Do you know that a non-converting website can frustrate a business out of the market? Yes, website conversion is one of the top companies’ strategies to stay relevant in today’s digital marketplace.
According to statistics, most companies spend 5% of their revenue on conversion rate optimization (Startupbonsai).
Website conversion is the process of making a customer act on a website that eventually leads to sales. This action could include filling out a contact form, obtaining a product (like an ebook or cheet sheat), or submitting their email address – to generate leads.
As a business owner, your website must convert to ensure success for your business. Not only will website conversion allow you to get more leads, but it will also help your business understand what your customers are looking for and how you must interact with them.
Website conversion also enables you to understand which pages on your website are performing well and which ones need some work.
However, many processes must be followed to achieve a reasonable website conversion rate. And as a business owner, it can be challenging to figure out these processes from start to finish by yourself.
No need to get overwhelmed! This is exactly what we’re going to cover in the next four articles.
In this series, you’ll learn the most effective best practices you must use, including all the procedures to employ should you want to ensure a reasonable website conversion rate. Read on. While this topic isn’t the most exciting, it does have a big pay-off, and it won’t take more than a few minutes of your time.
Increase Conversions with the Right Website Design
The design of a website is the first thing potential customers notice. According to Top Design Firms, 2023, in a survey of 500 companies, 50% of consumers reported that the company’s website design says a lot about its overall brand.
If the design of a business website is not appealing or does not look professional, the chances of customers purchasing from your website are cut in half. That is to say, the right website design can make a huge difference in your site’s conversion rates.
Undoubtedly, every website is different, but some general rules apply to almost any website to increase conversions.
The first step is to ask yourself what your conversion goal is. Is it to get more visitors? To increase the number of leads? To generate more sales? Once you know your conversion goal, you can design your website accordingly.
For example, if you want to increase sales, you should ensure that the most critical information about your product or service is easy to find on the homepage and that it’s clear how customers can purchase it.
A website’s design should be well-organized and easy to navigate. It should also have a visual hierarchy that guides the customer’s eye to essential elements on the page, like product images, buttons, and headlines.
Start with a clear understanding of your company’s brand identity. Draft out how you want the website to look, feel, and sound before you go on to the design process. This will help ensure that your website communicates the same message as your company’s branding. Organize the content so that it creates a clear hierarchy on each page.
Keep it simple and avoid unnecessary clutter.
Quick Tips for Creating the Right Website Design
Here are some tips on making the right website design that eventually converts:
- Keep information on the website simple but compelling. The more unnecessary wordings appear in your website copy, the more distractions there are, and the less likely it will convert.
- Ensure that your landing pages have a clear call-to-action.
- Design for conversion – make it as easy as possible for visitors to complete their desired action with minimal friction, using consistent brand colors and typography.
- Provide confirmation and feedback prompts to users before submitting your form.
- In the case of eCommerce websites, allow your users to track their progress during the transaction.
- Segment users based on their location. This will assist you in sending targeted offers and discounts to shoppers in different states or countries.
Make Your Site Load Faster
One well-known factor determining a website’s conversion rate is the website’s loading times. Of course, everyone will prefer to look for what they want on a fast-loading website over a slow one. We already know why.
People now, including you and I, have a low attention span, and we want to see the information we are looking for quickly.
But what exactly does a fast loading website mean for your business?
Simply put, a website that loads fast means having more time for your visitors to interact with the content on your site. If your business website can load the content of a page in less than one second, it guarantees that it’ll have actual interactions with visitors.
Anything slower, there’s a chance someone may abandon your site before they can see any content.
Therefore, the fastest way to make visitors use your website more is to load it as quickly as possible. The more people visit your website, the more money it makes for your business.
For instance, do you know that big companies like Amazon, eBay, and Netflix invest heavily in improving their site speeds? Of course, they know the importance of fast loading times.
Are they doing it because they care? Not really. They do it to increase user interactions with their website, which assures a great user experience and therefore increases sales.
Below are a few common reasons you may experience slow-loading times on your website:
- Too many images on the page
- Slow server
- Too many plugins installed
- A lot of scripts running on the page
- Too much data is being downloaded at once
Quick Tips to Improve Your Website’s Loading Time
- Analyze your website’s loading time: Many online tools can help you check your website’s loading time and improve it. Some are free, while others require a paid subscription. An example of these free tools is Webpagetest.
- Webpagetest is a free application for checking website loading times and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. With the Webpagetest tool, you can run a custom load test sequence that simulates users visiting your site by filling out login forms, browsing through your homepage, and clicking on links in your navigation. You can identify which pages users load most, the total time users spend on your site, and where they land when they get to a particular page.
- Determine your host server resources: The speed of loading a web page may vary depending on how many resources your host server has to host, the size and type of files stored on the site, or the traffic rate your site receives.
- The first step to increasing your website loading times through your web hosting server is to determine what resources your host server has. This will help you know how much bandwidth your web hosting server can offer and if it has enough RAM, storage space, and CPU power.
- You can also compress the size of your images and remove unnecessary scripts. This will reduce the time it takes for your site to load, making visitors happier! There are a few plugins (if you’re using WordPress), both free and premium, that can help with this.
- Perfmatters: a lightweight WordPress performance plugin for site optimization. It’s not free, but it’s only $25 per site and well worth it.
- WP Fastest Cache is a well-respected WordPress cache plugin. It’s free to use (premium upgrade is available, but I doubt you’ll need it) and will instantly create a cache of your site. It can help with other site optimizations as well (similar to Perfmatters), but the cache capability is the real star here.
- WP-Optimize is a free, with a premium upgrade available, all-in-one WordPress performance plugin that caches your site, cleans your database, compresses your images.
