If you are a web entrepreneur, brand- or nonprofit owner, converting traffic and viewers into clients, donors and customers should be on top of your to do list. Traffic is great, but unless you can find a way to convert that traffic, it is simply useless in most cases. Many of the world’s top businesses and brands spend millions of dollars perfecting their sales funnels online and optimizing their websites for conversion. For those without the large budgets, conversion is equally important and with these ideas, tips and hacks it’s totally achievable for any website.

Here is a guide to some of the top changes and improvements that have worked for some of the world’s most successful online entities, brands and businesses. With implementation of these strategies, you can boost your engagement and ultimately your business by optimizing your sites for conversion.

Conversion Rate Optimization Infographic Source

Speed Matters

The modern consumer is one who wants instant gratification. Gone are the days of a potential customer waiting for you or your sales team to make their rounds. If your website doesn’t load fast enough, customers will move on. A one-second delay in website speed can result in conversion reduction of 7%. This means if your website was to be optimized for speed, conversion can be boosted exponentially. If your website is loading slow, a simple boost in speed may be all you need to up your results.

Simplify Site Navigation and Landing Pages

Over cluttering and having difficult-to-navigate pages, regardless how informative, will not convert the way they are intended to. Landing- and homepages should be used to draw in the viewers and get them hungry for more information. The Weather Channel, for example, increased conversion by a whopping 225% by simplifying their homepage. Compressing a landing page increased DesignBoost’s sign-ups by 13%, and improving site navigation increased conversion by 7.74% on The Olympic Store. Draw the customer in and improve navigation to informational pages to see gross engagement levels increase profoundly.

Add Customer Care Channels

Sometimes a customer simply needs a few questions and concerns addressed prior to clicking on your call to action. Having a FAQ page is a great way to boost conversion. Adding live chat support is another way to address the customers concerns promptly and push viewers toward action. Intuit.com increased conversion by 20% and sales by 211% after adding a live chat to their website.

Streamline Checkout

If you are seeing a lot of abandoned carts and simply not getting the order volumes, your traffic would suggest it might be your checkout is simply too complex. Once you have convinced a viewer it is time to act, having them fill out countless forms and fields, or go through lengthy sign-up processes, will throw them off. ASOS store was able to see conversion rate increase by 50% by allowing customers to check out as guests. Additionally, adding common payment methods used by your customers help speed up checkout. Adding check out by PayPal button, for example, increases mobile conversion by up to 34%.

Use Ratings & Reviews

Using customer testimonials and product ratings can boost your brand and products market credibility. 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase after checking out product ratings, so having a review of your online platform is definitely a good idea if you want to get more conversions. Furthermore, 50 or more customer reviews per product can increase conversion by 4.6%. A great example of this strategy in practice is Wikijob, who were able to increase conversion by 34% after adding testimonials to their homepage.

Add Videos & Use Better Quality Images

We live in a media saturated world and having poor quality media does not do your brand or its products justice. Hyundai, for example, increased requests to test drive their vehicles by 62% after using larger product images on their site.

Using video media is one of the best converting types of advertising and can make a huge impact on conversion rates, as well. Voices.com was able to increase conversion rates by 400% by implementing demonstration videos on their site, and Candlemakers was able to boost conversion by 166% after adding video testimonials to their site. Video media is the future and adding video will help show the benefits of using your brand without oversaturating or cluttering your website with words. In the media-driven era of today, quality images and video are key to boosting brand image and conversion.

Use Special Offers

Online shoppers are notorious bargain hunters and will look around for the best possible deal. Using a wide array of special offers, discounts, promotions and coupons can boost conversion and sales. Adding an instant discount coupon to your site might increase your conversion by 6.8%, like it did for Namebadge,com. According to the data, 26% of customers prefer using online coupons when making purchases. Another great way to avoid your customers looking around your sector is to add a free trial. Muscle and Motion increased conversion by 14.5% after emphasizing a free trial on their homepage. In the psychology of the bargain hunter, a free trial means they get to use the product and are far less likely to go to a competitor once they have used your product and are familiar with it.

CTA Buttons

For whatever reason, placing a call to action button in different places or simply changing its color can impact conversion more than you think. Changing a call-to-action button from green to red increases conversion by up to 34%. Additionally, try moving it around to see where it gets the most engagement. Changing the place of your CTA button can increase sales by 36%. Put your CTA buttons at the top of your page, like Unbounce.com, and benefit from up to 41% better conversion as they have.

There are many types of changes that can make a huge difference in converting your hard-earned traffic into profits and actions. Though many of the ones covered above will work across the board, some may not be best for your specific customer base and viewership. With that in mind, it is important to always A/B test your website and try different things until you get the right mix that is converting the way you want. These are just a few tested ideas that will act as a guideline to building a stronger business and website that does its ultimate job: converts.

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Over to you

Share your thoughts about conversion rate optimization in the comment section below. I’m really looking forward to reading your comments about your learnings and maybe a few mistakes;).