With the competitive nature of online businesses across almost every industry, making the most of your visitors is crucial. Time and again, digital marketing agencies will focus on increasing or improving your rankings, getting you more visibility online or raising your brand awareness. All of that is essential and forms one part of an effective digital marketing strategy. However, an important goal for any online business is converting those visits into sales, leads or real conversions that you can quantify to grow your revenue. This article will discuss methods and techniques to increase your conversions and how to track important goals relevant to you.
The options available to you as an online business are almost endless. In terms of how you design, build and structure your site, there are a multitude of directions you can go. It goes without saying you want a website that is presentable and aesthetically pleasing. Beyond that, two key elements you ideally want to have are ease of navigation and relevant calls to action where necessary.
Brand Identity is Key
Dealing with the first, making sure there is a clear message and brand identity within a few seconds of a user arriving is crucial. Users have a short attention span, therefore, getting your message across early on means a lower bounce rate and longer retention times. Having a clear structure to your site enables potential customers to navigate effectively to what they are searching for. Taking advantage of something like a sticky menu bar means that no matter where a person is on the site, they always have the option of being able to click through deeper or return to the homepage as well as key calls to action always being visible.
You would want to make sure you have an up to date HTML sitemap and options in the footer for users to explore deeper into the website. Having clear directions to go when navigating your website means users can easily find what they are looking for and discover new products or services that they may not be aware of that appeals to them.
Additional elements that help with on-site navigation are keeping the pages clean, uncluttered, and making use of intuitive internal linking. You want to give potential customers options and choices, but not too much so things get confusing and seem overwhelming. If in doubt, the simpler choice is the better one as you are likely trying to appeal to a wide ranging of demographic. With that in mind, it is worth moving on to our second main point; specific calls to action you can make to enhance conversions.
Effectively Using Website Tracking
Every website should have Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics set up and tracking effectively. This enables you to see where users are coming from based on location and traffic source. You gain additional insights into landing pages, site navigation, session duration and where users are bouncing off the site. Armed with that knowledge over a reasonable period of time, you can set appropriate calls to action which can be trackable.
The obvious one is for E-commerce websites to know how many sales are being generated through the site. Yet there is a myriad of additional conversions that could play a big role in increasing the revenue generated. Firstly, not everybody would purchase a product or services upon their first or even multiple visits to the site. They may wish to speak to an individual before feeling comfortable to make their purchase. Therefore, having clickable numbers on your website that can be tracked can prove essential.
Make Communication Easy
It is important to bear in mind, with such technological advancements in recent years, methods of communication are so varied. People’s favoured way of getting in touch with you should be catered for on your site. Utilising an effective live chat can help capture many more potential customers than allowing them to leave, something useful when time is at a premium and quick responses are needed.
It is also worth noting that for any of your product or services pages, giving the user a choice once they have viewed it can dramatically increase your online sales. Whether that be a link to the contact form, click to purchase or a direct form to fill out means that it is being done on the relevant page of interested to the user.
Instant messaging is arguably more commonplace now than conversations over the phone so including a WhatsApp or FB messenger means you have a direct link to your customers whilst on the go. One especially useful benefit to this is setting up an alert when a new user arrives on your website. This can be a prompt to engage with them in those crucial first seconds and minutes to help make up their minds to use your company.
Landing Page Optimisation
A tool that has been around for quite some time, yet seldom taken advantage of is A/B testing. An element as small as changing the colour on your contact form or cheque out button can increase conversions by percentage points. Placements of relevant information can additionally have profound improvements to user engagement, and it is worthwhile doing some experimentation on subtle changes to verify that they can enhance conversions through your website.
We have already dealt with E-Commerce websites, however, there are many businesses that do not directly sell online. Being able to track valuable on-site actions such click to call, contact form submissions, and email clicks, means you can directly attribute value into dollars being invested into your digital marketing. Knowing how your website is performing is key to your future business growth.
This article only touches the surface of what is possible to increase your client base and engage more effectively. It would be worthwhile for you to do your own research into this topic to discover additional tools and techniques to further enhance your online sales. If you engage with a digital marketing agency, we encourage you to reach out to them and see ways in which you can improve your conversions with some of the things we have discussed in this article.
The message we would like to impress upon you is that your website is an ever-evolving entity. At no stage should you ever feel it has reached its final form. Constant improvements and adjustments with the changing landscape within the digital world can only benefit you and your business.