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5 Quick Tips to Help Improve Your Website's Conversion Rate

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of active business owners in the US plummeted by 22% in just the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic (Feb-April 2020). With sales being affected so drastically, it’s crucial for businesses to find more ways to improve their sales.

Your website’s conversion rate is a crucial metric that measures the percentage of visitors taking action. Each action directly affects your sales performance and bottom line. Let’s take a look at five quick ways to help boost this metric.

A conversion either results in immediate revenue or helps your visitors advance to the next stage in your conversion funnel, allowing them to convert later.

Whether a conversion for you means a download of your latest eBook, a purchase, or a sign-up to your email list, here are five steps to include in your next A/B testing (also known as split testing – comparing two variants to determine which performs better) to help improve your conversion rate.

1. Remove Clutter

In this context, clutter refers to non-essential content, images and other elements that don’t lend themselves to a positive user experience. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to clearing clutter across your website, but answering these three questions when assessing a specific page is a step in the right direction:

• What is the goal of this page?
• Do the elements on the page serve a clear purpose and accurately represent what am I offering to my prospects?
• Is there anything I can leave out?

Try to limit repetitive text. Overselling the visitor can hinder conversion rates and bloat the page with unnecessary content. Leave room for plenty of white space, it can do wonders for readability. It will help each important element stand out and add to a more positive experience.

If you need help, try hiring a professional. A website design company can be a great resource to designing web pages that are clutter-free and ready to market.

2. Make Navigation Easy

When guiding prospects to take action, intuitive navigation plays a key role. Elements such as the menu should allow for easy navigation from one page to another, help visitors figure out where they are on the website and where they ought to go next in order to fulfill a goal.

For example, let’s say you’re a real estate agent and have unique content for both buyers and sellers. To make it easy for the visitor you may want to add a buyer section in the navigation and a separate section for sellers. Structuring your navigation by the type of visitor is one way to simplify the process for visitors.

Once you have carefully considered your objectives, designing all the essential elements with intuitive navigation in mind should come naturally.

Your top-level menu links should be kept simple and restricted to no more than 5-6 links. Any further groupings should be considered in the sub-categories. If you’re having a difficult time grouping your content, try looking at similar websites online for comparison or speak to your web designer.

3. Focus on Quality Calls to Action

A “call to action”, or a CTA, is a suggestion made to the reader to take an action. Sample call to actions can include a link to buy a product, contact the business, or visit another page. They are an important tool to improve website conversion rates and can help reduce the time a visitor takes to convert into a lead or customer.

Having several CTAs on your page does create more opportunities for conversion, however placing them side-by-side might also stir confusion. For example, putting “Buy now” and “Learn more” links close together can render visitors unable to make a decision and ultimately only derail their journey.

To make sure you have quality CTAs, define the primary goal for your page. What one action should visitors take when they are there? This should help you identify and remove the non-essential CTAs and focus on carefully crafted and strategically placed links effectively guiding visitors along the intended conversion funnel.

If you are using a professional website design company, make sure to review this with your designer to provide for proper placement of your call-to-actions.

4. Put Products and Services on Display

One thing that rings true for both brick-and-mortar and online businesses is that, when all is said and done, most customers will make their final decision based largely on the quality of the products and services. Since customers can’t physically inspect your offerings online, the next best way to establish a level of trust and comfort is through high-quality product images and written content.

When showcasing the best in your offerings, try to explore a variety of multimedia tools. Static images are great for showcasing your products in multiple angles, and videos can offer a more dynamic and immersive experience to prospects. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, try to think what they may want to see in order to help them decide if the product or service is right for them.

Remember to keep image and video file sizes to a minimum in order to maintain good page load times. It’s often a common mistake by website owners, and their website may not have the technology built-in to resize the images automatically. Try to keep images under 500KB if you can and use video streaming solutions to stream the video rather than host them on your server.

5. Add Social Proof

Give visitors access to positive news, customer testimonials, case studies and other elements that show authentic sentiments from those who have benefited from your offerings. Awards and recognition, as well as logos of organizations you have collaborated with (with proper consents to utilize them), can also go a long way in convincing prospects to explore your website further. As a trust signal, social proof from satisfied customers can be incredibly persuasive and add to a more pleasant experience overall.

When brainstorming for ways to make your website more effective, keep in mind that not all design improvements need to be drastic and far-reaching. In fact, if applied continually and strategically, small tweaks and improvements can generate the most significant conversion gains in the long run.

When in doubt, simplify the process by using a professional website design company. Starting right from the ground up can help save you thousands in the long run. At AT&T Website Solutions, our professionals can help you make a great website. One that not only looks great, but functions great. Learn more about our website solutions by contacting us today!