As a website owner, one of the most important aspects of your website is its conversion rate. Your online marketing revolves around getting your website visitors to do what you want them to do. This might be to buy your product, sign up for a newsletter, register for a webinar, or fill out a contact form among other things. A successful conversion is when your visitor does indeed take the action that you intended when they landed on your site.
The ability to convert your visitors into customers is one of the main reasons that you have built and maintained your website. According to invespcro.com, the conversion rate varies widely from industry to industry. For example, the conversion rates for online shoppers is around 3%. Some industries, such as business services and electronics, have a much higher conversion rate.
Whatever your current conversion rate, increasing it is a driving force in growing your business. Let’s take a look at 5 factors that may affect the rate of conversions that your website can generate.
1. Website Design
The design of your website can have a major impact on its ability to successfully convert visitors. It is your presentation to prospective customers and has to convince them that your offering is worth their time and perhaps their money as well.
The use of highlighted keywords, bullet lists, and lowering your word count can help maintain interest in your site. Ensuring that your text is free of grammatical errors and misspellings gives more credibility to your site and can boost your conversion rate.
Another way to streamline your website design is through the use of WordPress gallery plugins. Rather than “reinventing the wheel”, you can obtain great results by incorporating a plugin that has been tested and optimized. Displaying the visual content of your site in a professional and user-friendly manner is a great way to increase conversions.
2. Use of Video
Video engages users at a very high rate. The addition of video content to your website can have a dramatic effect on your visitor’s desire to fully explore your offering. According to Kissmetrics, customers are 144% more likely to buy a product after seeing a video demonstration as opposed to those products with no videos attached.
In addition to product demonstrations, video can be used for many other purposes to assist in your website conversion rate. Online tutorials and testimonials can be instrumental in generating interest in your product or service. New technologies now allow embedded hotspots that make certain portions of a video clickable, allowing for quick linking to online stores or other web pages. Creative use of video is a tool you should take advantage of when searching for increased website conversions.
3. Page Load Speed
A website that loads slowly is a sure-fire killer when it comes to conversion rates. Many users will abandon a site if it takes longer than a few seconds to load. This is not just the initial landing page, but each page that is visited. In a successful conversion, a potential customer will visit several pages on a website.
If your site is slow, you are presenting opportunities for slow page loads to ruin a possible conversion.
There are a number of methods that you can employ to increase the rate at which your web pages load. Some of them are:
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) – This is a collection of web servers spread out to different geographic locations. Requests for web pages are fulfilled by the server that will deliver the page in the least time.
- Optimize your code – Your CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and PHP all offer ways to optimize your code, either by upgrading to a newer version of the language or by minifying the code by reducing its spacing and punctuation.
- Compressing Images – Images are a big part of the average website and compressing your images and keeping them to a reasonable size can have a great impact on your page load speed. If you are optimizing for mobile, it is a good idea to us images that are around 300 pixels or use responsive design to resize images to best fit the device they are being displayed on.
4. Highlight Your Call to Action (CTA)
Your call to action should be the main focus of your website. Having your visitor respond to it in the manner you desire is pretty much the definition of a conversion. You may have multiple calls to action spread across various pages of your site. Each page should concentrate on convincing your user to respond to one specific CTA. Usually, this will be by clicking a designated button.
Some steps that you can take to make your CTA stand out to your users are:
- Emphasize the CTA in the design process and avoid having it hidden or obscured with unnecessary information.
- Make the CTA more visible by using a different color, size, or shape from any other buttons on the page.
- State the purpose of the CTA in the button’s text. Label your button “Learn about miniature dogs” rather than a generic “Learn More”.
5. Usability versus Complexity
You want your site to enable the user to get the full flavor of the product or service that you are offering. At the same time, you need to avoid the tendency toward complexity when using the site. This can be especially true if your website serves as a tool that requires interaction with the user. A complex user interface can scare off a user no matter how great your product may be. Your user needs to be able to access all the areas of your site that might convince them to join or make a purchase without having to resort to technical support.
Visitors should be able to navigate easily around your website and avail themselves of the features that it contains. This theory harkens back to the issue of website designs, and the two go hand-in-hand in creating a site that appeals to your user and convinces them of the value of your offering.
Conclusion
These factors can impact your website conversion rate in either a negative or positive way based on how you use them. By reducing complexity, increasing user-friendliness, and streamlining your calls to action, you can increase your conversion rate and grow your business.Was this article helpful and informative? Leave us a comment with your thoughts in the section below.