Converting Your Website Visitors into Paying Clients
The 2 main purpose of a website is to make sure it brings in visitors and convince these visitors to convert to paid customers. Your website needs to move the relationship forward.
Traffic acquisition is only half the marketing equation. In addition to bringing visitors to your website, you need to keep them there. Ultimately your aim should be to transform them from interested prospects into customers. Conversion optimisation is an integral part of any SEO campaign. It helps to ensure that the traffic coming into your website will result in more engagement and purchases. So let’s see what goes into converting those visitors to customers online.
In this post, we’ll look at:
What is Conversion?
Conversion is the term that defines when a visitor completes a pre-determined and desired action on your website that lead to a defined conclusion. This might be signing up to your newsletter, sharing a blog post to social media, or buying a product or service.
Types of Conversions in Online Marketing
There are numerous ways to determine your website conversion. A conversion from prospect to buyer isn’t necessarily the only conversion you should be concerned about. There are few more conversion types that should peak your interest:
- Conversion of a visitor to subscriber.
- A subscriber to a customer.
- A visitor to a prospect when they fill in your contact form and make the first contact.
- Conversion of a user who is looking for a phone number on the website and calls up.
What Is Conversion Rate? And How Do I Calculate It?
The percentage of people that complete your desired action is your conversion rate. Take the number of times users completes a goal, and divide that number by the number of visitors to your site.
Example: You get 1000 visitors to your site. Out of which 20 of them take the desired action (become a subscriber or contact you). So your conversion rate would be 2%. That’s 20/1000 multiplied by 100.
What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation?
As a site owner, you ideally want to get as many conversions as possible, maximising your conversion rate. Ultimately, the optimisation of a website is about receiving as much qualified traffic as possible. Conversion rate optimisation is the process of encouraging more visitors to complete an action when they visit your website. It involves designing or modifying web pages to influence your visitors in a way that maximises the chance of visitors converting before they leave the site.
Micro vs Macro Conversions
Every time a user visits your website, it creates an opportunity for a conversion. 81% of the conversions occur only after a visitor gets to know your website or your business. This can take a number of interactions. A research suggests a user would need to interact with your site on an average of 7 times before converting.
Most user journeys involve completing a number of smaller conversions (known as micro-conversions) before committing to a bigger macro-conversion.
Micro-conversions include:
- Signing up for your newsletter
- Adding a product to their shopping cart
- Creating a user account
Macro-conversions might include:
- Making a purchase on your website
- Requesting a quote for your services
- Contacting you for further information about your product or services
In conversion rate optimisation, it is paramount to understand how users behave on your website and if there are factors that could be preventing them from converting.
Why Conversion Rate Optimisation?
Conversion rate optimisation gives you valuable insight into what motivates your target audience so that you can adjust your efforts to better meet their needs.
Just imagine, tons of visitors walking into a clothing store, but they all leave without making a purchase. The shop owner might be getting a lot of traffic but won’t be making any profit. The same way, excellent traffic to a website isn’t really worth much if it’s not bringing in conversions.
A study by Moz found, even though you work hard and might spend a considerable budget to get visitors to your website, 96% of those visitors leave without making a conversion.
Few Reasons Behind Low Conversion Rates
First let’s discuss what a good conversion rate would be. Any conversion rate above 10% is considered to be great, however very little websites manage to reach the double-digits. A recent Google Ads analysis show, an average good conversion rate for a website is closer to between 2% and 3%. However, if your conversion rates seem extremely low, it might be worth checking the 4 elements below to determine what could be holding your visitors back.
No CTA
A call to action (CTA) is something that motivates visitors to convert. It tells the, where and how to do so. If a call to action is generic, unclear, too demanding or even overpowering compared to the rest of the web page, your site visitors will typically ignore it.
Additionally, adding too many CTA options on a page will confuse the site visitors. They won’t be able to tell the difference between a generic content and a CTA if they are overcrowded.
Lack of Value Proposition
If you can’t explain to your visitors how your product or service will add value, they won’t see the point in taking any action.
Ineffective Contents
The texts or contents on the web page might be lacking something. Surely you have heard the saying “content is king”. Quality content that speaks to your target audience is key to any engagements or conversion.
Intrusive Pop-Ups & Advertising
Pop-up advertisements can interrupt the flow of user experience. Your visitors might feel restricted making it difficult for them to access parts of the web page. If pop-ups are poorly used and become too disruptive, a visitor is more likely to hit that little back button and leave your site without converting. Additionally, Pop-ups are great for converting visitors if used sensibly. Well placed and properly timed pop-ups can do wonders for your conversion.
Of course, these are just a few factors. Every site is unique, and the way it responds to the needs of the target audience will determine the percentage of the audience that converts.
Tactics for Improving Conversions
Here are a few effective steps you can take to optimise the conversion rate of your website.
1. Craft Quality Content
The best-looking website with amazing animation and the smoothest user journey won’t lead to conversion if you are not speaking your visitor’s language. A website’s content is arguably the most important factor influencing conversion rates. Include your calls to action and your unique value proposition using contents. Inform your visitors every step of the way as you guide them towards the action you want them to take. Make sure your page-texts are all factually correct and free of errors. Cite your sources where needed, and write with authority about the topics you understand well. First and foremost, be sure to write with your target audience in mind first, with search engines a close second.
2. Put Your Value Proposition Front and Center
A unique value proposition (UVP or USP) should clearly state how a visitor will benefit from your products or services. It should also clearly describe what sets you apart from others offering same or similar products or services. A successful SEO campaign plan should always directly be backed up by your UVP or USP. When drafting your UVP, try answering the following questions:
- What problems are you trying to solve?
- How does your offering provide value to your costumers?
- Why should your users choose you over your competitors?
Once you define your UVP, make sure you don’t keep it to yourself. Communicate these to your users using any medium possible. This usually is be a very strong motivation for any visitor to convert.
You have just 4 seconds to capture your site visitors attention before they decide whether or stay or leave. Make sure your UVP is clear to them in this timeframe.
3. Include Testimonials and Case Studies
A great way to improve trust and confidence with your visitors is by using persuasive contents with relevant stats to back it up. Try including feedback and reviews from customers or showcase a few case studies that prove the value of your product or services.
4. Focus On Landing Pages
Landing pages like the home page, product/services page are generally the high-conversion pages. These pages are where majority of the purchases, sign-ups take place. Your site’s home page is often where you get to make your first impression on visitors, and encourage them to explore your website further.
Make sure all your high conversion pages are well-designed. They should be easy to navigate. Ensure that all contents on all landing pages is optimised to encourage your visitors to take action.
5. Beef up Your Blog
A company blog allows you to position yourself as a knowledgeable, authorities sources in your industry. It provides you with endless opportunities to convert visitors. Whether your blog’s aim is to entertain or educate your readers, a well-written blog with regular updates will keep your readers coming back.
6. Improve Your CTAs
Pay close attention in making sure the calls to action on your website is optimised to get you conversions. Rather than disturbing the user journey and disrupting the user experience, a call to action should feel like an obvious way forward for the user. It should be simple, stand out clearly and to-the point. Make sure your CTA is specific and not too generic.
7. Make Smarter Use of Pop-Ups
If you do need to add a pop up for advertising or requesting subscription make sure they are placed in a way that is not obstructive and wont interfere with potential conversions. Try and use pop-ups on intent instead of slapping them in front of your user every time they land on your site.
8. Optimise Your Site Speed
We all know the frustrating feeling when we have to wait an eternity for the page to load. Use a site speed tool like Google PageSpeed and GTMatrix to determine if your website is loading quickly enough. Majority of the time there are ways to to improve your load time. A little tweak can go a long way when it comes to improving your site speed.
A mere 1-second delay in page load time can decrease your conversion rate by up to 7%.
9. Optimise Your Site for Mobile
More users than ever before are now using mobile devices to browse and shop. Responsive design is an absolute necessity or you risk loosing a large chunk of your prospective audience. A website that is not optimised for mobile use will result in negative user experience and discourage users from spending time on your site.
Mobile e-commerce sales are projected to make up 63.5% of total e-commerce sales in 2019.
10. Use Simple Navigation
The design of navigation on a website should include structural placements of menus, as well as in-page links and buttons you include in the page. The navigation of a website should lead your visitors through the site in a logical way that helps them find what they are looking for, bringing them closer to conversion.
11. Consider Short Conversion Funnel
“Conversion funnel” is a term used to describe the series of steps your website visitors will take towards taking your desired action. The process starts with awareness, followed by interest, which leads to decision and ultimately an action, or in other words conversion. It’s apparent that this funnel should be kept short and simple.
12. Consider Your Colours, Graphics and Visual Elements
From good quality images, to graphics and colours, every detail of your visual elements play a vital role in achieving higher conversion. Play close attention to the colours on your site. Colour is a language on its own and speaks to your visitors on an emotional level.
13. Include Chat Support
Your website doesn’t just get visitors during office hours. You need to be sure that these visitors would have a way to get a quick answer to some basic questions they might have about a product or service. Chatbots like Intercom and Drift have become more and more sophisticated. These little snippets can add 24/7 live chat app to your landing pages can help to give your visitors additional support that will lead to them being more confident in making a purchase.
14. Experiment With Different Marketing Channels
Try not to be too narrow when you pursue your marketing channels. If not already, try a new social media platform, PPC advertising, sponsored content, or any of the countless other channels out there. You don’t have to stick with them forever, and one of them might be home to a target audience gold mine.
See examples of how effective optimised conversation rates can be.
Conversion is a Long-Term Commitment
Conversion optimisation and SEO are complementary forces designed to build an audience and guide their behaviour. There isn’t any one universal formula for converting your website visitors. You may need to keep testing and tweaking multiple variants indefinitely. There is always room for improvement. Conversion optimisation might give you quick results, but ultimately it’s a long-term game, as you constantly look for attract new visitors to your site and drive them towards conversion. Conversion Rate Optimisation must form a solid part of your business growth toolkit, especially when you’re at the stage of rapid customer acquisition.
At Underline, we provide a full range of SEO services, including search optimisation strategies will bring targeted traffic to your site, and thoughtful web design tactics will help to convert those visitors into paying customers.
