Whether you are running a B2B or B2C business, your website conversion rate is vital. In order to boost the conversion rate for your website, there are three questions to consider to help you understand how your site currently performs and what steps you can take to improve it.
#1 Relevance: Is my website relevant to the traffic sources I am marketing to?
Relevance should be the first step when making marketing decisions and understanding how your website performs. While difficult, understanding how your potential customers find your business helps you identify the appropriate channels to market toward. There can be several layers within your strategy from a broad focus, to a very niche approach. The objective is to maximize your biggest opportunities (your most targeted market) and as budget and success permit, then extend outward to additional areas/targets for further growth.
Additionally, make sure that all marketing efforts are tied to the site itself. One of the worst mistakes we see is running a promotion that is disconnected from the messaging on the resulting “landing page”. When searchers reach your page, will they realize or understand that the page is related to the ad they just saw? If not, a new, more relevant landing page experience ought to be created.
#2 Value: Does your customer know why you are the right solution?
It is an age old question in business, what differentiates you from your competition? If you think about any time you make a purchase, you probably consider your options. What helps you make that final decision? The “value” component is extremely important for your customers to understand. This needs to be at the forefront of your marketing, as well as your website, to make sure that there is a cohesive message throughout the sales cycle.
#3 Call to Action: Is the action step straightforward?
This may seem very obvious, but many miss it. There are often assumptions made at this step, due to a misconception that most customers should be “familiar” with how websites work. The question is, are they familiar with your website? The more obvious and simple you can make the path, the more likely it will be for a person to convert. Think about a time when you’ve made a purchase online or you’ve wanted to get additional information on a service. Did you want to fill out a form with over 10 mandatory fields? Do you want to go through a 6-step checkout process in the shopping cart? By making these processes as seamless and quick as possible, you are helping your customers save time and have a more favorable experience.
By addressing these three questions, you can be on the road to a dramatically higher conversion rate and a more profitable website. While these principles were compiled with online marketing in mind, they can also be applied to your offline marketing efforts as well. The more cohesive your messaging is from marketing, to site messaging, and through to purchase, the better user experience you will offer and the higher your website will perform. Once you’ve asked yourself these questions, make some website changes and evaluate any impacts on your conversion rate. Then, ask yourself these questions again, is there further room for improvement?
