When making online sales, the first priority is to establish a website that showcases your products and services and effectively drives traffic to your business. However, attracting visitors to your site is just the first aspect of running a successful online presence. The real challenge is what to do when your visitors arrive, and then convert those visitors first into sales leads, and then into customers. To achieve this, you’ll need to ensure that your website is engaging and fully optimised for conversion, by investing in Conversion Rate Optimisation.
What Is Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)?
In digital marketing, Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the process of improving the performance of your content and website layout to convert more visitors into customers. In other terms, it means encouraging a visitor to take a specific action on your website, such as filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, or purchasing a product/service, expressing these clear calls to action (CTAs) through your content, your page layout, navigation, and even the colours, graphics, and URLs you use. CRO involves analysing data, conducting user research, and running experiments to improve the website's user experience and increase your conversion rate over time.
In this article, we’ll look at six actionable tips that can help improve your website CRO.
1. Make Sure Your Website Loads Quickly
Slow websites are a huge turn-off for visitors – it’s the digital equivalent of a large supermarket queue. You only have seconds to capture a visitor’s attention before they move on to your competitor’s site. The sweet spot is three seconds or less load time – any more than this and users are likely to ‘bounce’ away from your website. A bounce is a visitor that only visits one page of your website before departing, usually never to be seen again. Use a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to measure your site load time and identify areas for improvement. Some quick fixes include having images be WebP files and not JPEG or PNGs, compressing said image files, minimising HTTP requests, and avoiding render-blocking JavaScript and CSS.
2. Keep Your Messaging Clear And Concise
One of the most important things you can do to improve your website’s conversion rate is to ensure your messaging is clear, consistent, and concise across your content assets. All of your web pages, blog articles, videos, infographics, and images should clearly communicate what your business does, what problems you solve for your customers, and why someone should choose you over your competitors. Be sure to highlight your unique selling points in all your content and make it easy for visitors to understand what you offer.
3. Make It Easy For Visitors To Find What They’re Looking For
The average size of a business website has increased dramatically over the past decade, from 4 to 5 pages to dozens, or even hundreds of pages and individual articles. Despite this change, however, your website must be extremely well laid out for visitors to find what they’re looking for quickly.
Nobody likes a website that’s difficult to navigate. Your website should be intuitive and easy to use, with menus and links that are obvious to find and follow, and that work consistently and correctly on all browsers and devices. Make it clear what each page of your website is about and how visitors can find what they’re looking for, along with suggestions on where to go next to pursue their research.
4. Use High-Quality Images And Videos
Images and videos are powerful tools to engage visitors and convince them to do business with you, supporting and enhancing your written content. Use high-quality images that accurately reflect your brand and the products or services you offer and optimise them for fast loading speeds. Videos can also be effective, especially if you’re trying to explain a complex concept or showcase your products in action.
5. Make Your Calls To Action Clear And Prominent
Your website should have clear calls to action (CTAs) on every page that tell visitors what you want them to do next. Whether it’s “buy now”, “sign up”, or “contact us”, your CTAs should be prominent and easy to find. Use contrasting colours and make your buttons stand out from the rest of your page to encourage visitors to act.
6. Test And Optimise Your Website Regularly
CRO isn’t a one-time fix; it’s an ongoing process. To ensure your website is always performing at its best, it’s important to regularly test and optimise different elements of your website. This might include testing different headlines, CTAs, or images to see what works best, and performance testing your site on different browsers and devices. Remember that your website is one of your most important marketing tools that requires ongoing attention and care, so don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things to see what works best for your business.
Find Out More
Improving your website’s conversion rate is a key part of building a successful online sales strategy. To find out more about our conversion rate optimisation services and how we can help you increase leads and make more sales online, please contact JDR Group today by calling 01332 343281.
Image Source: Canva
