How To Convert More Sales on Your Website

The first step of every great digital marketing strategy is to find your target audience and figure out how to get their attention. But once you have their attention and you’ve got them on your website, you need to ensure you’re well set up to convert that traffic to sales. 

It’s a common issue to be ranking well in search results or getting great results on your advertising, yet not seeing that reflected in your bottomline. Typically, when this is the case, there are lots of easy ways you can optimize your website to create a stronger chance that your visitors will convert to customers. Check out our top tips!

1. Make It Match – If you are running social media or Google ads, ensure that they are appropriately branded with visuals and language that matches your brand. When someone clicks on your ad, they should link to a landing page that properly reflects what they saw in the ad. While platforms such as Facebook check your links, they don’t look for common errors that can lead to confusion, frustration or mistrust such as the landing page not looking similar to the ad they clicked on or using very different language. This is an easy way to lose visitors pretty quickly.

    

2. Load Speed – You’ve heard this one over and over, probably from your SEO company (or us!), but we’ll keep on saying it because it becomes more critical every time Google releases an update… or when you have a high bounce rate, which dramatically reduces your conversions. Ensure your site loads quickly, that each page is working properly, that downloads are instantaneous and that your mobile offering is working flawlessly.

    

3. Keep It Simple – There is a reason that this comes up in every area of life, especially when doing business. Especially in this day and age of very limited attention spans, every extra click loses people. When information is hard to find or promotions are too hard to digest, more and more people drop off. Go through your website, your ads, your e-commerce processes,etc., and remove every single unnecessary step. And remember that while collecting additional data may be helpful for you, it’s frustrating for your customers, so incentivize them or just don’t bother.

    

   This is a very important part of optimizing your site for conversions so here are some specific tips you can follow:

    

   • Ensure your Home page and key landing pages are as close to perfect as possible. Refine them, test them and keep making improvements until you get something that works. Once conversions on those pages start to wan, make minor adjustments until they are successful again.

   • Make sure navigation is as clear, clean and simple as possible.

   • Remove any unnecessary steps or clicks in the conversion process. The less fields in a form the better.

   • Remove distractions on your site. If something doesn’t add immediate value to the primary conversion the page is for, don’t have it on the page.

   • Keep all language on your website straightforward. Be honest and transparent in everything you say and offer.

   • Every conversion is not necessarily going to result in a sale so while you want things to be clear and concise, you also need to offer an alternative if the visitor is not yet ready to buy. Suggest signing up for a newsletter or move them to another page for more information if the immediate call to action is not taken.

    

4. Get Your Content Right – The quality of your website content is a huge factor is whether visitors feel comfortable and satisfied enough to proceed with becoming your customer. There are many small changes you can make that create a big difference.

    

   • Try using more personalized pronouns such as “you” and “we”. Let your customers feel they are already a part of your company. Tell them how working with you or purchasing from you will benefit them personally.

   • Use your customer’s voice in your copy. This means that you should use the words and tone that your customer’s would have when talking about your products. While your brand voice should be uniquely yours, if you’re talking to the right customers the two should be closely aligned. Just remember that your website should feel friendly, appealing and comfortable to your target audience as well so find a good balance.

   • Ensure your unique value proposition is very clearly communicated within the top third of your Home page. On the flip side, don’t try to sell in this area. Just tell people WHY they should buy and ask for the sale a bit further down.

     Note: This doesn’t apply to using a Call Now button at the top of the page where appropriate.

   • Improve your design. Website themes, colours and formats can get stale and outdated so be sure to update every few years depending on your industry. If you’ve combed your site and can’t find a reason for conversions slowing down, sometimes just a minor design refresh is enough to lift it up again.

   • USE VIDEO! This is another one you’ve heard us say over and over, but this is only gaining more relevance so get some video on your Home page and key landing pages.

      

5. Build Trust – It is critical that everything on your website is considered through the lens of asking “Does this build trust with our intended buyers?”. It can be easy to get caught up in website trends or hacks you saw online, but remember, withholding information or sacrificing detail for too much simplicity, or intentionally misleading your visitors, will result in them abandoning the sales process and your site without converting. Here are some tips on building trust with your website visitors:

    

   • Always include contact information. At minimum your physical address, phone number and an email address. If your business doesn’t have a physical address, at least include the city and province you are located in. Even if you sell globally, people often want to know where you are based. And a website lacking a phone number or email address is a red flag that will cause most people to avoid doing business with you, especially if you are an e-commerce website.

   • On that same note, be consistent, honest and transparent about everything you claim, offer and suggest on your website and ensure anything you say is carried across all of your processes. Consistency from end to end builds trust and retains customers.

   • Offer unbiased information such as supporting links to trusted authorities or social proof such as testimonials and case studies. Add images to your testimonials and case studies to give them more clout, or better yet, use video as well.

   • Address any objections your potential customers may have. By showing that you clearly understand their reservations, and gaps that there may be in your offering, you’ll gain their trust much quicker. Trying to hide these details or explain them away will only turn people off. Address them upfront and as early as possible, though this can be done subliminally and positioned as a positive option. A good example of this is understanding that some investments can carry a high risk, especially when there is significant financial or time investment, so offering a money back guarantee or free trial period will really help people take the step towards becoming your customer.

    

6. Make Recommendations – In keeping with the idea of social proof, many customers prefer to have a recommendation made for them or to be told the most popular option. They also like to have the next step, or call to action, clearly spelled out for them with easy to find buttons and access to the resources they need to make decisions at their fingertips.

    

   • If you have multiple package options, make note of the most popular ones.

   • Include upsell suggestions such as other items that work well together.

   • Offer packages and incentivize the customer to go with the one you prefer with things like deep discounts, free shipping or additional products.

   • Know your customers well enough to know what type of offer will best incentive them. This goes back to objections and creating trust. Do you need a discount, or a free trial? Easy returns or a money back guarantee? Or maybe an incentive to buy now?

   • Once you have their attention, don’t be afraid to suggest the next step. Buy Now, Learn More, Sign Up, Follow Us, Leave A Review… These are just some samples of the types of call to action you should be using throughout your site (and your marketing) to help move visitors to customers.

    

7. Keep In Touch – It’s very common that people will research multiple options online so you want to be sure to keep in touch if they don’t convert right away. Find a way to collect their email address or sign them up for regular communication such as a newsletter so you can continue to market to them as they move through the sales process. Use retargeting ads as well to stay in their feeds and searches.

8. Test – We’ve talked about this a few times because it’s important to test everything along the way, but it’s also important that even once you find what works for your brand, you keep checking in on your conversion data and adjust as needed. Things change, social constructs shift and people get bored – make sure you keep up!

Once you have a visitor on your website, you want to keep them there as long as possible and have them convert into a customer during that visit. While this will not happen every time – some people are just dreaming, some are not your target customer and some need more time – you want to keep your rate of converting the traffic you attract into customers (or at least prospects you can keep talking to) as high as possible. You’ll find a lot of tips out there on how to do this. Some are fads that may prove poor advice in the long run and many are tried and true tactics based on science and creating authentic connections with customers. We believe the latter half are the best foundational options and then you can play with hacks and fads once you have a proven website that’s converting for you. Set up a strong baseline and go from there!

We know this can be a lot to consider if you’re going it alone. Digital Monk offers website audits and can provide direction and strategy to your existing web developers. This tactic can save you money while offering specific advice based on your unique brand and the customers you are trying to convert. Reach out today if you’d like us to audit your website for optimal conversion results!