Conversion Rate Optimization
Gaining traffic to your site is the number one goal for all small businesses trying to increase revenue for growth. Capitalizing on each visitor to your site and therefore increasing your conversion rates, regardless of whether the user accesses your site via mobile or laptop your site must give you a chance of converting them into our latest customer and possible referral.
Introductory offers, discounts and well-written SEO content showcasing how you are unique from your competition are essential but it’s nothing new, you can do much more than that to stand out from the crowd to help your SEO agency, and make no mistake the crowd is big and only getting bigger, you need to shout louder to be heard in the market these days.
Here are conversion rate optimization ideas to help you convert browsers into business.
What About a Blog?
It seems around every corner there’s a blogger and many cases unsuccessful ones. However, a well written, informative and up-to-date blog will attract readers to your site an over time will grow and an as your traffic increases so will your rankings.
When you first start out it’s a bit like writing into a void, an empty space trying to find and identify your target reader, to find your writing niche. The most important thing is not to pitch your products too hard, too fast. Millennials will likely be a large percentage of your audience in today’s online world, and they see salesmanship a mile away.
Keep your blog informative, so if you are citing statistics back them up, get people talking and referencing you in-turn – the Holy Grail of link building. Don’t be afraid to spend time on an article, use eBooks and videos to keep your audience engaged, that is the key to success for any blogger.
Once your blog has an influence and a following you can subliminally introduce products and services as you have the moral high ground with your reader base. Then move onto connecting up with social media platforms and outlets to increase your outreach.
Do Your Research on Web Hosting
With Google’s attention lately turned firmly towards UX and UI you just cannot afford a slow loading site whether it be due to having unsuitable imagery or lousy web hosting, let’s concentrate on the web hosting.
Any kind of load up issues, or speed issues will not only affect your rankings but rarely is anyone in a niche where no-one else of the net has a comparable product, another company is just a simple click away, and they’re gone, never to return. Utilize quality web hosting to optimize your speed and performance, not only is that what your audience likes but also that’s what Google wants.
Have you considered as an option a Virtual Private Server (VPS) whereby you rent your own server and store and also host your site’s data? Plans are upgradable for enhanced stability as you grow and raise the performance of your website in tandem to increase your conversion rates. I recommend reading a post on Hosting.
Creating Functional, Navigational Design
Navigation is another component vital to keeping your audience engaged throughout their online experience with your site. If anything becomes laborious on your site, or difficult to find they will be gone. People who browse the internet have an extremely short attention span and are easily lost by hard to navigate website.
If you are not familiar with WordPress, or can honestly admit to yourself that your skills don’t match the vision of how you want your website to look then an investment at the start of your business with a digital marketing company who specialize and understand UX and UI in tandem with SEO strategies. They can help you to optimize and boost your conversions by hosting a website that has an appealing look, is easy-to-use with engaging content, and attention to colors and fonts.
A well-reputed company can also engage with you on how to represent your brand message that you want to push to build your core of followers. The trick is not to leave it all to the company though, by getting involved in these points, it’s a team effort.
Get a Handle on Your Conversion Metrics
Set out and define specific goals or targets that you want from each visitor to your site. These are your conversion metrics, by first setting and then continuously analyzing the data at your disposal will tell you what (if anything) needs amending on your website.
Utilize new technologies like a Heat-map and run them on your site for a month to see where people are gravitating to on your site, the irony of this technology is more relevant to see where they are not going on your site as to where potential conversion problems are.
Conversion metrics are the goals that you set out for each visitor, look to have a clearly defined goal for each page of the site, this can be anything from clicking a specific link or filling out a form, to answering some brief well directed poignant questions. Then implement A/B testing to analyse what’s working and what needs to be tweaked or overhauled to optimize your conversions.
A/B Testing How to Utilize it
If someone asked me to give them one tip and one tip only about business, this would be my answer in a nutshell – Don’t assume anything.
Over the years I have seen way too many businesses owners assume their approach or product, packaging or message was what the consumer wanted. With today’s technologies at your fingertips analyzing information and data has never been more accessible. A/B testing lead to smarter more informed business decisions, it can not, as you can extract behavioral data from consumers that have been active on your site, you have quantifiable data at your fingertip.
An approach to enhance the effectiveness of A/B testing is to test small pockets of trial data on pools of user’s using different messages to see what resonates and gets the best response and those that don’t. This is a useful tool not just to analyse your users but also what’s working on your site or not as the case may be and adjust accordingly.
Integration of Fresh Content
Captivating, engaging content is what users crave, if your site is outdated, you will struggle. Boring in NOT an option in 2018.
Content to millennial is king, business owners who spend time optimizing their content using new tools such as long tail keywords are increasing traffic to their site, leaving others in their wake.
Smart copy-writing is using common phrases used by satisfied consumers, using this to craft promotions to grab the attention of your target audience. Content optimized for SEO tactics can acquire visitors from all over the world, gaining valuable exposure and global appeal.
Calls to Action – Make Them Stand Out
Although you may master the art of engaging content that tells a story and keep your audience engaged if at the end of it all you don’t engage them further by action, what a waste.
Making the audience take the next step is the ultimate goal and the fundamental rule of increasing your conversion rates.
It can come down to the slightest details that can make the difference, like changing the location of your action button, this could be key to grabbing more attention.
There are many options, for example, using a text-based button, or using more than one call to action option on the same page is useful. Make the call to action stand out, it doesn’t need to be flashing bright lights but don’t implant it as one or two word’s use dynamic wording, remember it’s all about conversions if you’ve got them interest now it’s time to convert.
In Conclusion
As in all business, conversion is the difference between success and failure.
So first you need to lay the foundations with your core message, start with an engaging and fresh blog to grow your audience. Make sure your hosting enables your website to operate at premium speed with reliability. Continuous analyzing of the data you have, while assuming nothing and a willingness to change and adapt to suit the trends and demands of your users is key to drive and optimize your conversions but with intense competition out there it’s advisable to engage professional help.
Canberra is proving itself to be a hotbed for talented SEO companies, a search for an SEO company in Canberra is a good starting point if you are a small business, engage and ask them what strategies they are using for optimization within the country looking ahead to 2019.
Remember to take the rough with the smooth and don’t let it get you down if your kick rate is initially high; it works in progress. Above all else always be proactive and continuously be optimizing.
Such a good article. Appreciate it. Totally agree that speed issues affect your rankings. It’s an important subject.
I agree that content is still the king. No one wants an outdated information afterall. Engaging and fresh content is what users want. Anyways, great points!
Good read! Your article is very informative and helpful in optimizing small businesses. I do agree that well written, informative and up-to-date blog will attract readers to your site. Thanks for sharing this awesome post! Keep it up!
Average e-commerce conversion rates are 1% to 2% even if we are doing everything right but the sale we expect is around 2% at a time. I think this steps helped to reach a small incremental improvement to the overall experience. This is the game where we won’t work for the first time.
Hi Paula,
You have shared a very important piece of information. It is important to analyze your site at regular intervals and see what changes needs to be done in order to attract more visitors.
Thanks you for this post. Have a great week ahead.
Hi Paula,
Great post. You have shared a wonderful article giving great in-depth information about optimizing small business. technologies like a Heat-map can be of great advantage. It can help you analyse your visitors navigation pattern and suggest you changes which can get you more returns.
Thanks for sharing this post. Have a good day. 🙂
Hi Paula & Robin,
CRO is essential for Small Businesses if you want to achieve Big in Online Marketing.
hile there’s a lot of great advice on CRO in here, the post is also a content marketing lesson in and of itself.