Where do I begin?

You know you want to optimize your website but you don’t know where to start. Deciding where to start with conversion rate optimization doesn’t have the be difficult. Here are fifteen places that you can start to explore for opportunities.

1: Pricing on the product pages

A very interesting page to start analyzing are the pages where prices are displayed because the visual appearance of a price can have a big effect on the visitors of your website. This can have even more effective when the price is displayed on the product page because of the size of the pricing and the proximity to the transaction. Another way of optimizing this is by adjusting your prices automatically to undercut or match your competitors. Software like Greendeck can help you to automate this proces and get a lot of extra customers.

Nike product page pricing – 2020

2: Call-to-action on the homepages

Most online businesses that sell products or services run e-mail marketing. When you use e-mail marketing you probably have a landing page. The call-to-action on these landing pages are extremely critical to the success of a website because this can decide what the user does next.

Make sure users understand what your website is about in the first 5 seconds upon entering the website because it is proven that this has a lot of effect on conversion rate.

Adidas call-to-action on the homepage – 2020

3: Call-to-action newsletter form of your blog

Another great place to start conversion rate optimization is your newsletter acquisition form at the bottom of your blog because this is probably where a lot of your e-mail list is originated from.

You can try experimenting with the call-to-action, the buttons & placeholder text. You can also try showing a preview of the newsletter because this is the best practice way of motivating users to subscribe.

Newsletter call-to-action adidas – 2020

4: Add-to-cart buttons on category pages

When users browse your website for products it needs to be easy for them to find the add-to-cart button and add multiple products quickly because this will have a big impact on your conversion rate.

You can also use this functionality for up and cross-selling. When your business sells products the category page is probably the page where the most add-to-cart buttons exist.

Add-to-cart buttons Albert Heijn – 2020

5: Filtering options on the category pages

Online stores with a lot of products can be confusing for the users because the sheer amount of choices makes them unable to choose. That’s where filtering out your product options comes in.

Do you have sufficient data about your products to let the users filter out the product they need? How does this work on mobile? Making adjustments in this element on the website can have a massive impact.

Filtering options category page Adidas – 2020

6: Newsletter opt-in on exit-intent

If your website already has a notification on exit-intent it can be interesting to make adjustments on the visual aspects. When your website doesn’t have a notification yet It can be easily implemented with Google Tag Manager and used to grow your e-mail list.

Decide if you want to use an instant pop-up or a smooth notification, in my experience, you will get a lot more e-mail addresses using an instant pop-up. Keep in mind that it can annoy your users and actually be bad for your conversion rate optimization. Make sure to measure both these metrics.

Newsletter exit-intent Adidas – 2020

7: Checkout button on the basket page

Everyone that decides to buy what they added to their shopping cart will click on the checkout button on the basket page. Changing this button can make or break your day as an online retailer. There is no set way for any website to set up this button so you will need to experiment.

Try experimenting with size, text, position & visibility on the page related to the other elements. One best practice is to make sure nothing stands out but that button.

Basket page Adidas – 2020

8: Discount on the basket page

When a user reaches the basket page they will see an overview of products and connected costs that add up to the total. Does the user know how much discount they got per product? To what does the total discount add up to? You can experiment with different ways of displaying this information on the basket page to see what works for your visitors.

Cart product on Nike basket page – 2020

9: Showing currency symbols

A site-wide optimization opportunity can be playing around with currency symbols. Research has shown that showing currency symbols on your website can have a negative impact on your conversion rate optimization.

You can easily write a script to hide all currency symbols from your website and test what this does to your website. I actually still have the jQuery script I used to test this on the homepage of our website, you’ll just have the change the class.

jQuery(function ($) { $(".YOURCLASS").children().each(function () { $(this).html( $(this).html().replace(/\u20ac /g,"") ); }); });

Nike’s currency pricing – 2020

10: Information form on the checkout page

When the user finally clicks the add-to-cart on the basket page they will eventually have to fill out their contact information to finalize the purchase. This form can make a lot of users cancel their purchase if it’s and frustrating experience.

You can use tools like https://www.hotjar.com/ to analyze the input fields that are causing the most frustrations with users. These fields can be given more context, deleted, or displayed in another way to make it less frustrating for the user.

Checkout fields Nike – 2020

11: Navigation on mobile

In 2020 most of your users will probably be browsing your website on their smartphone. Analyze and revisit the main navigation so that users can find their way faster to get to their desired goal.

Does the navigation capture the most important parts of your website and does it symbolize a structure that embodies the whole content? The navigation on mobile needs to be seen as a separate element than the desktop navigation bar. Try experimenting with different ways of showing the hamburger menu and see what works best for your website.

iPhone 5SE showing the Nike menu – 2020

12: Search suggestions

Another important element of your website is the search bar. When analyzing the traffic that comes on your website you’ll see that a big percentage of your income comes from the people that use the search bar to find a product.

When a user types in characters in the search bar most websites will have suggested words for the search request. This can be brands, products, or any other connected property. Changing the algorithm or the way these suggestions are shown can have a massive impact on your conversion rate optimization.

Search suggestions from Nike – 2020

13: Payment methods

When users enter your website it’s important to make sure they understand what payment methods can be used to finish the transaction because this can give a boost to conversion rate optimization if you have many available.

Try experimenting by showing the payment methods on different pages in the customer journey and see what implementation works for your website. This can also be a good time to evaluate the number of payment methods you are actually offering.

Payment methods Adidas – 2020

14: Favorite items page

If users are able to add products to their wish list you want them to be able to quickly order the list of products because a lot of users that are likely to convert will be adding products to their wish list. You can try adding a button that converts the entire wish list to their shopping cart for a swift transaction.

Also, take a look at the functionality within your website. If users need to log in to add products to their wish list it might be time to start looking at storing that information in a session and sending this to the server. You will probably need some help from your development team,

Favorite and checkout button – Adidas 2020

15: Thank you page call-to-action

When running an online store it’s important to look at user retention as a goal for your long term strategy of running the business. Try changing the call-to-action on the “thank you page” to get people to your social media. Or immediately give them a discount for their next purchase.

Thank you page Nike – 2018

Conclusion

I hope these different ideas can give you an idea of where to start optimizing your website to increase conversion rates. Remember that these suggestions are ideas of where to start researching and testing. Just changing your website to meet best practices will most definitely make you lose money. Good luck with testing! Don’t have any experience with testing? Check out my beginner’s guide for using Google Optimize.