There has been a considerable amount of effort put into SEO and link building over the years by many businesses seeking to thrive online, with the goal of ranking on top of the SERPs and driving visitors that have a high probability of completing a purchase.
Targeting the right keywords that have buyer-intent and then actually ranking for them is a huge task, and accomplishment, when done right. It can be very time consuming and extremely expensive, and even when you do rank on top and see a flood of traffic on your website sales are still not guaranteed. You could have all of the top Google rankings for your target keywords and still not generate any sales or revenue.
How can that be? Well, if your website isn’t set up to convert at a high rate all of that effort and money is a complete waste.
It goes far beyond just having a nice looking website design, also, which is where a lot of the issues stem from. Companies pay agencies tens of thousands of dollars to create eye-appealing logos and website designs, but if they aren’t done with converting traffic in mind it’s a huge waste of money.
Look at ClickBank websites and some affiliate websites for popular offers. Their designs are so simple and dated, but they convert, and that is what really matters.
You need links, you need solid on-site optimization and SEO can deliver amazing results, but only if you have a website that will convert the traffic that lands on it. In order to help you make some tweaks to improve your conversion rate, leading to more sales and revenue for your website.
Here are seven tips that anyone can put into motion today to help increase your revenue.
1. Accept the fact that most of your traffic will be on mobile devices.
Everyone has shifted to a responsive website, or at least they should have by now. If a website isn’t mobile friendly, then it probably hasn’t generated money for a long time and is just sitting idle until the hosting bill stops getting paid.
The biggest problem I see is that business owners don’t take into account how someone uses his or her mobile device. A lot of people use one hand, so requiring someone to zoom in and manipulate the screen in order to adjust its size is going to push people away.
Your buttons and navigation should be accessible while holding a phone in one hand and scrolling with a thumb and using an index finger to “click” buttons.
I can promise you that if someone can’t navigate your site with one hand you are losing money. A lot of money. Now, when they see something they like, or want to complete a form or offer, then the phone goes into two-hand mode allowing them to type.
You need to also remember that some people have huge sausage fingers, so make your buttons and form fields as large as possible. Mobile number increase year after year, and eventually desktop traffic will become obsolete. Prepare now. The best way it to have real people go through your site, so enlist family and friends to be your source of feedback.
2. Don’t require the user to scroll in order to fully understand the offer.
While it is impossible to place every bit of information on a webpage above the fold, it is very important that the visitor is able to understand exactly what your offer is as soon as they land on a particular page, without having to scroll at all.
This can be done with clever headlines and design elements. The trick is to at least capture their attention, so they connect with the offer and want to take the time to scroll down to learn more and hopefully take action.
It’s also important to make your main attention grabber very short to the point. Let’s pretend you are an e-commerce website that sells health supplements and you created a landing page for a fat burner. Rather than listing all of the benefits and ingredients right away, you would want to have a compelling image of someone fit, the product and a powerful message like, “Drop Unwanted Body Fat in Time for Summer!”
Someone will see that and immediately connect the image and headline to what they want to achieve. This grabs their attention and then they will scroll down for more information. This is where you can then list all of the details of the product.
If your offer is attractive because of a price, then highlight that. Things like “Save 75% TODAY!” or “Buy 1 get 2 FREE!” capture instant attention.
3. Stop offering multiple CTAs on a single page.
The attention span of humans is decreasing every year, which is why you can’t give someone multiple options in terms of conversion offers on each page. You need to do everything possible to push them to the one single offer that you are presenting them with.
Now, you might have hundreds or even thousands of conversion options, but each one needs its own page, for several reasons.
Let’s assume you are an e-commerce store and you have created a purchase page for “Blue Widget XM500” and the URL structure for the page ends in /blue-widget-xm500, your on-site optimization is perfect, you are ranking on Google in the top position for the keyword “buy blue widget xm500” and your traffic number are thousands per day.
If someone is searching that search phrase in Google, then they are looking to buy a blue widget xm500. So, give them no other option on your page other than purchasing the product.
If you have a call-to-action that invites them to go checkout your blog or subscribe to an email list that could pull their attention away from the purchase. Think about it for a minute. The reason you would want to get someone on your email list or engage with your content is to convert them into a customer. Someone landing on this page is ready to purchase already. Let them purchase and they will be on your list of customers.
I would also suggest removing the navigation menu from pages like this, as it gives them an opportunity to jump over to another page and become distracted. They might have intention to buy, but while they are on the other page they could receive a phone call or a text message that pulls them away.
Knowing what traffic is ready to buy will help you make the necessary changes to keep them on the page with just one option, and that it to buy.
4. Make your checkout process simple and never require account creation.
I see two things that are responsible for shopping cart abandonment. First, requiring the visitor to register an account in order to complete the process. If you are doing this, then you are losing a large amount of sales every day.
Consumers are so protective of their information now, that many will not buy from a website that requires an account to be created. They don’t want to risk putting in their information and having it stored, making it vulnerable to a hack.
Allow guest checkout and if you are using a payment processor like Stripe, be sure to let your customers know that your website doesn’t store their payment information. Simply placing a little blurb on your checkout page can help create trust.
The other thing I see that kills conversion rates is a checkout process that is multiple pages with multiple steps required. If you have ever seen Stripe’s 1-click option in action you would realize how simple it can be. When integrated, when a customer clicks on “Buy Now” a little box pops up that asks for their name, credit card number, expiration date, security code and zip. That is all. They enter it, push submit, and you capture the sale, then they can be directed to fill out shipping info if it’s a physical product. If you are selling digital products there is no need.
If you are only selling one product on your site, then you can do some coding to bring the customer right to the check out, rather than to the shopping cart, since there is just one thing to buy. Little hacks like this to create a quicker checkout process means less time for the customer to think of a reason to abandon the purchase.
5. Simplify your initial navigation options.
If you pay attention to new web design trends, you will see that primary navigation menus are a lot simpler now than they were years ago. I can remember huge navigation menus with a dozen choices and then a few dozen sub-menu choices. Now, you usually see 5 or 6 choices.
This helps to drive traffic to the main areas, where then you can use call-to-actions to direct visitors to more specific pages. If you give too many options in the beginning it can cause confusion and an overwhelmed visitor will just leave your website rather than try to figure it out.
If you are an e-commerce store, then your navigation should be something like:
- Home
- Shop
- Contact
- Blog
This satisfies the needs of your three customer stages: those that want to buy now, those that want to contact you to ask a pre-sales question, and those that need to engage with your company more in order to feel comfortable.
I see too many people trying to include links to case studies, privacy policies, terms of service, testimonials, etc. These all have a place, but not on the main menu. Your privacy policy and terms of service links can be in your footer and stuff like case studies and testimonials can be linked to in the sidebar of your shop, giving people a resource to learn more about what you offer.
6. Eliminate all unnecessary website clutter.
I recently visited a website and after 3 seconds of being on the site a huge popup was displayed. I wasn’t trying to leave, so it wasn’t an exit-intent popup, and it was hard to find the way to close it. It was frustrating to say the least, but then it got worse.
As soon as I scrolled down, a slide out box came out with the same offer as the large popup I just closed. I closed that and then within 5 seconds another offer (the same one too) came sliding down from the top.
Talk about overkill, and pushing visitors away before they even have a chance to look around. I was hit with three popups all within 10 seconds of being on the website. What do you think I did next? I closed out the browser quickly before I was hit with another popup.
You don’t need every bell and whistle on your website. The best websites know what will work to their advantage for their particular visitors. Just because a marketing plugin offers a half-dozen different popups, that doesn’t mean you need to activate them all.
7. Don’t overthink your layout.
Years ago people were spending a ridiculous amount of money on custom website design and development. Today, it just isn’t needed. People aren’t impressed with websites like they once were, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that most are browsing on mobile. Nobody has the time nor interest in looking at fancy designs.
There are plenty of Shopify stores doing seven-figures a year running a stock theme with a logo purchased on Fiverr. How do they do it? Well, the stock themes that Shopify offers are perfectly optimized and feature layouts that are very simple.
There is no overkill, and they do everything right. If you are an e-commerce store and even if you are running on a different platform, I would suggest looking at Shopify’s themes to see what a minimalistic layout looks like.
For service based businesses, try to tell your story in a way that allows you to have a clean and simple layout. A minimalistic theme with a video of your company history will perform much better than a long text post, when it comes to generating leads.
Conclusion
When you fully understand how your visitors act on your website, you are then able to make subtle changes that increase the ease and navigation, which eventually helps to push them towards the conversion.
Having a compelling offer and a competitive price also comes into play, which is just further proof that you need to focus on everything equally, in order to really see stellar results. Rankings alone won’t get the job done, just as having a great product that nobody knows exists.
The tips above are not complicated, and they don’t even require a lot of money to implement. What you do need is the mindset to understand that conversion rate optimization (CRO) is just as equally important as all of the link building and SEO effort you are putting into your website.
If you have any specific questions about optimizing for conversions, leave them below. This is something I have been focusing a lot of my time on recently across several online businesses I’m involved with, and I can tell you first-hand that you can see incredible results simply by following the suggestions above.
