Any website owner or company should be improving their website over time, but what ways can a website be improved and what aspects of a website are important to look at periodically in order to better capitalize on your website’s traffic? Most companies don’t spend nearly enough time looking at how well their website converts visitors into sales. However in the last couple of years larger companies have been forced to invest money and resources into out-converting their competitors due to the rising cost of generating traffic (primarily PPC search) in order to take advantage of all of the search in their vertical, which can be a staggering amount in some verticals. The more companies vying for search traffic, the higher the cost and therefore that necessitates the need to improve conversion rates. Of course there are companies spending money on other types of traffic like: display advertising, Facebook advertising, media buys, newsletter placements, and performance-based marketing, so the importance of converting as well possible is imperative to growing traffic overall and capitalizing on those advertising expenditures. The best you convert, the more you can spend to generate traffic and sales, it’s a simple concept really.
1. Conversion Tools – Over the years conversion rate tools that facilitate what’s known as “multi-variate” testing and A/B testing have been developed to help improve website conversion rates. Companies specializing in this service cropped up to help merchants and advertisers improve their conversions, usually for a percentage of the increased revenue. However, the effectiveness of using 3rd-party “conversion optimization” experts depends squarely on their effectiveness and there’s never a guarantee their suggestions will work well. In the last couple of years the Google Website Optimizer Tool has really gained traction and has show excellent results with companies and their landing pages. A new tool called Optimizely was released by former Google engineers which addresses and perfects the short-comings of Google’s tool. Optimizely allows anyone to work on and improve their website’s conversion rates by simply dropping some javascript into the page they are working on. Then, live “experiments” can be run which allows for inserting variations of important page elements to see which work best and it in which combination. Using this type of tool is a must to improving overall conversion rates.
2. Good Design – using conversion tools is all well and good and definitely a must, but your site absolutely needs great design concepts to impress your visitors into purchasing. Over the years, what looks good on the web hasn’t really changed much. It definitely depends on the type of site you run and the theme, but generally speaking, a “clean”, professional looking site is advisable. This usually means a white backgrounds, minimalistic page elements, and life-like graphics. Nothing kills your conversion rate like a cluttered site with lack of direction. “Calls-to-action” like Buy Now, or Start Here are usually in place to direct visitors into an action you desire from them. Pleasing looking graphics and a good color scheme are also important to your conversion rates. Doing a competitive analysis of your top competitors is a must to see what other companies are trying. Of course, you have to have a good designer that can create the look and feel that will be effective and the graphics that can be rotated into your site optimization experiments.
3. Trust and Security – one of the most crucial elements to achieving a good website conversion rate is conveying trust and security of your website with visitors. I really like the BBB online logo and also whatever SSL certificate logo you use should be fine. Some others that are commonly used are Truste, Verisign, and HackerSafe. Also, having a good Privacy Policy page can convey your company’s stance on sharing personal information of your customers or lead data. So establishing a good amount of trust and security with your visitors is a must, otherwise they won’t feel comfortable using their credit card on your website.
4. Behavioral Retargeting – this is a relatively new process that allows websites to show their banners to site visitors that don’t purchase from the site or complete the desired action when they initially visit the site. You are able to show your banner ads around the Internet through various “ad networks” that control a lot of the ad inventory on major websites. Google Adwords recently rolled out their own retargeting banners to make Google PPC advertising more effective. What’s nice about behavioral retargeting is that you can show the products in your banner ads that the visitor was checking out on your site, which increases to relevance of your ads and increases the likelihood an action back to your site will be inspired. Some companies providing behavioral retargeting are Fetchback, Adroll, and Advertise.com. In my opinion this is a vital part of your overall online marketing mix and should be taken advantage of.
5. Re-marketing – one of the most neglected methods of increasing your website’s conversions is remarketing to your database, list, or abandoned traffic. Smart companies offer visitors newsletter sign-ups, free information in exchange for email address, pop-overs/unders, and other clever ways to build up a large database. Then, email messages can be sent to your databases depending on what list it is and whether the visitor has taken your desired action yet or not. Also, when people begin filling out your shopping cart check-out page or lead form you can auto-capture that information while they are filling it out, so if they abandon the page you can still call or email them and offer a special promotion. Having a good drip email system or just a good strategy for sending email messages to visitors and newsletter sign-ups is a must for increasing your overall conversion rate.
These are some great ways you can work on and improve your website’s conversion rate. All companies should be focusing on these processes on a monthly basis if not dedicate someone full-time to improving conversion rates on-site. I even think it’s important enough to create a position in your company that focuses sole on this task, i.e. Director of Conversion Rates or something like that. I hope this has been helpful and please let me know if you have questions at all about how to effective increase your conversion rates!
