For many businesses today, driving traffic to their websites means gaining more potential leads and increasing their sales. While this still works at present, there are more tactical digital marketing approaches that businesses can leverage for effective sales lead generation.
As compared to simply aiming to drive traffic, which can get costly, getting more out of existing traffic can help small businesses springboard toward sustainable growth. This is where Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) comes in.
What is conversion rate?
First, let’s define conversion. This is the point at which a visitor of your website performs a desired action. It has two broad categories: macro-conversion, which includes buying a product or service, and micro-conversion, which can be in the form of creating an account, signing up for an email newsletter, or adding a product to the shopping cart.
A conversion rate, meanwhile, is calculated by dividing the number of website visitors who complete some specific actions (conversions) by the total number of visitors and then multiplying the quotient by 100 to get the percentage.
Per Wordstream, an average conversion rate per website across all industries is 2.35 percent. But should you want to break into the top 10, your landing page should have a whopping conversion rate of 11.45 percent. Achieving this seems like a herculean task, right?
To increase your conversion rate, you must tap into the power of conversion rate optimization (CRO).
What is CRO?
Conversion rate optimization or CRO is the process of converting a higher percentage of your website’s visitors into potential customers by making your website more appealing through redesigning your website, using web analytics, and harnessing other marketing techniques to boost the count of visitors who are interested in buying your products or services. The aim is to raise your conversion rate by persuading your site visitors to take specific actions or conversions.
CRO allows your business to generate higher profits and increase your website traffic while keeping your customers your top-of-mind priority.
Read more: SEO and PPC – Two Sides to the Same Coin
Ways to improve your website’s CRO
The question now is how you can optimize your conversion rate. Let’s explore the proven ways on how you can improve your CRO.
1. Focus on your value proposition
To stand out, put your value proposition at the heart of everything your business does. This value proposition is defined as the value a business promises to deliver to customers if they choose to buy its product or services. This is the added benefit you’ll provide to keep your customers coming back. Value proposition also answers the common consumer question, “what’s in it for me?”
To know your value proposition, it helps to identify your customers’ pain points, connect your products’ benefits to them, and explain why you can better solve them.
As you optimize your website, make sure your value proposition is well-defined and well-communicated.
2. Tailor your website’s language to your audience
Your content is instrumental to increasing your conversion rate. Therefore, they must be relevant, and that they resonate well with your audience. Of course, nobody wants to read content that doesn’t speak to them.
To ensure that your content works for them, you must know your audience first. Try coming up with “buyer personas” to know them and find out the right approach to meet their needs. Once you have the information, you can start generating engaging pieces of content on your site and utilize highly relevant keywords, which you can find through tools like Google Analytics.
The tone and the formality of your language should match your demographics. Remember, speak in a way they will understand and are more likely to respond to.
3. Optimize Your CTA, landing page, and forms
You need to bolster your website’s call to action (CTA) to optimize your conversion rate. Since this feature dictates the action that a customer will take after going through your website, your CTA should be clear, clickable, and concise.
The goal is to convince your customer to navigate your website more and make a purchase. Thus, you must strike a balance between what they need to see and what you want to highlight more on your landing page. Start using bright colors, tailored language, and engaging buttons to draw more attention. Page speed is also essential in CRO, so make sure that your webpage just takes one to three seconds to load to keep your customers engaged.
Your form, whether for the checkout process or email address collection, must also be simplified, straightforward, and easy to use.
Overall, you can optimize your conversion funnel by providing the most seamless website navigation experience for your customers.
4. Add reviews and testimonials
To establish credibility and build trust, it also helps to add organic reviews and testimonials from your past customers. This strategy allows you to also improve your CRO.
People’s purchasing decisions are usually heavily based on others’ purchase experience and feedback. So, if they read good reviews and testimonials, they can be compelled to purchase from your business. Make sure your reviews are honest, well-structured, and organized enough for better reading. You can also add statistics and highlight important words from these reviews or testimonials to make them eye-catching.
5. Utilize Chatbots and live chat features
Customers love fast service. They appreciate it if a business can provide them with the details they need or help them out in an instant.
One way to do this is to employ chatbots. This way, you address your users’ concerns or questions in a way where they do not have to wait long or do more. Chatbots, however, must be supported by a live chat feature since customers lose their interest when they get unrelated automated replies. This live chat feature can make your customer service more personalized and effective. This then can boost your conversion rates.
In a nutshell
Making a buzz in the market can be an overwhelming challenge for small businesses, so it helps to utilize effective task management software to keep your priorities aligned. Ultimately, implementing effective CRO strategies for your website can make your business stand out, and generate more leads and sales.
