Improving Website Conversion 6 – 9 Tried and Tested Changes that will Have a Big Impact on improving Your Website’s Conversion Rate

This is part 6 of an 8 part series on how to improve the conversion rate of your website using a new testing approach to web design, rather than the old way of guesswork and assumptions. 

By now you’ve identified your website’s leaks, gained insights from your customers, assessed how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors and collected together your ‘persuasive assets’. But before you set about making wholesale changes to your website, it’s sensible to identify the tried and tested changes you can make to improve its conversion rate.

Here are nine changes you can make that have proven, time and again, to be effective in improving the rate at which visitors become buyers:

Benefit laden headlines

It’s estimated that four out of five people will read headline copy, but only one out of five will read the rest. So it’s critical that every page has a benefit laden headline that reels in visitors to find out more about your offer.

It can be tempting to write headlines that are quirky or clever, but this risks alienating visitors who don’t understand what you’re talking about or see any reason to read further. So focus on creating punchy, persuasive headlines that offer a clear benefit and a solution to your visitor’s problem.

Clear calls to action on every page

As you will have discovered when setting up funnels in Google Analytics, people go through a journey on your website. And they don’t always take the path you’d like them to. So it’s important to signpost your website so you can usher them in the right direction.

You can achieve this with clear calls to action that tell visitors exactly what to do and where to click to get further information, to request a demo or to ‘buy now’. After viewing every page you want to keep nudging them along to the checkout or signup form, so there should be a call to action on every page.

Focus on benefits, not features

A popular adage in copywriting circles is that you’re not selling the drill but the hole. What this implies is that your web copy needs to focus on showing customers what they will gain from your product, rather than what it does.

So if your product pages are plastered in list of features, consider adding an introductory paragraph that explains the time/cost/happiness benefits customers will gain.

Answer objections in a comprehensive FAQ section

If customers have doubts about your product then they are unlikely to email or phone when they can simply click away and shop elsewhere. So it’s vital your website answers every objection they might have.

A clear and comprehensive FAQ section should list all the questions customers might have and then resolve them one by one. It’s also sensible to add your email address or a Google chat box at the end so you can win over customers through a prompt and helpful response to their queries.

Don’t underestimate the influence of the ‘About’ page

When using Google Analytics you might have noticed that the About page is one of the most popular sections of your website. This is because people like to do business with people – they want to know why they should trust the promises you make and what makes you an expert.

You can build trust and rapport with visitors through your About page. Rather than use the same old clichéd boiler plate copy on ‘exceeding customer expectations’ and offering ‘a paradigm shift in workforce solutions’, consider talking about the reasons why you started your business, a brief mention of your successes and other concrete details that will build trust in your expertise. Spending time on your About page can make a real difference in a crowded marketplace.

Create a sense of urgency

This is a mind trick you can borrow from those looong sales letter landing pages that many deride but are proven to work. Whether it’s offering a special promotional price within a limited timeframe or having a countdown on the number of products left, creating a sense of scarcity and urgency around your product can give hesitant visitors that extra nudge to unsheathe their credit card.

Differentiate your product with technical or specific information

It’s all well and good to say your air purifier is the best on the market but people need to know why. One way you can achieve this is by making your copywriting more complex, and to discuss specific details about your product that differentiates it and raises its value.

Legendary copywriter Joseph Sugarman used this tactic to shift millions of pairs of BluBlocker sunglasses by discussing how its ability to block out blue ultraviolet rays improved your vision (if you’re a copywriter and haven’t read ‘The Adweek Copywriting Handbook’ yet then you should make a swift trip to Amazon. It’s a copywriting canon I reread every year).

Give your website face to face sales appeal

Essentially your website should be able to sell your product as effectively as if you were talking to a customer face to face. But many business owners can struggle to replicate their sales patter into the written word. One way around this is to record a conversation with the CEO or sales rep and what they’d say when selling to a customer.

This can help you to identify what key points your website is missing and how you can answer objections to close a sale. You can these extra nuggets of information to your website to recreate the sense of a face to face dialogue and to turn it into a well oiled sales machine.

Lower risk bar with guarantee

A strong guarantee is a corner stone of selling digital products. Offering a strong no quibbles money back guarantee is a tried and tested method of removing risk and persuading hesitant visitors to take the plunge.

Offering refunds might seem like a generous way of handing over profits, but the extra sales you’ll gain through offering a guarantee should be enough to cover any losses you might incur.

So along with these nine tried and tested tactics for improving your website’s conversion rate, your persuasive assets and the other insights you’ve learned from previous stages, you are now in a position to start rebuilding your website the tested design way.

In the next post I’ll be discussing how to create a wireframe of your website and how to get it tested early, so you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater in the rush to attain higher website conversions and sales. 

4 thoughts on “Improving Website Conversion 6 – 9 Tried and Tested Changes that will Have a Big Impact on improving Your Website’s Conversion Rate

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