When you are selling your products or services over the internet, there are two paths you can take to generate sales.
The first is to drive visitors (or traffic) to your website. The second is to turn up the efficiency of your site in converting visitors into customers.
Website Conversion Optimisation is about the second path.
It’s all about studying the sales funnel of your website, and how you can make tweaks to your site and increase its effectiveness in creating new customers for your business.
Many people don’t know that any changes to your website (no matter how big or tiny), can have a significant boost on your conversion, and ultimately your bottom line.
For example, sometimes even a small tweak such as the colour of the “Buy Now” button from red to green, or using a clearer font type for your product page, can increase the overall sales of your product.
This is why when it comes to website conversion optimisation, A/B testing plays a significant role. Without testing, you won’t have the data to rely on when you are making changes to your website.
A/B testing removes the guesswork and lets you know directly what sort of changes you need to make for your website.
The right testing methodology can bring in incredible results, which is the benefit of using fact-based, data-driven scientific approach to optimising your website.
What exactly is A/B testing?
In Website Conversion Optimisation, A/B testing is about running2 or more variations of a webpage, design element (different coloured buttons, text links, etc.), or copy (“Buy now” vs. “Get Yours Today”), and see which variation achieve the best results.
Unlike the “Before and After” testing, A/B testing tests all the variations simultaneously to ensure accurate results.
No two website has the exact same blueprint for success when it comes to website conversion optimisation.
For example, if you are an online electronics store, you might want to just copy and use Amazon UK’s website design as your own. But your users may be overwhelmed or confused by the vast number of options on the homepage.
And A/B testing lets you find out exactly what is going wrong (or right) about your website.
Without running A/B testing to guide your website optimisation, it is like flying an aircraft without the onboard instruments and relying only on your instincts and gut feeling.
Not only you will waste time going around in circles making little to no progress, but you are also potentially doing more harm to your business than good.
Why is Website Conversion Optimisation So Important?
Earlier we mentioned that even small tweaks can bring significant results to your bottom line.
Because of the potential for maximum results with minimal efforts, companies big and small are looking into using Website Conversion Optimisation to increase their revenues.
Website Conversion Optimisation can help your business generate more sales from your existing number of website visitors.
So instead of spending additional money into advertising or other digital marketing methods to bring in more traffic, you’re converting and retaining your current traffic, turning them into leads or sales.
And when you decide to drive more traffic, your website is already fully optimised to help your business get more out of your increased marketing efforts.
For example, let’s assume you’re in the software business. You are selling a piece of accounting software to small companies at £500.
You’re getting 1,000 visitors to your website, with 10% of the visitors buying your product, bringing you £50,000 in sales per month.
With Website Conversion Optimisation, you improve your conversion level from 10% to 12% (which is a realistically achievable figure), giving you an increased £60,000 in sales.
With an optimised website, your sales funnel becomes more effective in converting traffic to sales.
Should you choose to bring in more traffic in the future, you can expect higher earnings and profit because your website is now working harder for you.
Website Conversion Optimisation is also a viable option for a business that has managed to achieve recognition and presence in the market but hasn’t experienced any considerable improvement in sales year-on-year.
When your business has become stagnant in its growth, it can be challenging to bring in even more sales. This is where conversion optimisation can come in to help you bring in more sales from your existing traffic.
How does Conversion Optimisation Work
In doing conversion optimisation for your website, your focus in on improving the user experience for your visitors.
A good experience can be created through the clever use of design and copy, to produce a downward sliding effect that leads your visitor towards the desired action.
This action can be to buy your product or service, sign up for a free session, or even subscribe to your email newsletter.
To provide the optimal experience for users, there is a lot of planning, researching and testing involved when you are carrying out website optimisation.
Design in Website Conversion Optimisation
In general, a clean and easy to understand design should be the backbone of your website.
From the navigation links, colours, fonts should not confuse or mislead visitors to somewhere they don’t want to go.
Every link should ideally be functioning and create a logical flow. If you make visitors jump through numerous hoops just to achieve a single action, you are going to lose him or her, because you are creating design resistance for your visitors to convert.
Your website also plays a part in building trust towards your visitors.
When your landing page design lacks consistency or professionalism, it gives off feelings of unprofessionalism and illegitimacy for your business. This can affect your conversion negatively.
Copy in Website Conversion Optimisation
Most marketers placed too much emphasis on design and forgot about optimising the copy. The copy on your website is just as important as your design.
It explains ideas, propositions, and actions clearly to your visitors. This way, they will know what to expect when they click on anything on your website. When your visitors fill in a form on your site, they have to understand why they are providing their personal info to you.
Your website copy also consists of the appropriate use of CTAs (calls to actions) to drive conversions.
The general guideline for copy is always to use easy-to-understand language and stay away from complicated lingo in all your copy.
For example, if you are selling a camera with a storage memory of 256GB, you can write “Holds up to 250,000 photos” to convey the value of your product and make the technical spec more straightforward for readers to understand.
Using simple language this way guarantees that your visitors will be able to understand what they are reading, eliminating any confusion.
Why Should I Care About Optimising my Website Conversion?
The reason is simple: If you want to bring in more sales and profit, then you cannot afford to ignore Website Conversion Optimisation.
When your website is optimised correctly and provide a great user experience, your site can appeal to the desired audience and generate more sales.
You may think you can afford to stick to a poorly designed user interface for your website. After all, content is king, if you build the customers will come, right?
Wrong.
Customer attention spans are short-lived, in fact it’s 8 seconds short, according to research.
Customers don’t stick around for long if something looks out of place or you do not answer the questions they are asking.
This is why conversion optimisation is so vital and why you need to be preemptive when it comes to making any tweaks to your site.
On the flip side, when you’re already running a well-optimised website for conversions, you will stand a better chance outselling your competitors, especially if most of your competitors don’t bother about website optimisation.
How Conversion Optimisation Helps You Understand more about your website
When you’re making key marketing decisions based on data, you need to have a clear understanding of what exactly you’re doing, rather than what you think you know when you follow your gut feeling.
Conversion optimisation enables you to make data-based decisions which drive smarter results.
You learn about your customers
Because conversion optimisation directly involves your customers and target market, through optimisation you can learn a lot more about them and utilise this info for future decisions.
By learning crucial facts about your prospects – such as what they enjoy or hate about your website, and what info they are seeking – you will be able to implement modifications to your website which can resonate well with your audience, strengthening brand loyalty.
Achieve better results
When you’re implementing tweaks based on real data, you will find that any decisions you ultimately make will drive better results.
For example, If you alter the colour of some of your site’s menu bar because A/B testing has shown you that 10% more visitors will click it, that’s going to culminate in a 10% increase in people clicking through when it’s implemented permanently.
You will beat the competition
As your conversion rate goes up, you’ll find that traffic towards your social media pages and your overall online popularity will also increase.
The more you optimise, test and change your website, the better you will perform in search engine results; conversion optimisation is an excellent way to complement an SEO strategy.
You will increase profits
This is the whole point of increasing your conversion rates – to boost your sales and profits to the highest possible levels. Increased conversion rates mean more sales, which means more money in the pocket of your business.
Conversion optimisation is one of the best ways you can organically increase your sales and social media following in addition to your digital marketing strategy.
You gain control of the debate
When decisions are made by instinct rather than by numbers, then the person in the group with the loudest voice wins.
When you are driven by data, then the numbers do the talking instead. Reducing opinion from the debates is a key way to improve the discussion and debate within marketing meetings.
Want to learn more about Website Conversion Optimisation?
You can learn more about conversion optimisation here at my blog. I share powerful tips and secrets regularly, to help you achieve maximum conversions on your website on your own.
Of course, if you find all this too overwhelming and you just don’t have the time to take things in your own hands, feel free to contact me and I will be here to help you out.
How I Can Help You in Optimising Your Website
If you think that your website needs a little boost to improve conversion performance, or you simply wish to re-design from the ground up it with optimisation in mind, I’m here to help you do just that.
It doesn’t matter whether you are just looking for a little bit of guidance or would like a comprehensive solution planning and implementing, I will achieve better conversion rates for you.
Conduct A/B testing
As mentioned earlier in this article, conducting A/B testing is integral to the success of your business website. But not knowing what to test can make you waste unnecessary time and budget.
With my help, I can run the tests for you using a systematic method, using the right resources at my disposal, so you can focus on growing other important aspects of your business.
I have put together several resources and guides on my blog which can teach you how to optimise your own website to increase conversion rates and sales.
As mentioned earlier in this article, conducting A/B testing is integral to the success of your business website. But not knowing what to test can make you waste unnecessary time and budget.
Create high conversion landing pages
While I am not a professional website designer, I have access to a pool of design talents within my agency.
Because the aesthetic design alone can’t win you conversions, if the user interface is poor and the CTA of your website is weak.
In fact, a poor user interface and weak CTAs on your website not only don’t help your business, but it can also have a detrimental effect on your business branding goals.
Being a digital marketer, I can integrate and implement design decisions into the aesthetic aspects of your website, to ensure your website not only looks great, but converts visitors beautifully too.
Check out my blog
By reading these articles and learning key strategies and secrets from me, with the right effort you can dramatically improve your conversion rates.
At the end of the day, my goal is to help as many local UK businesses as I can in achieving their online marketing goals, whether they wish to work with me or not.
Nevertheless, if you wish to speak to a digital marketing expert on the quickest way to improve your website conversion, get in touch for a no-obligation chat about what I can help you achieve.
