It’s easy to place all of your focus on attracting more traffic. However, regardless of whether you’re getting 20 visitors a day or 800, increasing your conversion rate can add to your bottom line without requiring you to attract a single additional visitor.
Since every site and segment is different, you always need to test. But if you aren’t sure how to get started, here are five ideas to try out:
Make Sure Your Page Clearly Reflects What You Want It to Accomplish
Although it sounds like a no-brainer, many website owners forget that a page needs to clearly reflect its goal. For example, the goal of GetDefensive.com is for visitors to sign up for an online driving course. However, in the original version of their page, the call to action for this goal looked exactly like several of the other options on that page.
By enlarging their “Register for Online Course” button and changing its color to green (with all the other options being blue), they were able to increase their conversion rate by 15%.
When Someone Finishes Reading, Make Sure They Can Take Your Desired Action
LessAccounting.com tested two versions of their homepage. Both versions had two columns of features and benefits on the left side of the page, as well as screenshots of their app on the right side of the page. They also each had a signup button and a tour link.
The test found that when the signup button was placed under the second column, it performed 13% better than when it was placed under the first column on the left side of the page. This is likely because once someone finished reading both columns, they clicked whatever was under the second one.
People Love the Word Free
Some marketers are afraid to use the word free. The reason is they’re concerned that consumers may be immune to it. However, when 37Signals tested their Highrise signup page, they found this wasn’t the case at all. Instead, using the phrase “free trial” in their headline increased their conversion rate by 30%.
Don’t Make Your Visitors Work
Contact forms can work very well. The problem is many websites include too many fields in them. If your visitors are met with a contact form that features 10 fields, they’re more than likely going to disappear.
Just how big of an impact can this change make? When ImageScape.com reduced their contact form from 11 fields to 4, their conversion rate went up by a whooping 118%!
Less Can Be More
The conventional approach to landing pages is to include as much information as possible. What’s interesting is that this may not be the best option. RJMetrics.com originally had a video and marketing copy on their homepage, along with a signup form. Surprisingly, when they removed both marketing elements and increased the size of the signup form, their conversion rate shot up by 187%!
Have you done any A/B testing on your site?