It is expensive and challenging work to attract traffic to a client’s website. Fortunately, there are a bunch of ways to spend that money and take on that challenge. You can run a well-executed monthly SEO campaign, a sometimes expensive but effective PPC campaign or even just send out a weekly email to your client’s database to get the traffic numbers up.
Easy enough and plenty of options. However, converting that traffic into paying customers for your client by getting them to take action isn’t always so easy. In fact, ask any digital marketer you know and near the top of their list of most annoying problems will be a high bounce rate on their client’s website.
The silver dagger and garlic clove of low conversions on a website is the practice of Conversion Rate Optimisation.
Conversion rate optimisation is a simple concept. In basic terms, it is optimising, or improving the performance of your client’s website by using user feedback, research and analytics to better convince web traffic to take a specific action. The action could be to put a product in a cart, to click on free download, to subscribe to a weekly newsletter or to book a time for a consultation, for example.
The intention here is to make the most out of the existing web traffic, basically tying up your lead generation efforts with a crisp and pretty lead conversion bow. Here are some tips on how:
Site Speed is King
Perhaps the most effective and efficient way to instantly improve one of your client’s conversion rates is to have the speed of the site tested and improved. It goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: “slow sites send searchers seeking somewhere else”. Visitors will not stick around to wait for your client’s hi-res images of their showroom to load or the track that they insist plays on the homepage of their site to buffer and stream.
A/B Testing
A/B testing is another simple concept to understand. It involves conducting an experiment where you publish two variations of something (the same page, mailer, blog or advertisement), but with different content, coloured backgrounds, test headlines, subject lines, or fonts. You can gauge which version got more clicks and try to differentiate why one page was more successful than the other.
CTA
Calls to action are direct instructions for website visitors to follow. They can be “call us today”, “email for a quote”, “book now” or even “learn more.” A call to action is less likely to be successful if it is at the bottom of the page. What are the chances that your entire page will be read? Take your chances and move the CTA further up the page, so that even if half of the clicks the site receives are hesitant leads, there is still the possibility of nurturing them to a conversion.
Avoid Stock Photos
There is nothing worse than arriving on a website that is crammed full of familiar stock photos. They are easily recognisable, with a high chance of your client’s competition using the same picture as you are. A stock photo tells the site visitors that you aren’t interested in putting effort into finding better quality, more decent graphics. Try to be original and use the opportunity to post images that uniquely tell the story of your client’s brand, company, staff and ethos.
When trying to optimise your conversion rates and convert traffic into interested, paying customers, the best methods to use are analytics, research and user feedback. Post explicit content and simplify your client’s message, run A/B tests and get rid of tacky stock photos. Be the brand you envision.
If you need some help and want to see what a difference CRO can make to one of your client’s websites, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and request a free CRO audit for the site.
Related Tag: White Label CRO Reseller
