After talking about advertising your e-business, it’s time for the next guide. Today we focus on your sales and what you should do to increase them.
This guide will walk you through the questions you might have about Conversion Rate Optimization and how you can increase your sales.
You will find out what you need to do to improve the performance of your website. Learn how to optimize your landing pages and user experience, as well as the tools that will help you become successful!
Conversion Rate Optimization, shortened as CRO, is an essential part of online marketing strategies, created to maximize revenue and improve the user experience.
It is a method of using analytics and user feedback to improve the performance of your website. A page is well optimized when a high percentage of visitors turn into customers or subscribers.
CRO improves any metric on your website that is important to your business, such as KPIs (called key performance indicators), but it is often associated with acquiring new customers, registrations, etc.
In other words, it increases the percentage of website visitors that turn into valuable conversions.
CRO means, at its base level, figuring out what users are looking for when they arrive at your website and then giving that to them.
In other words, it allows marketers to track and keep up with unstable customer preferences and motivations.
You probably will pay for traffic to your website, so a high conversion rate means a better return on that investment.
It is also cost-effective to convert a higher percentage of the visitors you already have than to attract more visitors.
In addition to improving your ROI, optimization helps to defend against the limited attention span of your average visitor. It means giving them what they want before they get tired of looking for it and leave your website.
CRO key features:
Higher conversion rate – better Return on the investment
More cost-effective than finding new visitors
Defends against limited patience of visitors
What is truly important for you is to understand that optimization is about getting more of the right customers, not randomly optimizing the conversion rate of a given page or campaign.
Remember that your goal is to find more customers who will love your product and help you get business awareness.
Regardless of the strategy you adopt, it is better to keep your business plan following the main conversion optimization principles: urgency, social proof and clarity.
The urgency refers to having a deadline for a particular action. People tend to make quicker decisions when they see a deadline, as opposed to the alternative of being left to decide by themselves.
As an example, you can consider the booking.com messages on their website, stating that customers should take a faster decision about booking the room because there is only one left.
Social proof shapes consumer behavior and is a powerful ecommerce marketing tool, used to increase buyer confidence.
When other people have purchased the same product, it makes it much more likely for someone else to try it.
The most effective social proof examples are client reviews, ratings, or client testimonials.
Clarity means that every element on your website must be there for a reason and you should remove any irrelevant details.
It is crucial because it prevents the visitors of your website to abandon the shopping cart.
Step 1: Change your your product photos
Creating images of your products is a crucial part of selling them. Your customers cannot touch or try your product before purchasing it, so your images have to be good enough to convince them to buy from your website.
To improve your conversions, you have to test different product images. Change the style or the color of your photos and see which converts better.
Step 2: Use different Ads
To increase the conversion rate of your e-business, you should have several different ads, to keep your customers’ interest. This way, customers will not get bored by seeing the same ad and the performance of your ads will not drop.
Step 3: Improve your website’s speed
Page speed or page load time plays a crucial role in the overall performance of your website. It directly affects the user experience and conversion rate of the website
By testing your website and improving its speed, you will notice an increase in revenue.
To make your website’s pages load faster, you can reduce the number of pop-ups and the items that the page has to download.
Decrease the size of your images, to allow your website to load the images faster.
Step 4: Use the urgency method
The urgency method refers to convincing the customers that now’s the time to buy your products and that you have limited quantities available.
Psychologically speaking it works so well because many customers are afraid to miss out products or a special deal and this way you strengthen their impulse to buy.
Using keywords such as “Only one left”, “Deal ends in 30 minutes” can increase your sales.
Step 5: Update your website’s design
Changing your website’s design can help boost conversions.
Try to find the balance between your website’s conversion rate optimization and design that sells.
Use the color wheel to find the best contrasting colors, then choose the color combination that conveys the right emotion. Find what is in perfect contrast to the background color of your website.
On a product page, consider placing a visible color for the “Add to Cart” button, right next to the product information section. This trick will capture the attention of the visitors and makes them instantly add the product to their cart.
Take as an example Amazon.
Amazon strategically designed each of its product pages and used an orange „Add to cart” button that stands out on the product’s page:
How does this help? Orange is an intense color that complements the white background, making it easy for visitors to take the desired action.
Step 6: Have clear copywriting
A well-designed website goes hand in hand with well-written content. Words can hook your visitors, convert them into potential leads and return more traffic for your business.
Your homepage defines customers’ first impression of your business and should highlight what issue you can solve for them.
A catchy headline that answers all the basic questions makes the page look attractive and gets customers onboard.
For example, if you are a hairstylist and you sell beauty products, you help solve the damaged hair problem and you should highlight that in your copy.
When writing content on your website, you want to let your customers know the problem you solve to determine them to buy.
Remember to showcase the benefits of your products and describe them in detail, using expressions like “soft as silk” and “for a softer feel” to optimize conversions.
Provide enough content from product information to return policies to ensure that the customers have all the information they need to buy from your website.
Step 7: Show a tempting offer
When you present an offer that they shouldn’t miss, you will be able to increase the conversion rate. The easiest way is through pricing strategies and discounts, but keep in mind to find a price that will still keep your business profitable.
You can also group a few products and present an offer like “Buy two get a one free” to increase your business’ revenue and profit. Strategies like this make people have the feeling that they save money and encourage them to buy.
Step 8: Optimize the top part of your pages
Optimize the top part of the website that the customers see before scrolling because people spend most of their time on this part of the page.
People may not scroll through the entire product page, so you will want to showcase all the details about your products on top of the page.
From mapping the importance of your website optimization to strategizing the ways to improve performance, conducting tests and using the results to boost marketing efforts, conversion rate optimization has become a natural action.
It enables companies to understand how customers think and perceive their brand, what it offers and also exposes them to a wide range of data to shape their future business strategies.