You’ve got a website and you’re driving SEO traffic to it, but does it even convert the visitors that land on it? It’s important to pay attention to how people are interacting with the web design of your site and make changes to help them buy, contact and interact longer. If you’re not familiar with the art of ‘Conversion Rate Optimization’ here are some basics to get you going – and help you – help more visitors turn into customers.
- Create lower friction by including helper text next to your contact form, explaining what they should expect after they contact you.
- Add two or three ‘badges’ for industry-related organizations or things like Authorize.net for eCommerce stores or Better Business Bureau for service-based companies.
- Add testimonials throughout the site, even on inner pages and even include photos with them or at least some indication of the fact that they are real people.
- HUMANIZE your copy. Strip out any ‘corporate-ese’ and add some down to earth banter, of course sharing in a matter of fact way what benefits they’ll receive from working with you or buying your product.
- Add a big visual, imagination-stoking photography that showcases people doing similar things that they would do working with you or interacting with your product.
- Add a full-width call to action section above the footer for all of the inner pages on the website. Don’t be afraid to include imagery, but give space around the headline and the button so that people know what the next step is on each inner page once they get to the bottom.
- Minimize the number of your contact form fields to the bare minimum. It’s not worth scaring off potential clients to get their phone number if you only need their e-mail or vice versa.
- Use the crossed out old price trick, or use a countdown timer to indicate when a sales deal is over to help people feel some urgency and to have an old price to compare the new one too.
- Take the biggest call to action and use an outlined button or contrasting color background button on the right of the navigation. Not only does this make it more prominent if someone’s looking for, but it also reminds them what the primary thing the site is for and gets them thinking in that direction.
- Address objections, and add guarantees or something small free like a brief consultation to increase the leads coming in. If there are common problems, people have with your industry answer their concerns – and give people no reason to object, by simply making the contact form submission low commitment.
Enjoy getting more conversions and seeing more money from your website!
Tim Brown is a web designer and SEO Specialist who runs a small agency Tim B Design – and loves helping small to mid-size businesses with their website design and SEO.