Website conversion means that a visitor to your website has made the transition from a visitor to a potential customer/client. A conversion to some webmasters may be a purchase and some it may be a donation, response or signup. Regardless of what your conversion is, you need to understand the mechanics behind Conversion Optimisation in order to get them conversions. Free SEO Training has put together a list of 3 golden rules to remember when optimising your website for conversions.
Golden Rule Number 1:
Just because you know how to navigate around your website easily don’t expect your visitors to! A common misconception with webmasters is they expect visitors to work out for themselves how to convert without putting anything in place to walk them through it. When you are dealing with the public in general, if it’s not in front of their face or if there is no one to walk them through it they won’t. You need to understand what your visitors are doing and identify in advance any possible hurdles for instance, if, during a checkout you need to load a webpage which is large, the visitor may loose interest. Another good example is when completing a form and the visitor makes a mistake and tries to submit the form, if you don’t tell the visitor what they have done wrong (normally in big red writing) they will just quit.
Golden Rule Number 2:
What works now may not work later however what changes you make in future may not be compatible with older customers. This simply means that the processes you have in place will at some point be outdated however if you change too much too fast previous clients may not use you again as they are used to a system. If you implement changes make sure you have it backed up with multivariate testing / A/B split testing. Humans naturally don’t like change so note this when implementing any large changes to your website and make sure all documentation is there to again, walk them through it step by step.
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Golden Rule Number 3:
Ask for feedback. Feedback on a large scale provides more insight into the workings of your visitors than any other reporting software, tool or consultant. Most individuals will be more than happy to tell you what is wrong with your website as opposed to what is working well so it would be a good idea to add a gift on completion of a survey. Visitors appreciate you asking them how they found your website as webmasters who fail to listen to people are the same webmasters being badly reviewed on comparison, review and feedback websites. (Trip Advisor etc..)
What you need to know about conversions
In order to get a good understanding about any market or industry you need to know the people within that particular sector as they are the people who make that industry. One of the most successful websites are from people who share a passion and are part of the industry along similar minded people. In order to make conversions you need a clear cut vision of your visitors, any future hurdles they may come across on your website and the whole conversion process.
Know your audience
A common and successful strategy adopted by most webmasters is pretend any visitor that makes it onto your website knows nothing about what you do, why they should use you or how to use your website. This is a strategy which will appeal to all potential customers as the new ones will know what to do and veterans within your market can use your website with ease without being patronized. A good website will have the support available to the people who need it and the usability of competent website users as support information can cause hindrance to their website experience.
Predict your audience
You need to get into the minds of your audience and understand the possible routes they will take around your website. You need to have a plan in terms of the path they need to take in order to make a sale/conversion this can be look like:
Visitor A visits website > Visitor Searches for Product > Visitor then looks at alternatives > Visitor returns to make a sale > Visitor will see Checkout Screen > Visitor will Pay (Average Duration 4 minutes 30 seconds)
If you can determine the average time needed on the website you can optimise your website around Google Analytics ensuring that there is no hindrance to the time on site such as server errors, lagging and slow speed connection.
Your Call To Action function
A call to action is a trigger for a response, this can be in the form of a flashing banner to different color font. You can look at your call to action using several strategies firstly you can look at it’s visibility, is it within the correct section(s) of your website and is it relevantly placed? Try to deviate the layout of your call to action throughout the website as call to actions can blend in within the website if it’s consistent. If you have done suitable research for the above you will know roughly which path your visitor will take and place it accordingly.