Increasing your website’s conversion rate
Attracting traffic to your website is one part of SEO but then having that traffic convert to sales and email subscribers can be a whole other ball game.
There are a lot of moving parts to this and I hope this podcast episode and blog post help give you some clarity.
Listen to the podcast version of this episode here:
So starting with the basics, what is a conversion rate?
Depending on what you want visitors to do on your website, you can measure the percentage of visitors to actually complete that action.
So, let’s say you want visitors to sign up for your email newsletter. Then you can count how many of your visitors who land on that page actually sign up.
For example:
100 visitors total visitors to the page
5 email newsletter sign-ups
Conversion rate: 5/100 = 0.05% conversion rate
You can do this measurement for sales, opt-ins and anything else you are wanting visitors to do on your website.
Luckily, we have a tool like Google Analytics to help us measure this automatically. More resources on how to set up conversion rate and goals in Google Analytics here:
Setting up goals (video tutorial): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYXe27hMlUU
Tracking your opt-ins with goals: https://digitalbloomiq.com/blogs/tracking-your-opt-ins-with-goals
Remember to keep it simple when it comes to conversions and goals - you don’t have to track every single conversion, just the most important ones.
3 Tips to increase conversion rate on your website
Tip #1: Are you making it easy for people to buy?
This seems like an obvious question but so many times I come across websites that are basically hiding the buy button. Having someone sign up or download something should take them more than 1 to 2 clicks to get to from your home page.
You also want to make sure the button is really visible - bright colours and clear copy like “Buy here” or “Download the worksheet”. Anything else might be a bit cryptic. Again, if you are having to make your visitors work to give you money or their email address, it’s not going to work for you.
When reviewing your Call to action, always ask yourself “how can I make this even more obvious”? It should be dumb obvious.
If you aren’t sure which version of your buttons and CTAs (call to actions) is best, feel free to test or even survey your audience. Again, you don’t need to overcomplicate it but sometimes getting some feedback from outside perspective can be helpful.
Tip #2: Is the search intent aligned?
There is a whole other podcast episode (episode 197) on Search intent but basically, you want to make sure that the person is immediately identifying with what they are looking for when they land on your website.
Taking it a step further, how is the conversion that can happen on that page, whether it be an opt-in or a sales ask, really align with that need?
Having curated CTAs (call to action) that aligns with the search intent can change how visitors convert on that page.
And even if you have a generic opt-in or sales proposition, how can you write some specific copy around it to make it more relevant to the visitor?
Tip #3: Keep it simple - don’t give them too many conversion options
There are a lot of different schools of thought when it comes to what to include at the bottom of your blog post but at the end of the day, overwhelming your visitors with too many options is not going to work for you.
Consider what is most relevant and helpful to link to and ask them to do next.
This is something else you can test and play around with over time and see if the conversion rate changes.
I’d love to know - are you measuring your conversion right now? What is something you’d like to work on specifically after going through some of these ideas? Share them in the comments below.