When you are running a business, one of the things that you need to pay attention to is your conversion rates. The trouble is, how can you keep an eye on something if you don’t actually know what it is? And if you don’t understand the basics, how can you make changes to improve it?
The best place to start is learning more about conversion rates, then you can find out ways to optimise and improve these rates and hopefully make your business a success too.
A higher conversion rate will mean that you need less visitors to your website per action (e.g. purchase of a product, new enquiry, sign-up for a subscription, etc). If you’re spending money on generating visitors to your website using PPC (Pay Per Click) via Google Adwords, Bing, Facebook or LinkedIn, it will cost you less to generate a successful action.
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What are conversion rates?
Conversion rates are when you turn someone who is simply visiting your website into someone who is carrying out a specific action, this could be making an enquiry or perhaps making a purchase.
The conversion rate can be shown as a percentage and is calculated with the following equation:
Conversion Rate = [Action Number] / [Visitor Number] * 100
An example of this is:
Your website received 5,000 visitors last month and you had 65 enquiries about your services. Using the above formula, we would divide 65 by 5,000, which gives us 0.013. We then multiply this by 100, which gives us our percentage: 1.3%.
Improving this percentage is known as conversion optimisation and thankfully for you and your business, there are a variety of ways that you can tackle your conversions and make sure that they are as high as they can be.
The top 5 ways to improve your conversion rates
As we have already mentioned there are a number of ways that you can try to improve your conversion rates and hopefully the sales and profits that relate to your business.
1 Make sure that your phone number is noticeable
You might think that customers contacting you by phone is done and dusted, but after visiting your website and learning more about what you can do, there is still a good chance that customers will pick up the phone and call you. This means that your phone number should be noticeable within your website. Have it in large font, usually at the top of all the key pages, as this will make sure that visitors don’t need to spend too much time hunting for it.
2 Have a visible and prominent primary call to action
They might not want to admit it, but in order to know what to do next when it comes to ordering a service or a product, your customers need to be told what to do. In the marketing world this is called a call to action and these are very important to get right. It is vital that you pack your calls to action with compelling text, special offers and easy to click buttons, all of which will help to encourage your website visitors to actually take action on each page.
3 Use lead capture forms
Sometimes a visitor won’t think about getting in touch before they click away. If you want to make sure that you don’t lose the opportunity to speak to them and provide more information on your services, then you should definitely utilise the power of lead capture forms.
4 Share your testimonials as much as you can
In order for someone to buy from you or book in for your service, they need to have trust that you are going to deliver them what they are looking for. The importance of building trust has meant that testimonials and reviews are a key inclusion to any website. Share snippets of happy customers from the past and feature them on your home page, on your services page and even dedicate a page to them in their entirety, perhaps as case studies.
5 Offer online chat and help
One modern addition to websites that has really had a positive impact is online chat and help features. Whether these are automated bots or a real-time person, they will connect with your visitors and allow them to ask (and receive answers) to any questions that they may have. Along with an online chat facility, you could also consider setting up a knowledge base or frequently asked questions page.
These are just some of the ways to up your conversion rates and make sure that your business is as successful as possible. It is worthwhile trying each one, even if you are not sure whether or not it is going to work for you, as this will help you to make sense of which approaches are the best for your business and for your target market too.
Want to know more about your website and how to make sure that you have as many conversions as possible? Why not get in touch with us to discover how we can help you to maximise your number of visitors and of course, turn them into legitimate customers now and in the future too.
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