While doing some research today we came across this story 7 Tips to Improve Your Site’s Conversion Rate — Fast. While it’s a great launching point we wanted to provide a little more context based on our experience with a few of the points.
First, a little setup then we’ll break down some of the tips with our spin:
Want to do something for your website that has killer ROI? Try conversion rate optimization, also known as CRO. Your conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who take action. If you improve this rate, then you improve your revenue.
1. Get the most powerful testing software available and A/B test non-stop
Okay we combined these two because they really are the same because any A/B testing tool worth it’s salt should be powerful.
You want something visual, something that’s easy to use, and that can be fired up quickly. You also want something that gives you a historical view of your tests. Here’s the top solutions we’ve found:
2. Place your CTA above the fold
This is critical, you should have at least one call to action above the fold because often times it’s the only thing people will see and consume.
Here’s a bonus tip: include a call to action in your menu. This call to action should be something that will build curiosity with your audience and it should also move them closer to the sale or conversion point for your website.
3. Shorten your form.
This depends. Depending on your audience and your sales process a longer form might be more effective. Once again this is something you should A/B test.
When you do this make sure your testing the same path to your form. With a simple landing form this is easy but you still have to consider the path the user took to get there.
For instance, a user visits a post on your blog then clicks a CTA and is taken to your landing page. This path is different than if someone visited that same piece of content, went to your main page, then went to the same landing page. Their experience and information is different even if that path happened within the span of 30 seconds.
4. Make your call to action bigger.
We’ve tried this and if you see above this post we are running a test as you read this. Our opinion going into this test was it wouldn’t increase conversions but we don’t mind be proven wrong.
5. Make your headline more obvious.
Headline writing is one of the backbones of marketing. In the fast paced information world we live in headlines are increasingly the only thing people read. That’s why you have to get them right. I’m not sure that “obvious” is the most important thing you want to go after… does your headline convey the core benefit in an emotional and evocative way?
Here’s the number 1 thing we’ve learned about increasing conversions: It’s a process that you have to commit to and it’s not continuous gains. It’s like most anything in life, you’ll sometimes take giant leaps forward and sometimes take 2 steps backward. The key is to stick to it and try not to make the same mistake twice.
