Conversion rate optimization is an essential element of digital marketing. Improving your conversion rate can allow you turn failing campaigns into winning ones, give you an edge over the competition and can generate higher profit margins for your business. To many small business owners, the process of improving conversions can feel challenging.
There are so many different website elements to work with and a seemingly endless number of directions you can take, but the best thing that beginners can do is to rely on the fundamentals. Here are 7 conversion rate optimization tips that anyone can use to see results very quickly.
7 Conversion Rate Optimization Must-Do’s
1. Test Different Types of Headlines
The best way to start the conversion rate optimization process is to test different headlines. What you want to do is to test completely different headlines. Many business owners make the mistake of falling in love with a specific headline and playing around with variations of it. However, the biggest results will come from addressing your visitors from a different angle altogether.
You can try out different variations once you’ve experimented with multiple headlines and found a headline that generates significantly better results than the others. After that, you should test different formatting, font types, font sizes and colors in the headline for small lifts.
2. Approach with a Different Sales Copy Lead
The lead in a sales copy is the first few sentences or paragraph in your sales page. While the purpose of your headline is to capture the prospect’s attention, the purpose of your lead is to elaborate on your headline and build interest.
There are many sales pages online that have a great headline that is hurt by a poor lead. Like the headline, you want to try different approaches in your sales copy lead to see what makes the most impact. Just make sure that the lead is always relevant to the headline or you’ll confuse the visitor.
3. Experiment with Different Designs
Design play a huge role in conversion rate optimization. Design is a part of how you present your sales copy, how you support your sales copy, how you evoke emotions in your visitors, and how intuitive your site is to use and read. There are many simple ways to use design to improve your conversion rate. You can emphasize your call to action/offer with containers, graphical buttons, and unique font. You can also try different layouts and styles such as hero image, parallax, letterbox and minimalist designs.
There are many other design ideas to try out but if you’re hiring a designer to help you, make sure you get designers that are also conversion rate optimization experts or you might end up with a pretty site that doesn’t convert.
4. Try Out Different Offers
Your offer is basically what your visitors will be getting for their money. This is a big part of conversion rate optimization if you are working on a site that has the goal of getting prospects to make a purchase. If you have a regular offer, try to make improvements by making it clear what the customer is getting and selling them on the bonuses, warranty, and guarantee.
You can also try different approaches to see what results in the highest conversions and profits. Standard offers flat out ask for the sale but there are others that may work better. You can try offering a $1 trial which bills the customer the rest of the balance at a later time, using limited time sensitive offers or offering a free trial period.
5. Include Testimonials, Endorsement, and Ratings
Unfortunately, many businesses dismiss the importance of social proof when it comes to conversion rate optimization. You have to understand that most visitors are not going to trust your website right out of the gate. Using social proof is the best way to create trust and authority. Testimonials are a great way to prove that you have real, satisfied customers.
When you do use testimonials use real photos and a quick bio of the person that is giving you the testimonial. It’s even better if you can use video testimonials. Another great way to establish trust is to get an endorsement from a well-known person, website or organization. Finally, you can use ratings if your business or product has been rated on a popular site like Amazon, Google, Yelp, Zagat, etc.
6. Aim for Multiple Small Conversion Lifts to Add Up to Big Results
Conversion rate optimization is not always about creating big results. Sometimes, it’s about incremental improvements that add up to big results. Everything from testing different images, trying out different fonts, including privacy statements, breaking the order form into multiple parts, using video, to changing your site’s color scheme can all make an impact on your conversion rate.
Adopting the philosophy of never ending improvement will go a long way. You want to start the conversion rate optimization process with the elements that typically produce big changes and work your way down to elements that will have a smaller impact.
7. Use Multivariate Testing
While you should start with A/B split testing to get some experience, you eventually want to move on to multivariate testing. Multivariate testing tests multiple elements of a web page at the same time to determine the combination of elements that work best. It’s a rapid-fire conversion rate optimizer as it is designed to help you discover the optimal sales page as quickly as possible. Not only does it save time, it will also help you save a lot of money as it quickly helps you reach maximum profitability in advertising campaigns.
These tips will help you get started in the right direction with website conversion rate optimization. While the process can get complex, working on the fundamentals will help you make significant progress. Once you start seeing some results, you may want to look for expert conversion rate optimization services to get the most out of your campaign.
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