Ways to Increase Your Conversions
I just came across a great and very informational article about different ways to improve your site conversions. This gives you nine different things you can do to try and make more profit from the same amount of website traffic. Making more money from the same number of visitors? Who wouldn’t want to know how to do that, right?
You should think about these steps before you start spending more money to generate additional traffic—first try doing what you can to improve the traffic that you are already getting.
1. You need to have a good way of measuring what you are doing, what is working, etc . You need to know how you are performing before you are able to fix or improve something. Google Analytics is a free tool offered by Google that offers detailed statistics about visitors to a website. You can sign up for a free Google Analytics account or another no-cost or low cost tool to develop your metrics and analytics.
2. Try to create landing pages that are both campaign specific and keyword specific. If you separate related keywords into smaller ad groups, and then create a landing page for each of these ad groups, your conversions will almost definitely be higher. If your keywords and landing pages are thematically related, this will most certainly help your conversion rate.
3. Try testing different ad copy and headlines in your landing pages. This could be one of the quickest, most effective ways of showing improvements. Having compelling ad copy can increase conversions and should not be overlooked.
4. Testing your pricing is another important way to see a huge difference in conversions.
Try and test your prices in both directions—raise and lower your prices by a certain percentage and see if that makes a difference. If your goal is trying to maximize customer value, then the highest converting price may not be the best. So if you decide to lower your prices by 20% and you see your sales double or triple, your increase compensates for the price reduction. If you raise your price by 40% and only see conversions lower by 10% then you will have more than compensated for the drop. So it’s a good idea to test in both directions.
5. Measure your website load time—make sure the speed at which your website is loading is appropriate. This is often overlooked, but it is extremely critical when trying to reduce bounce rate. There are many online services that will measure you load time for you—and then from there you can reduce your load time (if needed) by removing items that are redundant, compressing images, etc.
6. Keep your sales process as clear and as straightforward as possible. The less confusing it is for the user, and the easier it is to navigate to the sale, the better. You can check your metrics and analytics and find out how visitors are navigating your site and if/when they are leaving your site. From there, delete any unnecessary steps. Try enhancing your sales copy and the call to action. Insert some testimonials to capture business. If you clearly identify the path to the sale, the less resistance visitors will display and the better chance you have for more conversions.
7. Third-party testimonials boost conversions—it has been clearly proven. If you add testimonials (they can be highlighted quotes, letter, or short blurbs) to your different landing page variations, sales pages and even shopping cart pages, you will no doubt notice an improvement in your conversion rate.
8. If you understand your customer’s experience with your website and the mind of the market, you can get a better idea of what you need to improve on in order to increase conversions. Try placing an order on your own site and go through the steps of an actual customer. Identify anything confusing or missing that would hinder a conversion. When you identify why you are not converting, then you can make any improvements that are necessary to improve your conversions.
9. Keep tracking of everything! Keep track of what changes you are making, when you are making them, how you are making them, and why you are making them. From there, you can chart your progress, review it periodically and continue to finesse so that you are getting the optimal amount of conversions.
Great list of things to keep in mind when trying to increase your number of conversions.
Try these things first—before you go and spend more money trying to generate more traffic.
