Taking the First Steps to Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization First Steps

Stagnant or declining growth is one of the toughest challenges for business owners or managers. If you are currently in the same boat, it’s time to buckle up! You need to widen your customer base, but how? In this digital era, conversion rate optimization can help you gain more customers and boost sales. Read on to find out how.

Website Conversion Rate, What Does It Mean?

A conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who take desired actions on a webpage, like filling out a web form, signing up for a membership, or buying a product. High website conversion rates mean a large part of visitors on your website are actually interested in knowing about or buying your products and services.

The First Steps to Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion rate optimization is focused on the following aims:

  • Getting the most out of the existing traffic
  • Generating new and quality leads
  • Encouraging leads to perform the desired action

Before working on any conversion rate optimization strategies, you must first define what conversion means for you. What is it that you want your website visitor to do? You have someone using your website, now what? What is it you want them to do next? For example, you may aim to increase the number of people who opt-in for your newsletter, share your links, sign up for a free trial, fill in contact information, buy your product or service, or book a consultation call.

Step 1: Conducting Research and Analysis

Research and analysis will help you understand how visitors react to your website and why. Here are the types of questions you should have answered.

  • What brings visitors to your site?
  • Which features motivate them to stay?
  • What makes them leave without taking any action?

Both kinds of research are of utmost importance here: quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative data collection and research help you understand how visitors react to your website. Examples of quantitative data that may help you in conversion rate optimization include traffic source, demography, click-through rates, time-on-site, bounce rate, user’s device and browser information, and much more.

You can collect quantitative data by adding interactive features to your landing pages. Also, advanced tools like heat maps, scroll maps, click maps, and session recordings can provide even deeper insights into what visitors do on your website.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research helps you understand why visitors react a certain way to different elements on your website. It involves talking to and interacting with your site’s visitors to learn what works for them and what doesn’t.

You can place website polls near different features of your websites, asking visitors if they like those features or not. On-site surveys and interviews are also effective tools to ask visitors about what difficulties they face on your website or what other features they would like to see on your platform.

Step 2: Identifying Conversion Problems and Opportunities

Conversions can happen over different locations on a website: homepage, landing pages, pricing page, blogs, and more. Careful data analysis can help you identify multiple conversion problems and opportunities across different locations on your website.

You may be able to fix some problems right away, while others may need careful consideration. But remember that you can’t work on every problem and opportunity simultaneously. You must learn to schedule everything as per priority.

You can prioritize problems and opportunities based on different factors, like importance, ease, potential, the time it may take to achieve the optimum impact, and the cost of implementation.

Step 3: Building Hypothesis

At this point, you must have already researched and identified your website’s conversion problems. Now, the next step is to create hypothesis statements on how to fix these problems. Data analysis allows you to establish multiple hypotheses to improve conversions at different locations on your website.

Here is an example of how you can build your own hypothesis.

Adding urgency messages like ‘Limited Edition’ and ‘Running Out Soon’ to your product page’s buttons may increase your cart additions by 3%.

Step 4: Testing Different Hypothesis

Now that you have created new hypotheses to fix conversion problems, it’s time to create new designs based on your hypothesis. But how can you be sure if the new designs will actually work? This is where different testing methods can help you figure out the best course of action.

The most common method to test new web page designs is A/B testing. It is the process of comparing a webpage’s new design to the original one, intending to test which design generates more conversions.

Effective Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies

We explained the basic steps to improve your website conversion rates above. Now, here are some quick conversion rate optimization strategies that may help you get more customers.

  • Add Text-based Call-to-Actions within Blog Posts
  • Use Attractive Pop-Ups (But Not To the Extent of Annoying Customers)
  • Test Your Landing Pages Regularly
  • Retarget Customers Who Tend to Add Things to Their Carts But Don’t Checkout
  • Use Live Chat Boxes on High-Converting Page

Ready For A Better Site Conversion Rate?

We have been optimizing websites and their conversion rates since 1994. We can help ensure that your website is getting the maximum benefit and bringing new leads to your business. Schedule a free 30 minute no obligation consultation today, and let’s see how we can help your business to grow to new heights!

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