Increasing your website conversion rate can have a significant impact on your business’s growth and trajectory. In addition to increasing your revenue, a higher conversion rate can grow your audience, brand reputation, and competitive advantage. In this post, we’ll explore seven impactful ways to boost your conversion rate so you can achieve your business goals faster.
What does website conversion mean?
Website conversion refers to the percentage of website visitors who complete a specific action on your site. Depending on your goals, this could mean filling out a contact form, subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an ebook, or making a purchase.
In order to increase your conversion rate, it’s important to first calculate your current rate. To do so, you’ll need to install Google Analytics on your site and track the number of conversions your site gets each month. Then you can divide that number by the total number of visitors per month and average it out over a period of a few months.
Once you have your current conversion rates in hand, you’re ready to explore ways to increase them, which we’ll dive into next.
7 ways to boost your website conversion rate
1. Define your goals
The very first thing you need to do in order to increase your website conversion rate is to define your goals. Which metric(s) are the most important to you? Do you want to increase your inquiries, subscribers, freebie downloads, or a combination of these?
Next, you can set a goal for how many conversions you need each month in order to achieve your business goals. For instance, if your goal is to gain 300 email subscribers each month and your website currently gets 12,000 visitors per month, your goal conversion rate for email opt-ins is 2.5%. This percentage may seem low, but keep in mind that the average email opt-in conversion rate sits just under 2%.
Without defining goals, it’s hard to know what to focus on and track whether your efforts are effective.
2. Identify Your Target Audience
The next step in increasing your website conversion rate is to identify your target audience. You need to know who they are, what they want and need, and how they interact with your website. This will help you create a better user experience for them on all of their devices as well as make sure that the content on the site is relevant for them.
A few ways to identify your target audience’s needs and wants include:
- Tracking your website analytics to learn about your visitor demographics and see which pages get the most traffic
- Periodically surveying your audience (ideally via your email list where engagement tends to be highest)
- Conducting 1:1 interviews or “coffee chats” with ideal clients in exchange for some free coaching
- Scouring Facebook groups or other online communities where your target audience hangs out and noting what questions they’re asking that you can address in your content
3. Improve Your Website’s Usability
To increase your website’s conversion rate, you must make sure that it provides an exceptional user experience. The easier and faster it is to get around your site and the more intuitive the navigation, the higher the chance of conversion. Ask yourself, how can I ensure that my visitors have a seamless experience on my website? Make sure to eliminate any barriers that may stand in their way, such as slow loading times or hard-to-find information. This may require periodic audits and updates of your website’s design and structure.
Related post: 10 simple ways to optimize your website
4. Create Quality Content
Creating quality content for a website is essential to attract and retain visitors, improve search engine rankings, and establish authority in a particular industry or niche. Website content refers to the copy on your main pages (Home, About, Services, etc.) as well as blog posts, client case studies, and even images.
Every page on your website should have a clear goal that ties back to your overall website goals. Determine the primary action you want visitors to take when they land on each page and make sure the content points towards it. Make sure visitors can easily understand the purpose of each page and provide helpful and relevant information that supports this goal. Highlight calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout the entire site by using distinctive headlines, shapes, colors, and images to drive engagement.
Related post: Benefits of hiring a website copywriter
5. Use Compelling Calls-to-Action
Calls-to-Action (CTAs) are an essential part of improving website conversion rates. Place CTAs prominently throughout every page so that visitors can take the desired action immediately. Depending on the context, this could be subscribing, filling out a contact form, or downloading an ebook, for example.
When determining which CTAs to use where, consider your customer journey. For instance, it’s pretty unlikely that someone will land on one of your blog posts for the first time and then immediately fill out an inquiry form to work with you (although it can happen!). In truth, it’s more likely that this person will need to visit your website multiple times before they feel comfortable reaching out. Therefore, you’re likely to get a higher conversion rate from your blog with a newsletter opt-in CTA versus a booking form. On the flip side, someone who visits your services page is likely primed to work with you and therefore should be guided to an inquiry form instead of a newsletter opt-in.
6. Share Reviews and Client Testimonials
Sharing real client reviews and testimonials on your website is an amazing way to increase your conversion rate because it builds trust and credibility. When potential customers see that others have had a positive experience with your business, they are more likely to be willing to do business with you. Reviews and testimonials also act as social proof and demonstrate that your services are legitimate, effective, and valuable. They can help reinforce the benefits and value of your services so that potential customers don’t have to rely on your word alone.
Another benefit of having positive client reviews and testimonials is that they boost your brand’s reputation and help give you an edge over your competitors. I always recommend asking clients to post their reviews publicly on your Google Business Profile because they look more legitimate than reviews that are copy/pasted on your site.
Related post: How to create a client experience that will get you return customers
7. Test Different Page Layouts and Content
A/B testing is a great way to determine which content elements and page layouts are the most effective at converting visitors into leads. Experiment with layout, CTAs, headlines, and navigation to find the combination that works best for your website.
One way to experiment with A/B testing is with Google Optimize. Here’s a basic rundown of how it works:
- Sign up for a Google Optimize account and link it to your Google Analytics account.
- Create a new experiment and select “A/B test” as the experiment type. Give your experiment a name and description, and select the pages or URLs you want to test.
- Create two or more variations of the page you want to test. You can use the visual editor in Google Optimize to make changes to your website without needing to code.
- Set up the objectives you want to track. These could be things like clicks on a button, form submissions, or pageviews.
- Choose how much traffic you want to allocate to each variation.
- Once you have set up your variations and objectives, you can launch the experiment. Google Optimize will then split traffic between the different variations and track the objectives you have set up.
- After your experiment has run for a sufficient amount of time, you can analyze the results in Google Optimize. The tool will show you which variation performed better and provide statistical significance testing to ensure the results are reliable.
One important caveat to A/B testing is that your website needs to be generating a lot of traffic (i.e. thousands of pageviews per week) in order to achieve meaningful results. If your traffic isn’t at that level yet, it’s best to focus your efforts on SEO first.
Ready to boost your website conversion rate?
In this post, we covered seven meaningful ways to improve your website so that you can get more conversions, whether your focus is growing your inquiries, email list, or both. The process starts with getting clear on your goals and target audience, then optimizing your content and user experience, and finally ends in testing and tweaking your strategy over time.
If you’re looking for hands-on support in elevating your website strategically, click here to learn about my web design services for service-based businesses.
