18 Ways To Improve Conversion Rates

Hello, Tyler DeWitt here. We’re going to talk about 18 ways you can increase your conversion rates.

Let’s start with number 1, or do you want to start with number 18? I’m joking.

1. Shorten Your Forms.

Use short forms. Short forms convert at a much higher rate. Long forms tend to convert at a much lower rate. Now, I understand if you need to qualify your customer, your lead, whatever it may be, you have to qualify them. But just don’t get too carried away with it. If you are only collecting an email for a newsletter, that’s all you really need, an email and maybe a name. I would say a first name and email. Actually, that’s all you need, unless there is some other reason you need more data from them. But there again, the more you ask for, the more friction you create, the person might exit because are just not comfortable filling out forms like they used to. They are just not comfortable giving too much information about who they are, what they’re looking for, what they’re doing, and whatever it may be.

2. Include Social Proof.

This could be anything from you interviewing clients, customers, testimonials, third party reviews, Google reviews, Facebook reviews, or whatever it may be. There are tons of platforms out there that provide third party reviews to make sure that they’re genuine, legit, whatever you want to call it. Now, that’s not to say fake reviews do not slip through. But it’s best to use a trusted provider so people actually trust what they’re buying from your site.

3. Track How People Interact with Your Site.

If you’re not using a heat map, use a heat map. The heat map will allow you to see where the user is going and where they’re exiting at. You’ll find out a lot of times a user might be scrolling down, hover their mouse over something, they click or whatever it may be, and then they exit. You need to figure out where they exit, why they exit, and how to resolve that.

4. Add Live Chat.

You can add a live chat to your website that way you can interact with the customer when they visit your website. Just like when you go into a store, if you’re looking for something, someone comes up to you, and they help you. And you’re like, “Oh, okay, that’s what I need.” That’s what you can use a live chat for. It gives you that live interaction, kind of locks them in.  

5. Test Your Offers.

You can test multiple offers. Say for example, you have a supplement. I’m just using this as an example so be creative. You can apply this into your industry or whatever industry you have. You can test two different offers for one problem. And find out which supplement converts the best. You can also offer different plans. Say you’re an attorney offering monthly retainers, offer different plans. There again, you might have to customize your strategy in some industries. But testing your offers is definitely a way to find out how you can improve your conversions. That will give you a better opportunity or improve your opportunity of converting them over the phone too. Because you’ll know based on what you’re offering on your website, how to respond to that person when you talk to them.

6. Conduct A/B Testing.

You should always A/B test your ads. Many people fail to A/B test their ads. That’s why Google ads is now requiring responsive search ads and did away with expanded text ads (ETAs). This is because people didn’t test. A lot of companies were not testing on the original eyes. The only people that were testing more top performers. You can take a product conversion from 1 to as high as 3 to 4% by testing.

7. Increase Trust and Remove Friction.

There again, this would fall under the category of, including social proof to an extent. But increasing trust would be like credentials, third party recommendations, you’re a big speaker at a big event and you’ve been approved. That will increase the trust. Because most speakers do have a thorough process they got to go through before they speak. Removing the friction that would fall into the category of removing anything that’s causing them to exit. Sometimes people will say, “Well, we require this, require that, and require this.” People don’t want to feel like they have to prove themselves to buy a product or service. It’s understandable if you have requirements, but you have to be real careful when you start using that type of wording. You want to remove anything that will cause them to bounce, you know, to leave your website.

8. Create Abandoned Cart Email Campaigns.

There again, a lot of people fail to do this. We have companies all the time that contact us that do not have a Shopify abandoned email campaign set up. You can bring back anywhere from 5 to 15% of those people that leave. And usually what you want to do during this process is offer a discount.

9. Communicate your Value Proposition.

Always be sure to list out your benefits and features of your products on your landing page. Just don’t write something up that’s really simple. You want to key in to the actual features and the benefits of how your products or services is going to help better their life. You want them to read and be like, “Ahh, that’s what I need.” This is so they convert.

10. Incorporate Multimedia Elements into your Landing Page.

Multimedia elements could be a customer using your product, someone wearing a certain fashion brand, whatever it may be. It could be a person taking a supplement. It can even be a client that you are interviewing. Videos really do give the website more of a realistic feel, especially if you’re able to interview people on testimonials or have them share their story with you about your products and services.

11. Write Strong CTAs.

CTA stands for call to action. Say for example, we set up a Google ad, in the title you can say, “Looking for bankruptcy attorney in Los Angeles?” They are like, “Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for.” They click on it and hit your landing page. Now, your landing page needs to be highly relevant too. Your goal is to get them to fill that short form out. This could apply to accounting, freelancer, web design agencies, whatever it may be. You need strong CTAs in every single industry.

12. Eliminate Unnecessary Distractions.

There again, unnecessary distractions would create friction. Unnecessary distractions can be unwanted pop-ups, slow landing page speed, it can even be a blurry image to an extent. Sometimes people going to the landing page, see a blurry image, and are like, “Oh, I don’t know, this company doesn’t look too reputable.” But distractions more than anything are slow landing page, unnecessarily pop-ups, unnecessary content. Anything that’s making the customer’s life miserable more than less, or not providing the best experience, get rid of it.

13. Meet your Audience’s Expectations.

There again, this fall under the category of manifests and futures. Keep this in mind, everything should meet their expectations. They need to see the right images, they need to see the right pictures, they need to see the right benefits, they need to see the right story. Everything has to be highly relevant. Because as soon as you start offering something that’s not so relevant, they’ll just exit. People have ADHD online nowadays, all of us do. We’re all running around searching with ADHD. 15 years ago, you could just throw up a page, it would have whatever on it, and people would just look through it. They would say, “Aww, I want this. I want that.” Well, unfortunately, it’s not like that today. When they hit your page, you have to meet their expectations, immediately.

14. Improve your Page Speed.

There are tons of website page testing software out there. If you want to find out ways that you can improve your page speed, I would say the best way to go about it is to manually review it. Review it on your phone, on your laptop, maybe somewhere else, have someone else review it. This is to make sure that it’s pulling through really fast.

There is Google PageSpeed and they have a testing tool. But it tends to tell everybody, “Your page is not the best.” And you’ll find out if you type in big corporations, their website in there, or your competitors, chances are it’s going to rate it low. And the reason is because there are all the content management systems out there, Shopify, WooCommerce, and all that who are adding in all this additional and unnecessary code. More than anything, just pay attention to manually reviewing it.

15. Optimize for Mobile.

Be sure to review your site on mobile. A lot of times people will set up their website and be like, “Well, my website’s already mobile optimized. I’m using Shopify. And I know that it’s optimized.” Well, have you looked at it? Are you sure there’s not anything that you added that might be causing your site to be dysfunctional? You might find out a lot of times that the bigger your store gets, the more you start editing stuff, the more apps you start adding, and whatever you might be adding to your site, especially on the design end, there is a higher chance that something could be broken. Be sure to check it. We constantly check our client’s websites on phones, laptops, and desktops. We are always looking at them to make sure that everything is working right.

16. Enhance the Purchasing Process.

Anything that you can do to enhance the visitor’s purchasing process is going to help increase your conversion rates. Are you providing free shipping, list that? Are you providing free returns, list that? Anything that you can list that will improve their experience, shortening the process would even help during the checkout process. That would fall back under the category of using shorter forms. Remember longer forms convert lower.

17. Be Creative with your Mobile Marketing.

SMS, I would highly advise that you incorporate SMS marketing into your campaigns. If you’re able to get the user’s phone number when they hit the checkout page, you get their email their phone number, why not send out a text, combined with the email? Texts have an incredibly high open rate. People are constantly on their phones. As soon as that phone goes through, 20% discount to finalize your order, “Yes, you have 24-hours to order this product and you’ll get a 20% discount.” Watch them, they will respond.

18. Make Adjustments to your Mobile Site.

I’ve already mentioned this, but I’m going to go back into it again. Remember, the more elements that you add into your design or customization, WordPress plugins, Shopify apps, whatever it may be, even Magento. The more and more that you keep adding and the more and more changes that you make, there’s a lot higher possibility that something is not 100% right on your site. Be sure to go through your mobile and just check it. This takes a few minutes. Like I told you earlier, we’re constantly checking our client’s websites. If I’m not doing anything, I’ll pull up my phone and check out client 1, client 2, client 3, client 5, or whoever. I just start looking at their website through our phone. My staff does the same thing. We want to make sure that everything’s displaying right because mobile is a big factor in how your visitors convert.

That should be it. Be sure to subscribe. Thank you

Tyler DeWitt President & CEO

A Top Performing Marketing Executive, Consultant, and Speaker.

Tyler’s success at helping clients scale has resulted in numerous speaking engagements. Tyler has spoken for numerous tradeshows including DigiMarCon which is one of the world’s largest digital marketing conferences.

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