8 Actionable Website Optimization Tips for More Conversions  

Every website owner wants more conversions. This post has 8 actionable website optimization tips to help you drive more website conversions starting today.

Website Optimization Tips for More Conversions  

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So, you want more conversions on your website? Well, let’s find out what conversions mean to you and then we’ll talk about how to get more of them on your site.

In the jargon of contemporary e-commerce and web design, conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a website who are converted into customers during their visit. But beyond this broad definition, the term can have some slightly different meanings.

For most businesses, a customer is considered to be someone who purchases from their website. The most straightforward conversion rate calculation would then be the total number of website visits that result in a sale divided by the total number of visitors in a given time frame.

That’s not to say there aren’t other types of conversion you might want to measure. Many website managers also have specific metrics to measure customer retention or the percentage of visitors who add a product to their cart, return to the website again, or fill in a contact form.

No matter what kind of conversions you’re trying to optimize for, it’s important to keep an open mind and try different approaches to find what works best for your business.

Whether you have a dedicated web development team and customized CMS or use a WordPress template, these eight tips are designed to provide a set of easily implementable methods for conversion optimization that have proved their value for many websites.

1. Make Decisions Based on Data

If visitors to your website are arriving at the landing page and then closing the tab before navigating through the site, this can drastically reduce your conversion rate. Likewise, if potential customers are only browsing a single page of products yet you know that interaction with subsequent pages is likely to increase sales, this will also negatively impact conversions.

Alongside the classic metrics for clickthroughs and bounce rates, as well as cookie and tracker data that can tell you a lot about the makeup of your site’s traffic, click data is fast becoming an essential component of any analytics strategy. 

Website heatmaps that track visitors’ cursors as they explore your website can give a much more detailed picture of the average visitor experience than metadata alone. Knowing what areas of the site people are most engaged with is key. What your visitors are looking at, clicking, and lingering on tells which areas of your web design could be improved.

Personalization tools and intelligent product recommendations are other important areas where visitor data can be used to optimize your conversion rate.

2. Redesign Your Landing Page

Alongside a catchy domain name, a visually appealing landing page is one of the best ways to ensure your website makes a good initial impression. As the first thing people see when they visit a website, landing pages vitally influence people’s perceptions of a brand. This is where their interest is piqued – that is to say, it sits at the top of your optimization conversion funnel.

A data-centric approach to web design, as outlined above, will often suggest that simple is better when it comes to first impressions. If your landing page looks busy or cluttered, try using the aforementioned heatmaps to single out the elements people are ignoring. Once you have identified these, consider whether it’s really important that they’re on the first page people encounter, and if not, remove them.

While your landing page should be simple, it’s also important that it effectively channels potential customers towards the right sales pages. Your main sales page/s should therefore be no more than one click away from the landing page.

3. Focus on Search Engine Optimization

If visitors to your site arrived there because they clicked on a paid-for advert, the chances are they have at least a passing interest in the product you’re selling. But if they arrived there through their own search efforts, they’re far more likely to be interested enough to part with their money.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the strategic optimization of your website and other online content to maximize its visibility on search engine results pages. An online training platform administrator can help you develop a cohesive website strategy, refine your online marketing and technical skills, as well as learn the ins and outs of Google Analytics.

A simple way to optimize search engine results is to outsource the task to an enterprise SEO company specializing in this procedure. They will be able to consider your entire digital business model and focus on areas where you can improve your SEO.

With the help of such a company, you should develop an actionable SEO content strategy, as well as make any technical alterations to your site’s architecture to improve your chances of being found by the right web searches.

4. Perform Competitor Analysis

A sign is that your plan for identifying key search terms and implementing SEO changes is failing if those searches are still leading to a competitor’s website.

When designing your SEO content strategy, it’s important to keep the competition in mind. For example, if someone interested in professional communication platforms were to search “Glip compared to Slack”, what their search engine returned would have a massive impact on their ultimate purchase decision.

No matter what your product, if there’s a direct competitor selling something similar, it’s likely that many people will be aware of them by the time they start exploring your website. What’s more, comparing websites is an easy way to do product matching between rival brands. 

Effective competitor analysis will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. Use this information to make sure your products appear in a favorable light when the two websites are compared.

5. Test Everything Before Permanent Deployment

Just as software contract development with collaboration tools has been a huge boost to version control for software developers, web developers also now have a suite of technological solutions with which to measure the success of their changes.

Testing is the best way to know whether your website changes are having the desired effect. For years, A/B testing has been the industry standard for trying out modifications to a website. It entails showing a proportion of visitors to a site an alternate version to see whether the changes made to that version have the desired effect.

More recently, advances in statistical analysis have led to the growth of what is known as experimental design. 

The problem with traditional A/B testing is that web designers rarely want to test changes one at a time, making it difficult to know which changes are responsible for any new user behavior identified by the test. 

Using mathematical formulae that combine different variables as proxies for the complexity of the actual variables, experimental design massively and deliberately increases the amount of variance in website versions. Experimental design enables website designers to overcome some of the limitations of standard A/B testing by allowing them to project the impact of many variables by testing just a few of them. 

6. Add Live Chat Customer Support

Consumers love the ability to have their questions answered in real-time. Live chat customer support means any concerns a website visitor might have about a purchase can be responded to by a customer support agent, thus increasing the likelihood that they’ll purchase their visit.

Some websites have even opted for live video meeting tools as a customer support option, a solution that can make your website experience more user-friendly.

Live chat features should not necessarily replace traditional modes of customer support, such as inbound call center solutions, but are better thought of as a way to improve the user experience. Rather than losing potential customers because they can’t easily find answers to questions, live chat bundles important sales, marketing, and customer service functions into a single service, maximizing your conversion rate. 

7. Make Signing Up and Filling Out Easy

It’s been proven that the more fields online forms have, the less likely people are to complete them. With this in mind, ensure your sign-up processes are as streamlined as possible, asking only for essential information.

The most stripped-back sign-up forms will ask only for an email address. By removing all superfluous fields, these make it more likely that you will convince someone to sign up to your mailing list – one of the most valuable assets for your targeted marketing campaigns.

In 2021, email marketing is still one of the most useful weapons in a marketer’s arsenal. Thanks to marketing automation and third-party sign-up services, it’s also easier than ever to implement. For maximum effectiveness, work together with your web hosting service provider to ensure all marketing emails come from a recognizable domain-linked address.

Google and Facebook offer the most popular and accessible sign-up services, which reduce the hassle of registering details with a new website down to a few short clicks. 

For forms that require more in-depth details, remember to make them auto-fill-friendly. Removing as many obstacles as possible in the journey from visitor to paying customer reduces friction in the user experience and increases your conversion rate by simplifying the process of purchasing something.

8. Try Different Customer Offers

It might seem like stating the obvious to suggest that everyone loves a good deal, but what kind of offer will most appeal to customers and how best to broadcast it might not be so simple. Because every business is different, there’s no straightforward formula for getting this right, so it’s best to experiment a little.

Using A/B testing can reveal which offers the most appeal to your visitor base. Changing your introductory offer periodically can also help to attract visitors returning to the site who were not convinced by their first visit.

Image sourced from Shopify

Used appropriately, in a way that isn’t annoying, pop-ups and count-downs can increase your conversion rate by injecting some urgency into the browsing process. Gamification is a great tactic that has proven to be worthwhile for many websites. Bonus wheel style offers and “mystery” offers that the visitor has to provide an email address to receive are a fun and easy way to get people’s attention and sign them up to further marketing.

Isn’t it time you implemented these eight actionable website optimization tips to improve your conversions?