After several blog posts about various aspects of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay per click advertising (PPC), you hopefully now know plenty about how to drive traffic to your website. But are you converting as much of it as possible into sales? Here are our top tips for boosting your website conversion rates:
Measure and test everything
If you want to improve your conversion rate, you first need to know where you stand at the moment and have a mechanism for testing new things and measuring their effectiveness. Google Website Optimizer is a great tool for this. Say, for example, that you’ve decided to revamp your website’s homepage. When you’ve got a design you’re happy with, you can use Website Optimizer to drive a percentage of traffic to the new layout so that you can assess its effectiveness without changing everything over at once. So, if it turns out that your old layout encouraged more people to convert you’ll see that reflected in the results and can reassess the new design accordingly. Similarly, you can use it to test which of two different promotional headlines, images or copy treatments is the most effective. The more you do this, the more you’ll start to get a feel for what works well and what doesn’t.
Encourage, don’t discourage
Your website should contain clear calls to action – there’s a reason why everyone has bright, bold ‘buy now’ buttons placed prominently on product pages. They encourage the action you most want from customers – the opening of the wallet. Likewise, your copy should promote the benefits of whatever you’re selling and directly suggest that readers buy now. I know we all know that a website there for sales purposes, but it’s amazing the difference it makes to your conversion rates if you actively request the sale rather than just hoping it will happen. Other things you can do to encourage the sale include: adding customer testimonials or product ratings; keeping your copy in plain English, brief and focused around benefits rather than features; adding a Twitter or blog feed to your site so customers can really engage with your business (the more engaged they are with you the easier it will be to convince them to make purchases); and adding a newsletter signup area button – if they’re happy to sign up to your newsletter, that means they’re interested in what you have to offer and likely to be swayed by a tempting offer emailed in their direction. I’ve seen this work brilliantly on sites which send a welcome mail containing a 10% off voucher code when you sign up. They’re usually only valid for a week or so, so it really encourages a quick sale and gives the customer a feeling of getting a bargain. Which means they’re more likely to pay attention to everything else you send them and to keep revisiting your website, and so it goes on.
What your website shouldn’t include is anything which makes it harder for people to buy your product or service. The more hoops you make people jump through to make a purchase, the more chances you’re giving them to wander off before getting their credit card out. So, avoid making it necessary for people to register before making a purchase (you can make it possible, but don’t require it. Keep your order process as lean as possible – request the minimum information necessary and make sure your order form is clear, easy to understand, contains as few steps as possible and gives some indication of how many steps into the process the customer is at each stage. If someone gives you incorrect or incomplete information, don’t make them type everything all over again – just draw their attention to the bit that needs correcting.
Illustrate what you’re offering
If you’re selling tangible products, make sure you have clear product shots of decent size, preferably from different angles and zoomable or enlargeable. People can’t examine prospective purchases online in the same way they can in a bricks and mortar shop, so you need to give them as much as possible to go on so that they’re encouraged to make the purchase. Mention the dimensions of the product in your copy so people can visualise how it will fit into their home or on them.
If you’re selling a service rather than a physical item, you’ll still need to use images to highlight what you’re selling and make your webpage more appealing to the eye. Choose clear, simple images that relate to what you’re offering. You don’t want to make them so elaborate or confusing that people get distracted by them, but they should convey the right message. The image on our eShop pages, for example, provides a clear visual link to the idea of shopping, and we’ve added a template gallery and forum icon to draw attention to those additional convincers. For our new SSL Certificates pages, we’ve used a padlock as our main image to convey the idea of security, included logos from the secure certificate providers to demonstrate the pedigree of the product, and added the actual site seals customers can use with our secure certificates so that customers know exactly what they’re getting.
