15 Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Driving traffic to your website costs money. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving traffic to your website with ads, SEO, or organic content — it all requires an investment. To make the most of your investment, you need as many of those visitors as possible to convert. Below, we’ve rounded up a list of 15 ways to increase your conversion rate. Some of them require only a few minutes and some will require more thought and time, but all will have an impact. Let’s dig in. 

What is Conversion Rate?

Your website’s conversion rate is the total number of visitors that achieve the goal of your website, i.e. take the desired action. A high conversion rate is indicative of good web design and marketing. A low conversion rate means that your website and marketing need a bit of optimizing. A good conversion rate depends on your industry and vertical, but here are the average conversion rates for ecommerce verticals.

Have A Goal

Speaking of achieving goals, you need to know what the goal of your website is. You can only evaluate something against a goal. Your conversion rate measures how effective your website is at achieving a specific goal. If you don’t know what the goal is, you can’t measure it.

A goal of your website could be a form fill or sign up, a purchase, clicking on something, downloading something, or ordering.

All of those are measurable things. 

Set a goal, make sure it’s measurable, and then let’s get started.

Test it 

A/B testing is the name of the game when it comes to increasing your conversion rate. You won’t know whether one thing is better than the other unless you test it.

As an example, you can build two different home pages or landing pages and use A/B testing software to split traffic to the two pages. You can test headlines, calls to action, colors, layout, images, etc.

We are all about data here at RAEK, because data takes the guesswork out of decisions. It provides hard facts about what works and what doesn’t work. Continually A/B test your website to see what’s working, what isn’t working anymore, and what you can improve on. 

Quick Things You Can Do Today to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Here are a few things you can do right now to instantly help you collect more emails and thus covert more website visitors.

Add a popup 

Make sure you have a way for people to get updates from your company if they want them. If you don’t have them already, add email form fills in the header and footer of your website and an exit intent pop-up to your website. The pop-up should have the goal of collecting email addresses. You can usually accomplish this by offering a discount, a free education download, or something else of value. 

Remove unnecessary form fields

While we’re on the subject of forms and pop-ups, remember to keep the information you’re requesting to a minimum. Asking for too much information decreases conversions (the only exception to this rule appears to be financial websites) so think about what you really need from the customer and only ask for that. This is usually an email address. However, this is something you can A/B test to find out what works for your customers and website.

If you really need more information, ask for it later. You can send an email with a short survey asking customers what products and categories they are interested in. Progressive forms are also an option which ask website visitors for more information after they submit the first field or the next time they visit your website. 

Whatever you decide to do, make sure the initial ask is small. It will make it easier for customers to say yes and will increase conversions.

Add Live Chat

When you are shopping in a brick and mortar store, you are able to ask questions about products right then and there. This is unfortunately missing from the online shopping experience. If you don’t have a way to ask questions about your products on your website, visitors will leave your site to find the question elsewhere, and you risk them not finding their way back to your store. 44% of shoppers think that having live chat to answer questions in real time is the most valuable thing a store can offer. 

Not only do shoppers find it valuable, people who use live chat spend 60% more per purchase than people who don’t.

Add live chat to your website and have someone available to answer questions during business hours at the very least.  Adding a live chat feature to your website will typically increase conversion by about 20%.

Collect First Party Data

First-party data allows you to truly know who your customer is and to create target ads and marketing specifically for those customers. When you are talking to the right person, with the right message, at the right time, your conversion rate is going to increase significantly. 

First-party data is the information you collect directly from your interactions with customers. It includes contact information, website clicks, purchases, form fills, customer service calls etc. You can collect and organize this data on your own or by using a tool, like RAEK, that automatically, collects, organizes, and allows you to activate your data.

Heavy Hitters That Will Have the Most Impact on Your Conversion Rate

This section includes things that may take a bit more time to do but they will have the highest impact on your conversion rate in the long run. Don’t skip them

First, A Few Things You Should Clean Up to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Make Sure Your Value Proposition is Clear

The reason someone should buy from you, and not your competitors, is your value proposition. It is the most important conversion factor. Getting it right will have the bigger impact on your conversion rate than anything else you do. 

How do you get it right?

First, you need to know exactly who you are speaking to and what is important to them. Take the time to create customer personas. Know their language and what their pain points are. 

If you only had one sentence to tell someone why they should buy from you over a competitor, what would you say?

A good value proposition must be differentiated from your competitors and provide the same value as a competitor except for one key factor. Your secret sauce. The reason they should buy from you over someone else. 

You also have to communicate it effectively. If you can’t communicate your value proposition, it won’t matter how good it is. Rework and refine it until it’s short, to the point, and instantly communicates your company’s value proposition.

Increase Trust to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Trust matters. No one will buy something from a sketchy website or a company they don’t know and feel they can trust. 

How do you build trust?

Show that you are a real company

List a physical address for your company, show a picture of your offices, show your involvement in your local community through memberships in your local organizations, chambers, and clubs.

Show the people behind your company

Have an about page with profiles for each of your company’s key people. Have pictures of employees at work, at events, and out in the community. People don’t buy from companies, people buy from people. Having real people on your site builds trust. 

Be an expert

Show the expertise of the people that work there and the knowledge base you have through blogs, articles, and by highlighting credentials of your employees. Link to credible websites and facts in your blogs to show you’ve done your homework and readers can trust what you say. 

Keep your website updated

Refresh your content regularly and post new content continuously. Your website shouldn’t look like an abandoned company. If your blog articles aren’t recent, and you haven’t posted to your social accounts in months, people will wonder if you’re still in business.

Contact Us

Make it ridiculously easy to contact someone at your company. Provide a phone number and have a contact form that you answer promptly. Knowing that questions will be answered promptly builds trust.

Fix Errors

How do you feel about websites that have spelling errors, multiple dead links, or pages that won’t load. Probably not the best. If someone can’t take the time to proofread their website copy, the way they present themselves to the world, how much time are website visitors going to think you’ll take for them. Errors hurt conversion rates. They may seem small, but they plant seeds of doubt. 

Be Careful with Promotions

Flashing specials, too many pop-ups, slide ins, and wheel spins can hurt your credibility. Too many promotional elements can come off as scammy. A/B test what works and keep promotions to a minimum.

Your Website Should Look Professional

Did you pay your nephew $500 to design your website or watched a few YouTube videos and took a go at building it yourself? Your website needs to look professional and polished. If it doesn’t people won’t trust it. The increase in conversion rate you’ll receive from having a professional looking website will far outweigh the cost of paying to have the website built.

Things You Should Add to Increase Your Conversion Rate

Add Social Proof

Social proof sells, adds value, adds trust, and makes it easier for customers to say yes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a B2C company or a B2B company, social proof works. If you’re a B2C company, your site should have customer reviews and show you responding to reviews that are less than optimal. If you’re a B2B company, you should highlight case studies and make them easy to find. People trust reviews and case studies as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family. Happy customers and success stories increase conversion rates.

Address Objections

If you’ve spoken to your customers or people that use alternative products to yours, you know what their objections are to your product. Don’t pretend prospects don’t have objections or worry about highlighting the negative. Your customers are already doing it. Your job is to address those objections up front, on your website, to make the decision easier for purchasers. 

B2C example: If someone with sensitive skin is shopping for skincare online, they would wonder whether a product was good for sensitive skin or not. If it is, say so and make them feel comfortable about buying the products. If it isn’t, say so and suggest one of your products that is good for sensitive skin.

B2B example: If you’re selling a software subscription, people might wonder whether they will get stuck in a contract, or if it takes a long time to set up, or if they need an employee to manage it. Address these questions and objections up front. If they do need an employee to run the software, show how the product will increase revenue or decrease the need for resources in other areas of the business.

Set up automated emails

Whether you sell directly to consumers or businesses you should have automated email flows set up.  

A B2B sales funnel should take people from what the customer wants, to learn more about X and how it can solve their problem, to what you want — a sale. Sales funnels give you the opportunity to build a relationship, increase trust, and prove your value. Provide value before you ask for the sale.

In the B2C context, emails increase sales exponentially. Set up the following automations to increase conversions: A welcome series, abandon cart emails, browse abandonment emails, happy birthday emails, etc. Emails triggered by user behavior preform better than campaigns and email blasts. While the set-up can be time-consuming, they run on their own and make you money while you sleep.

Add Incentive. Increase Urgency.

Sometimes increasing conversion can be as simple as offering a discount or creating a little FOMO. Offer a discount for email sign-ups. Put a time limit on the coupon code to create urgency to complete their purchase. Low stock notifications also increase sales, no one wants to miss out on a product they love. But it must be authentic! If all the products on your site are low in stock, they aren’t going to believe you and you damage trust. No one likes to feel manipulated, don’t do it. 

Things to remove to increase your conversion rate

Remove Risk

If a customer has never ordered from you before, they are likely concerned about the risk of losing money. What if the product doesn’t meet their expectations? Offer free trials, money-back guarantees, friendly return policies, and product warranties. Removing risk makes it easy to say yes by alleviating their fears of losing money. 

Remove Friction – make it easy

Have you ever gotten to the check-out and been asked to create an account, and verify your email, or any other step that stands in the way of you being able to make your purchase? Don’t kid yourself, people can buy your product or a close alternative elsewhere. The more steps they have to take between adding an item to their cart and being able to buy the item, the less likely they are to convert. Remove friction (unnecessary steps) from the checkout process. The easier it is to buy, the more you will sell.

Remove distractions

Your website should have a singular, clear call to action. If you’re asking people to do multiple things (buy now, sign up here, download), they are going to get distracted and likely not convert. Think about how people interact with your website and the primary action you want them to take. Keeping those things in mind, create a clear path through your website and remove any distractions standing in the way of them taking that action. 

We hope this article gave you a few ideas about how to increase the conversion rate on your website. Want more? Here are a few related articles. 

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Guide to Browse Abandonment Emails that Convert