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How do I improve my website conversion rate?

Written by This Side Up | Jan 22, 2020 12:45:00 AM

4 Ways to Increase your Website Conversion Rate

 

#1 THE CUSTOMER

When someone lands on your website for the first time, you effectively have 3 seconds to communicate to them.

  • 1. Can they see straight away what you’re offering? If they cannot work it out quickly (i.e 3 seconds!) and it seems a little complicated, then most people will simply leave your site.
  • 2. Is your offering hidden in the depths of jargon and long-winded paragraphs? If you’re forcing people to ‘think’ too much about what you are saying, you’ve lost them. They’ll leave and it’s unlikely they’ll be back.
  • 3. Are they going to leave because they can’t be bothered scrolling, or you’ve made it difficult to find the answer to their problem?

Here are our key tips

  • Write for people, focus content on them, be their hero and not a salesperson
  • Write for people first, not for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
  • Write like you talk and let your personality come through

This helps build trust and makes it easy to buy from you. And while your homepage normally receives the majority of visits, treat every page as if it’s the first time the customer has found you, allowing them to quickly find what they need.

Action Point: Ask a total stranger to visit your site and ask them the following:

  • 1. Is it clear what problem you are solving?
  • 2. Are the answers readily available?

If not, re-write your copy and possibly look at rearranging a few key elements on the site.

#2 SPEED

Nobody likes a slow website! Research by Google found 53% of mobile site visits leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. And more importantly, the data shows:

“While more than half of overall web traffic comes from mobile, mobile conversion rates are lower than desktop. In short, speed equals sales revenue.”

Action Point: test your speed using Google’s free Page Speed Insights tool

Another useful Google tool – Test My Site – shows the impact on revenue when you improve site speed. One of our client’s current site speed is 2.5 seconds and their goal is to reduce that to 2 seconds which could translate to a potential increase in annual revenue of almost $6,000. Worth doing? You bet!

#3 MOBILE USABILITY

Is your website mobile friendly? I really hope so because 81% of Kiwi’s own a smartphone and according to Google’s Consumer Barometer

“For many people, Internet access is smartphone-centric. Smartphones are used to come online at least as often as computers / tablets.”

How visitors interact with your site on a mobile is different from desktop. For a start, they’re using their thumb and fingers on a tiny screen and if you have “fat finger” syndrome like me, it doesn’t take long to get annoyed if you keep accidentally pressing the wrong thing!

Research by uxmatters.com shows there are around six ways users hold their phones with 75% using just their thumb to touch the screen

 

Action Point: Test how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device 

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

#4 ARE YOU ATTRACTING THE RIGHT TRAFFIC?

Perhaps I should have made this #1 because if you’re spending time and money driving the wrong people to your site then none of the above really matters.

So before you begin your website conversion journey, please do this first:

  • 1. Create a ‘persona’ that details who your customer is. it should include information on their goals, pain points and where they can be found online.
  • 2. Create a ‘buyer journey’ that outlines the types of stages a prospect goes through when purchasing your service or product. E.g. from awareness, consideration, through to the decision.

Now do an audit of any campaigns you’re running and get rid of those that are driving the wrong traffic to your site.

Blog provided by This Side Up

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