Boost Your Website Conversion Rate in 5 Simple Steps

Driving traffic to your website is a crucial business tactic, but it’s only half the battle. A million site visitors don’t mean anything if they don’t actually buy your product, sign up for your email list, or click the contact button—i.e., convert.

Bolstering your website conversion rate can be very tricky. Leads can fall-off at different parts of the sales funnel. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is all about making your product or service (and your website) as simple, easy-to-understand, and persuasive as possible. Take a look at our five steps to increase your website conversion rate.

1. Clarify Your Product or Service’s Value Proposition

Your value proposition tells your clients/customers that you offer a high-quality product or service that will meet their needs. According to the experts at Single Grain, your value proposition should be up-front and center. Site visitors should know exactly what your company offers them by glancing at your website. Their best tips?

• Pinpoint the benefits: Let your customers know how your product will make their lives better, solve their problems, and why your business is different from the competition. 
• Make it skimmable: Most customers are not going to read every single word on your website. Make essential information about your value proposition bold, easy-to-read, and scannable.  

2. Add Video Content

Embedded, relevant videos on your site can quickly increase website conversion rates. Convince and Convert nicely breaks down the reasoning behind this: “Our brains process visual information about 60,000 times faster than text, which means that any visitors to your site absorb information in videos better than they would by reading text.” 

If you need further convincing, check out these stats from Wowzyl’s State of Video Marketing 2020 report: 

• 82 percent of marketers say video helped them generate leads;
• 81 percent agreed that videos increase the average time their visitors spend on the page;
• 89 percent of those that used videos on their site saw a positive ROI. 

To use more video, start small and simple. Incorporate a product or service explainer video; it can even be a screen share from your computer. Your videos don’t need to be expensive or complex. Start small and A/B test pages with and without videos. 

3. Include a Call-to-Action on Every Page

Call-to-actions (or CTAs) are worth their weight in gold. Nudging a website visitor towards their next step means they are more likely to take action. And the numbers don’t lie, according to research from Toast, emails with CTAs see a 371 percent increase in clicks, and a 1,617 percent increase in sales. Here are two ways to maximize the value of your CTAs: 

• Personalize: According to a recent Hubspot study, personalized CTAs convert 202 percent better than the default versions. The software you use for your website should allow you to create ‘smart’ CTAs, which enables you to target potential customers based on the customer’s country, device type, referral source, or contact list membership. 
• Make it short: Keeping things concise is the golden rule when it comes to marketing. If you give your customer too many tasks, they’ll get confused. Call-to-action means one action, for instance, add to cart, contact us today, or get your free estimate.  

4. Keep Forms Brief

Keeping forms short, with only the essential information needed, is key to making sure customers convert. Think about the form from your audience’s point of view. What’s more annoying than signing up for something and seeing more than 20 fields to fill out? Odds are, you’ll leave on the spot. Since you want to secure that lead and keep bounce rates down, you want to avoid that action. 

When it comes to forms that lead to your sales funnel, only ask for what you need (i.e., name, email, company). Concise forms will lead to an increase in website conversion rates because you’re not scaring off leads. 

5. Refine your Copy

Just as we touched upon refining copy with your value proposition, you need to extend these principles to every part of your website. Try the following tips for writing conversion-worthy copy: 

• Cut things down: No matter how well-written, no site reader will read every word on a page. Especially for revenue-driving pages or conversion points, make sure the copy is refined and succinct.  
• Focus on your headlines and titles: As David Ogilvy famously said: “Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.” Put the majority of your effort into your headlines.
• Use short paragraphs: They pack more punch than an entire page of text, especially on landing or sales pages. (Save the long-form content for your blog, not on service/product pages, or entry points to your sales funnel). 

Increase Your Website Conversion Rate 

Looking for more ways to boost your website conversion rate? Our team has written two excellent guides to refine your strategy:

• Our CRO Optimization Beginner’s Guide outlines conversion basics as well as specific tactics to boost CRO.
• Refer to our sales strategy blog post for tips on catching potential leads as they fall out of the sales funnel.

Reach out to our CRO experts to further discuss how to use your website to convert leads faster.