It is common knowledge among all business owners that a well-designed website is crucial to success in the online marketplace. But a successful website does more than just attract visitors – it converts them, too, into customers! Creating a website that converts is difficult, especially if you don’t have the experience so you may want to hire a web development agency like Blue Whale Media to do it for you. They have offices in many locations like Liverpool, Manchester and London.
A lot of business websites currently online miss a lot of conversion opportunities. Too often they are too concerned with showing off fancy graphic design elements, or were hastily cobbled together in a rush to get the business off the ground, and then never returned to and polished up.
If you have a website that is not really generating as much income as you would like, there are probably some areas you need to troubleshoot in order to up the conversion rate and turn visitors into customers. In this article we will highlight and discuss three key points you need to look at. Read on to find out!
Just like anything created, a good start and a solid base is going to help down the line. There are a few things you can do to ensure your website gets started on the right foot.
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An attractive design
While it is not the be all and end all of a successful site, appearance will have a massive impact on how visitors behave when they are browsing. You want your site to appear professional, organised, and easy to navigate. Besides, if a potential customer doesn’t like the look of your site, there’s a chance they will click off it almost instantly. Studies have shown that first impressions are 94% design and appearance related!
A functioning site
This might sound obvious, but it is absolutely crucial to keep your website running smoothly and quickly all the time! Technical issues and poor loading times not only look unprofessional, but if the error lies in the wrong part of the website, you may actually be losing customers through accessibility issues. Imagine losing a boatload of customers because the ‘buy now’ button on your site wasn’t working!
It is relatively easy to stay on top of this – provided you know what you’re doing or employ someone who does. Make sure your site is up to date in terms of software, plugins, themes, etc.; use a CDN (content delivery network) to ensure your site speeds don’t drop, and invest in some good security software to keep hackers and thieves out of the code!
Direct your visitors to the right place
To add to the first point, is it vital to remember that your website is there to do one thing: convert. If your website is not turning visitors into customers, then it is failing. To remedy this, you should employ something known as conversion-centred design in the layout of your site. This essentially means that no matter where on the website a visitor may be, they are always able to convert themselves into a customer with ease. Here are some simple tips to help that happen.
- Focus on microtransactions
- Encourage visitors to sign up for email lists.
- Offer a free trial/sample of your service or product.
- Provide a contact form for potential customers to fill out.
- Use CTAs (calls to action)
The correct use of a call to action can make an enormous difference to your bottom line! If you don’t know, a call to action is a piece of text specifically designed to encourage visitors to act (buy something, subscribe to emails, etc.), and should be placed strategically around your website, as well as in all the usual places such as:
- At the top of each page
- In the sidebar
- In the footer
- As a popup
Optimise your website for search engines
These days, SEO (search engine optimisation) is intrinsic to online success. Aside from keywords and metadata, there are more simple, obvious things that will change how your site is ranked, and a lot of them are customer focused. For example:
- Make sure your site is mobile friendly
- Mobile searches surpass desktop way back in 2015! Google has a mobile website tester – use it! If your results are negative, remedy it asap!
- Tweak on-page SEO
- Take the time to learn how even the smaller details of on-page can influence visitor behaviour – you will be surprised! Even minor tweaks have been shown to increase sales by 20% over a one month period!
Even just tackling these three things will make a huge difference to your conversion rate, and there is more to look at after these basic steps have been taken. For now, focus on the fundamentals, and watch your traffic increase, your conversion rate soar, and your sales hit the roof!