When it comes to increasing website revenue, most people think that they need to increase their website traffic. While increasing traffic seems to be a good idea, having an impressive amount of it will not guarantee that your website will make a greater profit.
What then should you do to increase your site’s income?
The answer is simple; you need to focus on your conversion rate. Your website’s conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that fulfill your desired action, such as subscribing or purchasing.
For example, the average conversion rate for an e-commerce business is around 2%. If you can improve this figure up to 4%, you will get a 100% increase in revenue.
There is no silver bullet for increasing your website’s conversion rate, but there are some tricks that can help you to boost it significantly. In this article, I will explain nine effective ways to do so.
Let’s get started!
#1. Come up with a unique value proposition (UVP)
A value proposition is a clear statement that delivers specific benefits and tells prospects why they should purchase from you and not from your competitors.
Many people try to improve their conversion rates by changing page elements, font colors and sizes, images, button shapes, and so on. However, your first step should be focusing on strengthening your value proposition. To increase your conversion rate, you need to test different UVPs and see which one is attracting the most number of clicks.
Let me share some tips for creating a clear and compelling value proposition.
- It should be clear for your visitors the moment they read it.
- It must be differentiated from your competitors’ offers.
- It should reduce the perceived risks of your offer (e.g., “Try it free for 15 days. Download now.”)
Furthermore, having a clear value proposition isn’t enough; you must communicate it effectively to get optimal results. It should be the first thing that visitors see on your home page.
#2. Build trust
There are several reasons why visitors turn away from your website before making a purchase. Zig Ziglar says,
Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.
You can’t do much about the first four reasons, but you can build trust easily by adding trust elements to your website.
Here’s the list you can follow to increase your audience’s trust easily:
- Make it easy to get in touch with you.
- Make sure that all information on your website is easy to verify and trustworthy.
- Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.
- Add customer testimonials.
- Design your site in a way that looks professional.
- Display the right trust seals.
#3. Easy conversion process
Make your website’s conversion process as easy as possible for visitors so that they can take your intended action without any hassle. If you are selling products or services, make the checkout process as simple as you can. If your website generates leads, then don’t overwhelm users with unnecessary information.
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Would you like to spend 7-8 minutes of your valuable time to fill up some forms just to get access to online software?
Just as I assumed, your answer is “No.”
Your customers might have the same feeling if you make the conversion process complicated. So your aim has to be making doing business with you as easy as it can be.
#4. Create urgency
Most of us don’t want to miss out on an opportunity because of a delay. Urgency notifications like “offer expires Friday” or “Order in the next 2 hours for delivery today” have proved to be effective in urging people to take immediate action.
Amazon.com shows the exact number of hours within which the purchase needs to be completed for next-day shipping.
However, make sure you create a proper type of urgency based on your products or services. For example, using a statement such as “3 items left in stock” for online software is not going to work because people know that these kinds of products never run out of stock.
If you can create urgency appropriately, doing so will surely help you to increase your conversion rate by prompting your customers to make a purchase.
#5. Know your competitors
Almost every product and service has its competitors. Knowing the core product features and marketing strategies of your competitors is a must for you to improve your website’s conversion rate.
Online shoppers no longer just go to a site and make a purchase. Instead, they research and compare product features and prices with those of other websites. Therefore, knowing about your competition is important.
For example, what if you have competitors who are openly comparing themselves to your services and prices and making it look like their offers are superior? If your website doesn’t have those kinds of details, then more people will go with the competing offers because that’s where they’re finding the information they are seeking.
To survive in online business, you definitely have to offer a better product than that of your competitors, and you need to clearly explain the reasons why your customers should purchase from you.
#6. Eliminate all distractions
When it comes to conversion rate optimization, the truth is that less choice equals higher conversion rates. The more options your audience has to process, the less likely they are to make a conversion decision.
Don’t overwhelm your pages with tons of outbound links, irrelevant images, and extraneous information. Doing so will make it harder for you to guide visitors through your website. If you are on a sales page, the “Buy Now” button should be the only clickable option available.
JellyTelly improved its conversion rate by 105% just by removing some distracting elements (i.e. navigation, search box, and links) from the page.
Therefore, before adding something to your webpage, seriously consider whether that element is really essential to convert visitors.
#7. Use a clear call to action (CTA)
Whether you want your audience to buy your product or sign up for your mailing list, you need to have a call to action button on your website. A perfect CTA button communicates with your audience and encourages them to take your intended action immediately.
I came across many websites with poor CTA buttons and, even worse, some of them are not using any calls to action on their websites. According to Small Business Trends, 70% of small business B2B websites lack a call to action.
In order to get a maximum amount of conversions, your CTA button must be clear. Make sure the copy of the button is compelling and that its color contrasts with the background color.
#8. Minimize risk
Because you are always working with your product, you’re very familiar with how to use it and how it can solve your audience’s problems. But how would your audience members know that your product can fulfill their needs? This uncertainty is one of the main reasons why people are scared to shop online.
The best way to remove risk is to have a money-back guarantee. The industry standard is a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you should definitely not offer any less time.
You can also minimize risk with a 30-day free trial. With a free trial, your customers can get the chance to use your product before spending any money and get a clear picture of whether or not your product can solve their problems.
#9. Do A/B testing
A/B testing (or split testing) is the process where you create different versions of your page with different features to find out which ones lead to higher conversion rates.
You can run A/B testing with almost anything on your web page, such as CTA buttons (their color, text and placement), headlines and messaging, page layout and design, and new media elements (picture size, videos, etc.).
You won’t know anything about what works in your website and what doesn’t unless you test it. Remember, A/B testing isn’t a one-time event; it’s a continuous process to find out the best combination of features.
Final thoughts
By working through the techniques on the above list, you will go a long way toward improving your website’s conversion rate.
This list is not exhaustive. If you have tried any other methods that have led to positive results, feel free to share in the comments.
To learn more about optimizing your site, you can read through the detailed guide to conversion rate optimization. Thanks for reading, and please share this article if you have found it helpful.
Jabed Hasan
Latest posts by Jabed Hasan (see all)
- 9 Proven Ways to Boost Your Website’s Conversion Rate - October 6, 2016
Thanks for the blog….really helpful in improving the conversion rate of site thanks for letting us know which mistake swe can make and how to improve them simply and easily….and also to make customer happy…different offers and coupons and schemes should be there to increase their interest
Thanks for sharing your nine proven conversion strategies Jabed!
They are extremely practical an straight forward.
And they definitely can and do apply across the board, for
practically any type of business and or service.
And thanks for sharing your eye opening stats!
Mark would love you to read ..Asset Management:How Savvy Entrepreneurs Cash In On Overlooked Opportunities!Part Three
Great post with nice analogy and very much informative for all affiliate marketers as well as bloggers, as you mentioned in the post, gaining trust of our visitors is where it all lies to convert a traffic in to conversion or sales. And also timing as well as products selection of desired niche also plays a major role in converting the traffic in to sales.Thanks for the post, keep writing great stuff.
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Hi there,
i found the article to be quite useful. i think we can add a point that before planning all of this it is absolutely necessary that we do this for the right persona. Building persona is complex yet effective since everybody is trying all the methods mentioned above. it will be effective only if it reaches the right ears.
very nice awesome post. It is very informative and it’s really interesting to increase our conversation rate. Thanks for sharing this blog.
I just launched a website for my local plumbing business. I have a lot to learn but these tips are very helpful.
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Hi,
you give very helpful tips on conversation. I will keep this tips. Thank you for sharing your knowledge !:)
A/B Testing is not a good way to find out how website will get more conversions. It is just a wrong thinking that changing the color, text, buttons can make a website get more traffic. 99% visitors do not see all these things they just see how a website help them.
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If a site has sufficient traffic, A/B testing most definitely will allow them to make changes that will increase conversions. There are thousands of test results published on line to prove this. Split testing does not generate more traffic and smaller sites have a tougher time getting statistically significant results from it.
Any site owner who can buy more traffic using something like Google AdWords, Facebook ads, or LinkedIn ads can definitely improve their conversions through modifying buttons, colors, text, images, etc. Look at case studies on sites like Inbound.org, GrowthHackers.com, and MarketingExperiments.com to see proof of this.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..How to Optimize Your Site for Conversions
Hih – of course A/B testing is soooo helpful – you can not change your conversion rate for 20 %, but it will increase conversions for sure.
We just had red buttons for such a long time, but when we changed it to blue – it was just significant shift – i can tell you that.
Tomy
Have a nice day
Using those advise i boost up my traffic about 25%.
But i don’t understand about A/B testing?
Do you have any post related A/B testing? If so please kindly give me the link.
Hello,
Conversion optimization does not increase traffic; it generates more income from the traffic you already have. I will explain with A/B testing. The A/B refers to two variations of the same page. So you take an existing page and change one thing on that page. Let’s say you swap out the featured image.
Then you send half your traffic to the old page and half to the new page and measure which page generates more leads, sales, or subcriptions. By testing each element on a page (title, images, text) you can gradually improve the page to get the maximum conversions possible.
The more traffic you have or can buy, the faster this can be done. Many small businesses and blogs don’t bother with it because they can’t afford to buy sufficient traffic to get statistically significant results in a timely manner.
But anyone can over time. There are platforms built specifically for split testing that allow you to easily create the variations and they measure the results for you. Anyone can split test their own email marketing and many major email providers have split testing either built in or available as an upgrade.
Simply search for “Split testing case studies” or anything similar to see results. Here is one example: 8 A/B split testing case studies you cannot afford to miss
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Trust is a main consideration for change, yet we need to acquire that trust particularly with new clients. Incorporate client surveys or tributes on the off chance that we have them clients constantly trust marks progressively when they offer bunches of outsider audits.
Hey Jabed,
Our conversion rate is a measure of the number of potential customers that go on to buy. In the context of a website, it is usually the percentage of visitors that make a purchase. Many websites concentrate solely on increasing the number of visitors they have, when often they have fairly simple problems with their site that, have a huge effect on their conversion rate and improve their site’s bottom line at minimal expense.
Trust is a major factor for conversion, but we have to earn that trust especially with new users. Include user reviews or testimonials if we have them users almost invariably trust brands more when they offer lots of third-party reviews. If we have any indications of authority, such as affiliations with major industry influencers, publishers, or brands, show them off with badges, and consider offering a guarantee on our product to make ourself even more trustworthy.
The best marketing campaign isn’t centered around building traffic, nor is it centered around increasing a conversion rate. It’s a careful balancing act of increasing traffic and increasing conversion rates. A great conversion rate without traffic and great traffic without conversions are equally inefficient for our brand. Thanks for your support.
With best wishes,
Amar kumar
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Hi Anup,
Thanks for your valuable opinion.
I strongly agree with your statement that many websites solely concentrate on increasing the traffic. Where as, to get a handsome ROI people should focus more on their conversion rate. As we know a little tweak can drastically improve their conversion rate. They don’t even need to invest that much on it. Having the good amount of is important but the more important thing is getting the best from the existing traffic.
Also, Social proof is an essential tool to improve the conversion rates. Here is an article on how to use social proof for maximum conversion- http://www.mountnow.com/social-proof-to-boost-conversions/
Jabed Hasan would love you to read ..How To Compete With Big Companies And Win
“Create urgency” is a really good idea. Although people/prospects don’t want to feel pushed to buy something, they will consider to take action if they know that the time is limited. It is just an psychological factor.
I think the biggest challenge is to gain prospect’s trust. It is a long process. I agree with all techniques you mentioned in the article and want to add that establishing clear rules and policy is also important, especially when it comes to e-commerce business.
Hello Jabed,
The ways you have suggested to improve the conversion rate of a website is quite interesting. Thanks for this wonderful post.
Building trust is definitely the most important factor to work on in order to increase website conversion rate on whatever object a company might have, love this.
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Awesome post. It is very informative and it is really interesting to increase our conversation rate. Thanks for sharing, it will be useful to everyone.
Hey Jabed,
To get more clients, you should always think about building the trust. Provide them what they want. The offers can be helpful to get more exposure.
Letting them about your services which are unique and your competitors can’t. It’s a great idea.
Thanks for sharing with us.
~Ravi
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Thanks Ravi for reading this article.
Yes you are absolutely. Building trust is the key to convert the visitors into customers. Also, you need to offer something unique which your competitors can’t copy if you want to surpass your competitors.
Thanks again for pointing the key elements.
Jabed Hasan would love you to read ..How To Optimize Your Customer Acquisition Funnel The Right Way
Fantastic post. Website conversion rate is a herculean task for anybody, if they miss one of the single point that you’ve mentioned. My suggestion is use “Phone number or Contact details” in the website boldly so that they can easily contact.
Real Customer testimonials can boost your conversion largely.
Hi Abrar,
I agree with you that providing a prominent phone number makes your visitors happy. I do know of businesses that hide their phone number of have it nowhere on there site. They do this for one of two reasons:
1) They want to force conversions digitally so they can better measure them.
2) They don’t want to invest time in interacting with their customers or potential customers.
These are both good ways to annoy some percentage of your buyers and reduce repeat business. A small business that is willing to interact with their potential buyers will create a loyal following who do not only buy once. Refusing to interact makes you a commodity seller and brings you the people who care more about price than anything else.
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