Conversion Rate Optimization — Best Strategies to Optimize your Website for Conversions

Nishant Maliakel Oommen of Cloudnix Software Labs Pvt. Ltd. shares effective hacks to engage online visitors, boost conversion rates and optimize your website.

The world is dominated by digital technology. Technology that is way smarter than an average person (yes we are venturing into a  world of sentient humanoids with general artificial intelligence). Over the decade, the rapid pace in technological outburst has been extolled across media. Technology has eased the process,  ubiquitous connectivity with the digital world has beguiled a large no: of the populace to actively engage on digital platforms. Opening a new realm for marketers to reach out to customers, as business happens on platforms people engage. 

THE MODERN CONTENT MARKETER’S BUYER GUIDE

Welcome to the 2019 edition of The Modern Content Marketer’s Buyer Guide. About 10 years ago, marketers realized that content is a critical piece of their pie, and have since been working overtime to generate content to help win the prospect’s attention.

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These opportunity invites businesses to explore the digital realm. Scouting for chances that could extrapolate into a sale. As the early adopters started to gain the market, alternate business solutions started to recognize the scope. The linear growth in demand has forced the market to optimize their business around customer experience. Over the years, portable devices have shown a significant increase in customer engagement. The shift in displays comes with its own toll, as a business you need to make sure that your business entity is optimized to meet the demands across varying displays.    

A customer-oriented strategy is developed when a business entity triumphs to create a business model that roots under certain values that empowers the customer. The customer is placed at the center, and all the marketing activities that take place tend to inspire the customer to interact with the business entity. As the market is introduced with multiple alternates, offering more or less the same features, it boils down to one question. What’s the best strategy to win customers? The answer is, provide the best possible experience. 

Also Read: What is CRO and Why Should We Take It Seriously?

Nobody is interested in ordinary experience. Your customer deserves the best.

Think about it this way, you are on a hunt to find the latest edition of “Louis Vuitton Handbag”. Your pursuit to find the rare edition made you land a website. Albeit the fact that you find the product listed on the website, upon scrutiny you are alarmed with the authenticity of the website. For a premium product like Louis Vuitton, the customers come with a set expectation. There are multiple reasons that could alarm the customer. Scaling from the lack of bearing a professional demeanor to a 404 error page. 

Conversions are hard to come by (whether its a micro/ macro conversion). Never give your customer a reason to click the small red button located on the top right corner. The best strategy is to make sure that every visitor who lands on the website finds value with the business. Don’t let your platform compromise a potential sale. 

Optimize to Convert

It’s all about optimizing the website the way your customer wants it. Everyone has expectations. In most cases, when it comes to digital commerce, the human interference is limited. There isn’t a personal chauffeur guide your or to take you to your destination. When our customers are on the platform, they are on their own. Every element they interact should add meaning to their customer journey. If your customer click on a drop-down menu, visits a category page just to find that there are only two products listed on the platform, then there is a high chance it could raise concern. The customer could raise few concerns like, Is it a genuine platform? Why do they fail to list more products? Why did people fail to find value engaging on the platform? so on. 

Multiple studies conducted by business research organizations stress upon the point, how CRO can increase the overall effectiveness of your online campaigns. 
 
Tweak your landing pages to best convert the leads on the page. Remove all elements and features that distract the customer. Incertitude on a landing page could lead to cognitive dissonance. Second thoughts and biases that could affect the buyer's journey. Capture the attention and focus them to activities that deliver results.   

Create a Result Oriented Strategy

As a business, your primary objective is sales and conversion. Raw traffic is not going to add any value to your business. In several cases, a business invest/incentivize their prospects just to visit the website. The best you could do is to make sure that the prospect finds value with your website and decides to convert on the website. The conversion can be as simple as sharing their email or placing online order.  

With a huge volume of spam emails hitting our inbox, it's often a concern for people whether to share their personal information with a business or not. Most people are a bit wary about how a business will use their personal information. Think about the average cold calls we receive in a day. You need to give your online visitors a genuine reason to share their email id or phone no. Cordially assuring customers that their information is safe with your business entity.    

With conversion rate optimization you can motivate the website visitors to take action on the website. Building trust and giving them enough reason to say yes. Let’s consider the retail sector, there are lots of window surfers, how you display the offers and discounts can increase the foot traffic, later the in-house experience could materialize into a sale. Here the business owner has optimized the store in such a way that every interaction increases the probability of conversion. 

With Conversion Rate Optimization you get to reduce your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) and capitalize on your existing traffic.  

Quantitative Data Analysis - Key to Optimize Your Website

Almost all interactions with the digital systems are recorded. Every time an individual interacts with a digital system he or she leaves behind traces of information. There are multiple tools and solutions that enable an entrepreneur to make use of this information and figure out how a visitor engages on the website. An in-depth understanding on the customer behavior will help a business optimize their digital platform and deliver spiffy customer experience. 

Tools like Inspectlet and LuckyOrange tracks the user behavior on individual web pages and allow data analyst/ digital marketers to make strategic decisions. These tools help gather crucial insights on how individual elements on the website is contributing to conversion and what factor’s obscure the visitors from moving down the buyer's funnel.  

With quantitative analysis, digital marketers will be able to make data-driven decisions. Once you have pooled enough data then you could analyze the data sets and then drive efforts to streamline the overall conversion journey. 

Let’s consider an example:- Data from Google analytics indicates that there is a significant traffic drop in the add to cart section. The increase in exit percentage is a clear indication that the page needs to be tweaked a bit. So that a seamless experience is made available to customers. 

Design A High Converting Landing Page

Intrigued to know the secret.

Understand your objective. Visualize the buyer’s journey. Make sure you know what action to expect on the landing page.

Each page on your website should have a definite purpose. The context and intent with which a page is designed can differ at a great extent. A blog article may have multiple conversion metrics whereas you could create specific landing pages with a definite purpose. 

Anatomy of a high converting landing page

Start with above the fold part. Above the fold is the top portion of a website you first notice when you try to load a webpage. A crappy above the fold part could alarm concerns and derail the customer from interacting further with the webpage. 

Page Loading Speed

Think about it think way, you clicked on a link and it took 15 sec to load the webpage. Great example of a failed business strategy (you just ambushed your customer experience). 

In an instant gratification world, your customers don’t have the time or patience to wait long enough for a page to load. By default people expect your web page to load the second they try to open it. A positive first impression is important. 

CTA - Place it Where The Customer Sees It

Every CTA you create needs to be placed intelligently. Make sure CTA’s are kept in places where the people most likely to click and engage. You can always conduct a multivariate test and then use the data to make your final decision on where to place the CTA. 

Psychology of Colours When designing a Landing Page   

Do a small A/B testing to find how tweaking your website on a minor scale can increase the online conversion. Colors can significantly influence our psychology. That is one good reason why colors like red and orange trigger a sense of arousing, whereas dark blue often leads to passivity.

Make use of Visual Graphics

Rather than textual chunks, visual media could greatly influence people. That is one good reason why people tend to prioritize testimonials that are in the form of videos (10-15 sec max) than textual chunks. Adding testimonials to a landing page could invigorate trust among online visitors. Also when integrating testimonials make efforts to mention their social accounts (LinkedIn should be Ideal). 

Mention your Achievements, Awards

Listing your achievements, recognition, and awards can help root your credibility among online visitors. How do you think visitors will pursue your identity if you integrate a video giving an interview with Forbes. What about you mentioning that you have been featured in Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, etc. 

Use Positive and Inspiring Words

Be cautious with the language that you use on the website. Sales happen through positive and inspiring words. Better to restrict the sentences. Use simple language, highlight what benefit/ advantages the end user will get in return to the information they share. 

How to Mention an Offer/ Discount

It’s never an ideal practice to mention a lame offer/ discount on your website. Every offer/ discount that you mention on your website should be correlated to a reason. The customer should understand why the business is running this offer. Rather perceive it wrongly as a continuous offer. In that case, the online visitor fails to understand the urgency and fail to see that the offer was time bound. 

Few Hacks to Effectively Engage your Online Visitors
 

A Bonus Trial Period

Let's consider that you own an e-commerce website builder who caters to a specific niche. On an average, you get around 1000 trial stores created on your platform. Currently, you provide a 7 day trial period. In the sales meeting if has been brought to your notice that almost 75 to 80 people request the sales team to extend the trial period. Giving them more time to explore and make an informed decision. Rather extend the trial period for free, won’t you think you could use this opportunity to motivate the users to share your e-commerce establishment with their social followers and in return get an additional 7 more days. So that the prospect will get a total of 14 days to fiddle around and make sure that the platform is the right fit.    

Robust AI-driven ChatBots and Callback Tools

AI-driven chatbots have shown significant scope when delivering high customer satisfaction. Stats published by Harvard Business Review clearly indicates that business that contacted the lead within one hour of the query were 7 times more likely to qualify the lead than a business that contacted the lead after one hour. Responding to the leads at the earliest can increase the likelihood of conversion. The prudent response from a support team addressing the concern/ query will most likely create a positive assiduity among customers. It clearly shows the effectiveness of the brand as a whole and root a sense of credibility. A real time callback tool gives the whole online engagement a human context. Where a salesperson from the backend could pick up the cold lead and qualify the customer.

Ensure that Proper Certifications are Integrated

Let’s take the example of a pre-owned apparel store. The pre-owned online fashion industry is plagued with first copy. For a premium luxury brand, it's important to establish trust within their target market and make sure to establish that all the products they sell are authentic. One amazing strategy to adopt is to display a bill of purchase (in most cases the receipt won’t be available) along with the products. In case if you don’t have the purchase receipt then you can display a certificate from a licensed agency ensuring the authenticity of the product. 

Also Read: CRO for B2C brands - 5 Basic Tactics for Best Outcomes

Parting Note:- With increasing market competition and dropping attention span it’s important for a business to optimize their digital presence to provide an effective customer experience. Higher the customers find value with the website greater the chances for increased online conversion. Understand the target demographic that you are planning to allure and optimize your website to meet their expectation.