Increase Conversion Rates on your website with these most “workable” actions which will help you boost website sales.
We are not going to show any dreams to you. Nor are we going to talk big!
If you are reading this post, chances are that either your web design project is underway or you are through with your project. Now you want your project to attract more audience and increase the website conversion rates.
What needs done – get rid of cliches and work on things that would help you IMPROVE and be the BEST in something you are already good at.
Attracting visitors to your site and achieving good conversion rate is no rocket science, after all!
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What is Website Conversion Rate?
A website conversion rate is the ratio of visitors which makes a purchase on your website against the number of total visitors to your site.
The conversion rate is one of the most important metrics to measure the success of a website.
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As per my personal research by following many websites and case studies of various brands and also by even interviewing key stakeholders at various organizations, the average rate of conversion is around 3%. The highest converting website has a conversion rate that’s as high as 40%!
(Once you read the entire post, you also get to know which business or a website converts over 40% of the total visitors and how they do it.)
Whatever your present conversion rate is, you should always aim for a higher rate and think of how to increase website sales. Remember, even a slight improvement of 1% in conversion rate can make a huge difference to your revenues.
It is a simple maths:
Say, you get around 10k visitors a month.
Your are selling a $20 cheap product. Your current conversion rate is 1% i.e. 100 customers buys your products out of total 10k visitors. You are currently making $20 x 100 = $ 2000
If you can optimize your website to convert 1% extra percent of visitors, you would be now having 200 customers paying you $20 and your revenue is $20 x 200 customers = $ 4000
Trust me when I say that 1% to 2% increase in conversion rate can scale up your profits by thousands of dollars.
In today’s competitive world, where it is largely about “the winner takes all,” it is even more important that you develop an edge over all your competitors.
We
want your site towill make your site convert more than 3% of the traffic.
In this post, we have brought together seven ways to increase your conversions.
You do not need to be an excellent webmaster for this. Just dedicate couple of hours a week and you shall see the difference.
Also, you can checkout few effective and time-tested tips on conversion rate optimization here.
Various elements go into developing a highly effective website that converts more. The most important rule remains the same. Create an excellently designed and impressive looking website and stay ahead in the big online game. If you feel you are not comfortable with your design, your customers will feel just like you
Here we present the 7 secrets that help you improve and boost your sales and conversion figures, right away!
Typography drives conversions
Quick typography tips for designers:
- Do not use more than three font types across your website. Use one for the titles and subtitles, and one for the body copy. You might use another font at rare occasions like graphics, ads, and banners.
- Mobile compatibility of your website is essential these days. Sans-serif fonts are optimal for handheld devices. Use this for your next website design.
- Use Arial, Georgia or Verdana in the body copy.
- Use Baskerville, Georgia or Arial for headlines.
You must be thinking now, that above 4 quick tips are a random. NO, I have done my bit of research and the gist of it is below.
Let us first differentiate between Fonts and Typography/typefaces.
Font means the collection of characters.
Typography refers to the style and appearance of the characters used.
Your text is given a style and personality with the typography you choose.
Typography and fonts style influence individual choice in different ways. It is an important determiner of the success of your website. Read this interesting case study on how an organization benefitted by the simple change of the font used:
When Click Laboratory (http://www.clicklaboratory.com/ ) was hired by a software company to improve their conversion rates, they did not pay focus to the color combination of the website, the navigation, or the call-to-action buttons first. Instead, they decided to improve the fonts.
Click Laboratory changed the font. They used a larger font and gave extra line spacing.
The results were stunning:
- 10% reduced bounce rate
- There was 19% decrease in Exit rate
- Pages per visit increased by 24%
- Moreover, Conversion rate saw an increase of a whopping 133%!
Therefore, a simple font change can bring a huge difference to your website performance.
Different font types will influences users’ decisions in varied ways.
Here are couple of case studies on Typography
Case Study 1: Typography affects readers’ perceptions
Famous documentary filmmaker and author Errol Morris ran a survey in nytimes.com in 2013. Morris asked 45000 readers a question from a given passage. The readers had to answer in a Yes or NO.
However, the survey was a secret. Morris’ intention was not to know about what the readers thought about the passage. He rather wanted to know how typography influences people’s judgment and understanding.
Morris made a developer alter the typography of the passage in 6 different typefaces. The typography would appear different to different users.
Results:
More people responded with a ‘Yes’ when the font used was Baskerville.
People disagreed with statements in ‘Comic Sans’ and ‘Helvetica’.
Baskerville font had a more positive influence on the readers than the other six typography used.
Would suggest you make this into an image. Like this:
Source: Quicksprout
There’s lot to know about Typography. Read Morris’ insight on how typography shapes our perception of truth here.
Case Study 2: Font Size matters
Wichita State University conducted a survey of eight fonts to understand the legibility and readability quotient of font types – Century Schoolbook, Courier New, Georgia, Times New Roman, Arial, Comic Sans MS, Tahoma, and Verdana.
Results:
Out of 10, 12, and 14 font size, font size 12 was concluded to be easiest and fastest to read.
Times New Roman and Arial are quickest to read
Arial and Courier are most legible while Comic Sans is the most illegible font.
Highly preferred fonts are: Verdana and Arial
One should carefully choose the fonts in Headline and Body Texts. Below is mentioned the most popular choices of fonts:
What about: Serif Vs. Sans Serif
Researchers from IBM and Google conducted a survey. They found that readers can easily comprehend Serif typefaces.
Sans Serif fonts are perfect for the body copy and Serif fonts for title and sub-titles.
Quick typography tips for designers:
- Do not use more than three font types across your website. Use one for the titles and subtitles, and one for the body copy. You might use another font at rare occasions like graphics, ads, and banners.
- Mobile compatibility of your website is essential these days. Sans-serif fonts are optimal for handheld devices. Use this for your next website design.
- Use Arial, Georgia or Verdana in the body copy.
- Use Baskerville, Georgia or Arial for headlines.
Utilize Negative Space with utmost creativity
Negative space is the content-less, blank space in between the content, images and features of a web page.
Web designers at BusinessLabs have mastered the art of using Negative Space on websites. The Home Page of BusinessLabs is a perfect example of well-utilized Negative Space. Having designed world-class sites like Gucci, the designers do complete justice to defining the spaces on web pages.
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Colors hits the Psychology – pick the best colors for your website
Colors have a strong impact on an audience’s mind. In fact, it is the most important factors to induce a buyer to make a purchase.
Every color has a meaning. While red is the color of fire and symbolizes warmth, intensity as well as danger, blue communicates trust and calmness, spiritualism and protection and professionalism, and so on.
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Photography that attracts customers
The trend of cheesy stock photography is out. Consumers are always on the lookout for something that is new and sophisticated.
They do not want to part from their money for the regular mediocre product.
They will only spend on products that promise them to be different from the average. Once you can live up to their promise and expectation, they become your loyal customer.
Here, pictures play a very vital role.
The right photography goes a long way in making visitors turn into paying customers.
Schwans.com is a big brand today. It is an online grocery store that also home delivers food ordered from their site. The site converts as much as 40% of their traffic! This high rate of conversion is the result of high-quality images on their website. Have a look:
Image source: http://www.schwans.com/
Put up images that give positive feelings to your users. Make them smile; make them feel happy and important. This will help you in connecting with your audience.
Wherever possible, use human faces in your images. Sites that use human faces are more trusted than photos with no facial impression at all!
Audiences are more attentive to pictures than to generic icons. For example, for your Contact, the Author page, using the author profile pic will bring more visitors to your page.
Photographs or Images when it is an E-Commerce website:
For each of your product images, try to give alternate views of your product. It wins your buyers’ trust instantly. When the consumer gets to see the product from every angle, he feels more confident and goes ahead to purchase it.
Speed matters – pay particular attention to Page Load time
Users need more and need them quickly. When they are looking for something online, users prefer a website to load within 1 – 3 seconds. If it does not, they do not mind looking for another site.
Speed is an important measure of a website’s performance. It takes a lot of technical fixes to improve site speed. Remember when it comes to site speed, every second count.
It has been found that 30% mobile web users said that they would abandon a webpage that doesn’t load within 6-10 seconds.
79% internet users who are dissatisfied with the web site performance prefer not to visit the same site again.
47% users expect a site’s load time to be 2 seconds or less.
40% of consumers would leave a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Delay by even 1 second can reduce conversions by 7%
You can check the speed of your website by using free tools such as:
These sites are helpful in tracking site’s problems and advising you on how to fix them. Look at fixes that have been suggested and implement the changes to improve the speed of your website.
Create a Single-focused Landing Page
Landing Pages are standalone pages and are not one of the website pages. It is a page that visitors reach or ‘land’ on for a particular action. It helps in conversions.
No Distraction Please
The goal of a landing page is to prompt visitors to take a particular action. This page is all about lead generation. Hence, have just one call-to-action button that helps the visitors to take just ‘that’ action – make a purchase, subscribing to emails or register for a campaign.
On your Landing Page, do not give links to any of your web pages. Make sure your visitors do not feel distracted when he is on the landing page.
Don’t Lose Mobile Customers
Make sure your landing page has a mobile-responsive design. This means, your landing page should look all great, appealing when accessed from Desktop, Laptop, Android devices, IPhones, and MacBook.
Google recently reworked the logo to give importance to its mobile-friendliness and continue staying ahead of the race.
Landing Pages should have a responsive web design that looks great not only on personal computers but also on other devices like mobile.
If you want to check how mobile-friendly your landing page is, get this app – Mobile-Friendly Test or you can also use Resizer by Google Design
Type the URL of your landing page. This test will analyze the URL and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design.
Here’s what the app says about mobile-friendliness of businesslabs.org:
Image selection for your landing page is vital
Use Images that communicate your message. The image should be very appealing and should be able to relate with your visitors instantly. Use pictures that prompt immediate action and engagement.
Active designing and placement of Call-to-Action
All of your design efforts will bear fruits only when the visitor clicks on the Call-to-action button.
The call-to-action button in itself is an important element in your landing page. The design and the placement are critical.
Use contrasting color for your call-to-action button. If you have a blue or green landing page, prefer using red or orange for your call-to-action button.
Place your call-to-action button strategically. Ensure it is set to the immediate level of the viewers’ eye.
To acquire customers and earn revenue, design a website that’s on one hand, sales-oriented and at the same time is audience-focused.
When the call-to-action button is appealing, attractively designed and strategically positioned, the viewers make the decisions quickly and take the action promptly.
Other landing page tips
- Avoid too many texts on your landing page. Use bullet-points, make the words bold, use proper headings and images to communicate your messages.
- Highlight the USPs of your products/services. Make your visitors know how significantly they will benefit from your product.
- Take advantage of Trust symbol or customer feedback.
Use Heat Maps Analytics to increase the conversions
Implementing all the design changes will surely help you be there for the big conversion game!
However, you still need data that shows how your readers perceive your website. Installing Heatmaps will assist you with real-time data about user behavior.
Heatmaps analytics tracks the clicks on links on a landing page or website. It also tracks the movement of the mouse on areas which are not links. It tracks the clicks and presents the data in a heatmap, like this:
Bright colors show areas that are getting more clicks. Brighter the shade, more the number of clicks the area is getting and vice versa. Hence, it apparently helps you to check which of the links are generating a good response and which of the areas are not. Accordingly, you can improve the weaker sections.
I use CrazyEgg on my website and prefer using it on my clients’ website too. For one of my real-estate clients, I used the heat map analytics for usability testing and started working on the analysis provided by CrazyEgg.
I implemented the changes and within a month, the conversion rate escalated to 25%! In fact, an image on the website which was not even a link received around 1500 clicks in the first 30 days.
With CrazyEgg, you can also understand the clicking pattern of a worldwide audience on your landing page/website.
Usability testing is necessary to realize the strengths and flaws of your site. Using heat maps analytics is just the perfect tool to have more visitors to your website, increase conversions and hence revenue.
Conclusion
Improving website’s conversion rate or achieving the conversion rates that help your website become successful is not a day’s task. It involves the right efforts coupled with the right skills. Hence, it is best to contact a seasoned designer to help you with your next big project. BusinessLabs can help you get the right designer for you. Contact Us and let us know your requirements right away. We will come up with the best solution.
Meanwhile, do keep this post handy and refer to it to make necessary changes on your website. Wait for a fortnight and you shall see promising results.
Do leave us your comment on the post. Let us know if you have experienced improved conversion rates from any other factors. Knowledge sharing is always fruitful, isn’t it?
Please comment. I love reading them and answering them back – that is what keeps us connected. Happy reading!
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