanisms to deploy on your website. Used properly, social proof is a great way to establish credibility, build trust with prospective buyers, and create FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) among your website visitors. In fact, according to Nielsen, 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer, and 70% of people will trust a recommendation from someone they don’t even know.
The formula is simple: show how many people are happy with your product or service. Use the right types of social proof to get buyers over the hump once they are on your website. Provide client testimonials, ratings and reviews, social media praise, industry endorsements, flashy client logos, glowing press coverage, and so forth wherever possible.
Tip 3. Highlight the Value Proposition
Your value proposition is the most important copy on your website – and it should get top billing. Value propositions use clear, concise language to tell prospects why they should do business with you and what benefits they will get in return..
The main headlines on your homepage and key landing pages are the perfect locales to share your value proposition. What is there to gain from purchasing your offering? Emphasize the answer with copy, formatting and website placement that is impossible to miss.
Tip 4. Create a Sense of Urgency
Adding a timeframe to a proposition can induce people to make decisions faster. Offering expiring pricing discounts, limited product availability, or exclusive deals creates a sense of urgency that compels the buyer to act.
In this day and age of comparison shopping, creating a sense of urgency on your website can place you at a distinct advantage over your competition. You can preclude buyers from shopping around or stalling on a buying decision with strategically-placed notices of product discounts and special deals.
Tip 5. Be Concise with the Messaging
Brand messaging on your website should be clear and concise. Headlines should be effective and straight to the point. Moreover, they should create a visceral impact with your buyer. Communicate a simple, powerful message that resonates with the short attention span of today’s buyers.
Remember: website messaging is all about perfecting the elevator pitch. You need to convince visitors that further research on your product or service is worth their time and effort. Clear, concise messaging is scientifically proven to register with buyers on an emotional level. Avoid deep dives and blocks of text.
Tip 6. Improve Website Speed
Improving site speed will do wonders for website conversion on multiple fronts. Foremost, you will reap major search engine optimization (SEO) rewards from Google and other search engines, driving significantly more visitors to your website and giving you more opportunities to convert potential buyers.
Secondly, the buyers that do visit your website will stay longer and have an overall more positive impression of your product or service. Studies show that even a one second delay in page load time will decrease conversion rate by 7%. Challenging the patience of your website visitors with slow load times is self destructive and easy to fix.
Tip 7. Optimize Above the Fold
Your above the fold (ATF) area is typically the first thing buyers see when they visit your website. It’s your most prime piece of internet real estate – and therefore the most important part of your website to optimize for conversion rate.
Best practices for above the fold optimization include:
- Button with main call to action. Ex. “Buy Now” or “Request a Demo.”
- Concise headline that compels action.
- Expiring deal announcements that add urgency.
- Compelling visuals and background that underscore (but don’t distract from) value.
For help optimizing your above the fold, we recommend using tools like Unbounce, Optimizely, and Google Optimize to A/B test ATF presentation and gradually improve conversion results over time.
Tip 8. Keep One Conversion Goal per Page
Giving people too many options creates information overload and buyer paralysis – two things that can destroy your website’s conversion rate optimization. Limit yourself to one conversion goal per page and focus your CTAs appropriately.
Remember: Goal conversions don’t have to be purchase decisions or demo requests. They can include eBook downloads, webinar registrations, blog subscriptions, newsletter opt-ins, and so forth.
Tip 9. Add a Live Chat Feature to the Website
A study by VWO found that adding live chat on their signup form page raised form conversion rate by a staggering 31%. The subject of the study, Ez Texting, ran a controlled experiment A/B testing two versions of the landing page: one with a live chat widget and one without it.
The live chat experiment worked by giving visitors the ability to chat with a company representative about any lingering doubts or questions they had prior to signing up. Adding live chat to your website enables company representatives to proactively help website visitors overcome fear, uncertainty, or doubt that may have been preventing them from converting. There is a great thorough article by Landbot showcasing case studies of how brands use automated chatbots to increase conversion and nurture leads.
Tip 10. Remove Distractions to Reduce Cart Abandonments
This second article by VWO offers an amazing brief on the value of removing extraneous CTAs at checkout. In an A/B test run over 6 weeks, nameOn found that going from 9 CTAs to 2 CTAs at checkout raised visitor conversion rate by 11.4%.
The takeaway: once you get somebody to the tip of conversion, optimize your site for laser-like focus on completing checkout and converting into a buyer.
Final Takeaways on Website Conversion Optimization for Sales
Whichever of these 10 tips you choose to implement, it’s pivotal that you approach the process of conversion optimization scientifically.
To that effect, we recommend applying continuous experimentation, testing, and data-driven optimization to your go-to-market strategy both immediately and as a long-term best practice. Doing so will let you reap the full rewards of your sales and marketing efforts, acquire and close more potential buyers, and amplify your overall revenue numbers/
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This article, “10 Conversion Optimization Tips to Increase Your Sales” was first published on Small Business Trends