There are various techniques available to assist with generating website traffic such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) advertising and social media marketing (SMM) as well as additional website promoting techniques to help with driving traffic to your website.
What happens though once you start building all that traffic and getting visitors to your website? Are those leads turning into customers?
While it's great to get a healthy amount of visitors coming to your website, if you aren't turning that traffic into sales or at least generating leads, then your business isn't going to grow anytime soon.
Improving your conversion rate is important because you can increase your sales without necessarily having to increase the number of people visiting your site. With just a few steps, you can optimize your website to get visitors to take the action you'd like which will allow you to convert those leads into loyal and paying customers. As your traffic grows, your earnings will multiply; double your conversion rate and then double your traffic and your earnings should increase about four-fold.
If you can't figure out how to convert all that traffic into paying customers, you aren't alone. Many individuals and companies struggle with methods to improve their online conversion rates. Below are a couple of strategies that you should consider implementing to increase your website's conversion rates.
Content
The problem a lot of business owners have is that the content they create doesn't resonate with their target audience. When creating content for a company blog or any landing page, it's important to think about your market - what are they looking for? What makes your offering better than the competition? What are these potential customer's needs?
Call-To-Action
When people come to your website, the action that you want them to take should be obvious. Don't make them think too much... just tell them what action to take once they come to your website. A call to action may be as simple as "Sign up now" or "Click for a free quote." Just make sure to spell it out clearly and watch your visitors convert into customers.
The Importance of Color
Color and other visual cues can have a major effect on converting visitors into sales. Color has a very powerful psychological affect on the brain, and yet the color that people choose when designing their website typically seems to be an afterthought. Colors can be used to illicit emotional responses from your website visitors and if you choose the right color scheme, you can possibly see double-digit increases in your conversion rate.
A/B Testing
The use of this technique allows you to test the effectiveness of offers, ads, and landing pages to improve conversion percentages. Basically, you create two different concepts, concept A and concept B. You make sure that everything is the same except for one element - change the size or color of your sign-up button, change the font, etc.
Once the concepts are live, you can then collect data on the success of each. You then analyze the results to figure out which concept performed better and which should be used going forward.
By doing A/B tests, you'll be able to figure out which elements work and which don't, allowing you to ahead of your competition and increase your conversion rates since you'll constantly be improving your landing pages.
Speed
For every second that there's a delay in page response, there is a 7% decrease in conversion rate. Speed is such an important factor when it comes to conversions that large companies such as Amazon, AOL and others constantly look at ways to improve it. As you can see from the infographic from Strangeloop, a decrease in time for pageload led to an increase in conversions.
Sense of Urgency
By using things like countdown clocks or other time sensitive methods that create urgency you can incentive your visitors to convert into paid customers. An example would be to add text to a sales page that indicates that the offer is only valid for the first 25 customers, after which the price will jump up.
There are multiple ways of increasing your conversions and getting your visitors to become customers. Think about using some of the methods above, but don't be afraid to also think outside of the box and get creative.