This is a guest post from our friends at EYStudios.
How much money do you want to make? That is the question that many business owners ask themselves when they are deciding what to do with their website. If the answer is “a lot,” then you should be focusing on conversions and conversion rate optimization strategies. Many businesses spend time trying to increase traffic to their website and fail to improve conversion rates once they get there. This is a huge but common mistake. In this post, we’re covering ten ways that will help increase conversion rates and generate more revenue for your ecommerce business!
Make sure your website loads quickly
The faster your site loads, the less likely website visitors (aks potential customers) are going to abandon it before completing their desired action (like making a purchase).
When you are running a business, it is easy to forget about technology and the website building process because you have so much work on your plate already! Many webmasters underestimate what goes into creating an effective ecommerce website that performs well under load (traffic sources). If your site takes too long to load or keeps timing out, conversions will suffer.
Update your website content regularly
If your website is still using old blog posts, an outdated landing page, or original photos, you should consider doing a major overhaul. Make sure that new unique visitors can easily find products and contact information while maintaining the latest content updates on blogs or landing pages for previous visitors.
Blog posts and new website content can improve conversion rates in the following ways:
- Helps establish you as a thought leader in the ecommerce industry and position yourself as an authority that people trust when it comes time for them to buy something.
- Allows visitors who may not have been ready to purchase right away the opportunity to return at a later date when they are ready to buy.
- Makes it easy for new customers who have never heard of your business before to become familiar with you and what you do simply by reading through some of your past content.
Improve your site navigation
Your website is the cornerstone to high conversion rates for your ecommerce store. Make your website navigation intuitive and easy to use. If you have important customer information or conversion opportunities on multiple pages, make sure it is easy for visitors to find their way around the site and align that navigation to the customer journey.
The most important thing to remember about improving your site navigation is that you have to do it based on the user engagement and conversion rates that your business wants.
If your goal is to sell products, then make sure that visitors can easily find a product and purchase it as soon as possible.
Similarly, if you want more leads for website conversions later down the road (e.g., email subscribers), place key conversion information, like contact information or an opt-in form somewhere that can easily be found.
If you are really ambitious and want to increase conversion rates in both areas (products sales AND website conversions), consider adding interactive elements on product pages so there is something for everyone!
Optimize your website for mobile devices
In today’s world, many people are using their smartphones to shop online. Conversion data shows that 53.9% of all online purchases are done via mobile and that number is only going to continue to go up. So if your online store is not mobile-friendly, you could lose out on over half of your potential business from those mobile users!
Making your site mobile-friendly can include a variety of changes and marketing strategies. You may need to update your design or even rebuild a new site from scratch using responsive web design principles. It might also be as simple as resizing your images.
Review your traffic source data to see where your customers are coming from on each page. From there, you can decide which pages to focus on first for maximum conversions via mobile devices.
Utilize calls to action (CTAs)
Make sure that your CTAs are noticeable and easily clickable. You want visitors to be able to easily find it, but you also don’t want them thinking they are about to leave the website if they see a big bright red button! Work your CTAs into your overall conversion rate optimization strategy and create a seamless experience for your website visitors.
You don’t need to overwhelm a user with pop-ups to have a successful CTA strategy. Create CTA buttons that are noticeable but not annoying. Then, you can run A/B tests to determine if one version performs significantly higher and yields more conversions. Finding that perfect balance is the goal.
Improve your search engine optimization (SEO)
Having a strong SEO marketing strategy is key to ensuring new customers find your website. Make sure that your online store is showing up in the search engine results by improving SEO. This will increase conversion rates because more people can find you through Google and other search engines!
Some common SEO mistakes that businesses make that can result in a lower overall conversion rate:
- Not using specific keywords on your page titles, headlines, or meta descriptions
- Repeating the same keywords over and over again – also known as “keyword stuffing”
- Not having enough internal links to other pages on your website
There are many different SEO strategies that you can implement and it’s important to analyze this part of your site carefully to ensure Google isn’t penalizing you for anything. This is another reason to make your site mobile-friendly because Google has started to prioritize this in search results.
Utilize social media to amplify conversion rates
Social media is a great tool for conversions because it allows you to engage with customers in a way that was previously impossible. The personal touch you can provide to customers on social media creates new acquisition channels.
Social media can even help you with conversions by generating new sales leads if the online community likes your social media posts and shares them with their friends! The potential amplification from a viral post on social media makes focusing your energy on this strategy paramount to increasing your conversion rates. This means that conversions will start to happen organically which is a great way to improve conversions over time. Additionally, online reviews are much easier to collect and respond to, which makes conversions and referral traffic much more likely.
Test, test, and test some more
Make sure that you are constantly A/B testing your conversion optimization to get the best results for your business.
A/B testing is a way to see how different tactics affect conversions on your website. You can run an experiment with two versions of the same page – for example, one version has blue text and another has red text. If you have visitors go through each variation in order to complete their desired action (like making a purchase), then you will be able to compare results at the end.
By using A/B testing, you can see what is more effective for increasing your average conversion rates and utilize that conversion data to improve your website. This will lead to higher conversion rates over time because you are constantly improving.
Track your clicks
Make sure to use tracking codes (utm parameters) on your website. If conversions are not showing up in Google Analytics, you may need to make adjustments to ensure you’re getting a clear picture of your conversion rates.
Tracking codes are a great way to see where conversions are coming from and what pages they go through before converting. This will help you improve conversions by seeing which areas of your website or marketing strategy have the most success and pinpoint key areas you need to improve.
Check your analytics
Analytics allow you to see what aspects of your ecommerce store still need improving and which areas are working well in terms of conversions. You can then use this information to improve conversion rates and find out what works best for your website.
Properly optimizing a site for conversions can take time and effort but the results always make up for all that hard work. EYStudios has extensive experience in helping businesses increase conversions while also making sure they look great across multiple devices. If you are interested in increasing conversions on your site, contact us today! We would love to work with you!
EYStudios offers email, social, and PPC digital marketing to go along with our award winning website design and development to help you convert your customers at every touch point. Our team of account managers and marketing specialists provide professional consultation and work with your business to craft a custom plan to integrate with your website in order to deliver data-driven results and a proven ROI.
