August 6th, 2018

Turn website visitors into paying customers

Does your website already turn leads into customers? If so, you are way ahead of most of your competitors. Way to go! If not, you might need to make a few minor tweaks. Converting looky-loo’s into customers doesn’t happen automatically just because they visit your site. There are some proven best practices to making conversions that you’ll want to consider before making updates to your site.

 

Unbounce Your Bounce Rate

One major consideration is making sure your site functions optimally on mobile devices. It’s hard to believe, but we still come across this occasionally. We’ve all encountered people walking down the street – even right into traffic – with their eyes glued to their cell phone screen. Is your site “sticky” enough to cause visitors to risk life and limb in that fashion? It should be.

It’s easy enough to browse your site on your phone to experience what your mobile visitors experience. Check your display. How’s it looking? Check your links to make sure they work properly. Especially those “Contact Us” and “Purchase Now” links. If you’re not pleased, your visitors won’t be either and they will move on from your site. Time to get busy and update. Don’t know where to begin? We can give you some free, no obligation advice.

 

Go Fast or Go Down

Another best practice is making sure your site loads quickly enough. The attention span of today’s Internet browsers – and by that we mean shoppers, not software – is decreasing by the minute. Check out Google’s Pagespeed Insights to see how your site performs and get some tips on improving download speed. It’s remarkably easy – just enter your URL and hit Analyze!

 

Got a Scheme?

You’ll probably also want to codify the ideal “schema” for your website. No, it’s not an illegal conspiracy. It’s knowing how you’d like your visitors to travel through your site, page by page, so you can lead them to your product info download, webinar sign-up, video link, or even straight to a purchase decision. Setting up your site to help visitors navigate where you’d most like them to go – with plenty of opportunities to engage with you along the way – can make a huge impact on your site’s success.

 

A/B Testing

This best practice can test your patience as well as your site performance. It entails, as the name implies, making two complete but separate versions of critical pages to see how minor (or sometimes major) changes affect visitors’ actions.

The reason we say it can test your patience is that it is critically important that you make only ONE difference per page, then send half your visitors to one iteration, and half to the other. After you’ve had enough visitors to make a legitimate analysis, you’ll know which version – A or B – to use going forward. This may take some time and some investment. But the payoff is huge.

Then, you can make ONE MORE change, and start the whole process over again. I would say that using this method will eventually lead you to the ultimate page design, but the truth is, you should never stop testing. But again, just one change at a time or it makes the whole test useless.

 

And Speaking of Analysis…

No doubt you’ve heard of Google Analytics. But do you use it? Do you understand how its insights can steer you toward improved conversion rates?

 

Well, maybe more than a few tweaks to optimizing your website… did I mention strategically designed UI and UX? I could go on actually. If you’re interested in making your website work hard so you don’t have to and you don’t want to figure this out on your own, our consultation is always free, and always no pressure.