Website conversions can make your company’s goals a reality, but converting website visitors into leads can be more difficult than expected. We take an in-depth look at the secrets marketers use to increase website conversions which can ultimately lead to an increase in sales for your store. Check out these tips you can implement on your website today!
Spend Time on Collecting & Analyzing Data
Collecting data on how your website persuades users to act or not to act can give you a lot of insight into your users’ experience and uncover huge wins. By digging into user behavior and collecting feedback you can run less tests and find huge wins. Your data and feedback should be analyzed and then A/B testing is used to confirm your hypothesis which was built from data. Your end conclusions should not be pulled out of thin air or used just because it worked for someone else.
Look at the big picture when developing your tests, what drives visitors to your website? What persuades them to act by filling out a form or buying a product? Where and why are visitors abandoning your website? This should be the very first step before any change or test is completed.
Become Your Website User
Data is a powerful marketing tool when developing test ideas, but a huge secret that marketers use to uncover the right test for your website user is empathy. By becoming your user, you can empathize with them and see the bigger picture rather than just looking at numbers. Use empathy to identify the pains, successes and goals of your user. To truly understand this, you must first immerse yourself and there are a few strategies that marketers use to do so.
Walk yourself through the whole buying cycle on your website and record your screen. By recording yourself you can see how you would navigate through the website and can identify areas that are confusing or any roadblocks that your user may be experiencing.
Another technique is to record your own users which is a great strategy because your own session may be a little biased. Record and view at least 200 sessions of users converting. Does this surprise you? You want to focus on where users are leaving, right? We recommend 200 sessions of converting because you are more likely to understand what needs to be fixed in these sessions. These committed users can help you to identify where people are stopping or pausing, showing you areas of confusion. Seeing your website through your users’ eyes will help you gain context to what your data is trying to tell you.
Persuasion is Key to Improve Conversions
Now that you have identified your users’ pains continue to focus on the context of the website. Think about the sessions that converted in your recordings. What was their ultimate goal? Your website’s purpose is to persuade the user to convert, so make sure that the information needed to submit a form or buy a product is there.
Next, identify where users are dropping off and provide hooks to encourage the user to complete the goal. You can do so, by referring to the flow graph in Google Analytics. This is a great tool that illustrates where users in your website funnel are dropping off.
Connect the “What” With The “Why”
The next step to increasing conversions is to analyze key pages and one of our favorite tools is a heat map. This eye-opening tool lets you see interaction and helps you connect the “what” and “why”. When analyzing your heat map, ask yourself; Where are my visitors interacting too much? Where do they seem lost?
Another great way to analyze your pages is by simply asking questions. Send your users a survey after they have converted and ask them what their main challenges are. What was the main factor that made them choose you? What are their major concerns? If you offer an incentive like a prize or percentage off the next purchase, make sure to ask them to be brutally honest. Manners do not matter here.
Read your survey responses and find the biggest objections and hooks. Here you can identify the biggest challenges and create a split test to fix these issues.
Build Commitment & Social Proof
The final step that needs to be taken to increase conversions is to build commitment. Give your users a reason to stay on the site and make sure the site isn’t scary. If your data is indicating your users are confused, try testing a simple and easy homepage design. Another way to encourage commitment is by looking at your forms. Is there an excessive number of fields? Think about how you can encourage the user to commit to your site and give them reasons why.
Social proof can also build commitment by helping a user feel comfortable and confident in their session or purchase. Have you been featured in a local newspaper or blog article? What are your customers saying about you? Find items that you can feature on your site that show users that you are a trusted vendor for many users in their area or across the country.
Learn how you can identify unknown shoppers on your website down to the HOUSEHOLD level.
