THE smartest, most successful online marketers and businesses invest as much time and money in improving conversion rates as they do building traffic.
Website conversion rate is the first internet success metric your business should strive to improve. Too many Australian businesses focus heavily on increasing customer flow or visits. However, more visits mean nothing if customers are not spending.
The same applies offline; no business owner is satisfied with a busy shop where no-one buys.
Boosting conversion rates by even 1 per cent can double or triple the effectiveness and profitability of your traffic-building efforts. If you double your website’s conversion rate, you double the effectiveness of every marketing dollar you spend.
To increase conversion rates, your website must engage consumers while driving them to take action, such as calling, emailing, or completing a form.
Following are the best five ways to increase website conversions, no matter how visitors reach your site.
• Add videos to your website. Online videos are more visually appealing and interactive than static text or images and therefore heighten customer interest. Video marketing can also have a seriously powerful impact on your search visibility and ranking positions. With online video also proven to be an effective way of encouraging purchase intent and brand recall, few companies cannot afford to overlook the potential of the medium. Introducing your business to potential customers with a short video is an excellent way to showcase your brand position and personality without taking up valuable real estate on your website.
• Engage visitors immediately with live chat. To capture further interest, entice customers with a live chat option for queries or concerns. Website chat technology has shown to create a positive customer experience because it lets visitors get their initial questions answered without feeling like they have to take time out of their day to call or email you. More importantly, live chat is a cost-effective way for the visitor to convert.
• Optimise your site for mobile conversions.
Forty-seven per cent of smartphone owners rely on smartphones to find out more information about a product and 36 per cent use their phones to read product reviews on retail websites. Optimising your site for mobile will increase the ability to convert time-poor customers. Make sure you include a well-placed phone number and email address, and consider the ‘click to call’ feature so prospects can make contact quickly and easily.
• Use remarketing to keep your business top of mind. If potential customers do not convert into leads the first time they visit your site, make sure you stay top of mind with them after they leave. Remarketing is an easy and cost-effective display advertising tactic that targets previous website visitors as they surf the web. In addition, letting visitors subscribe to your blog via an RSS feed or opt in to your mailing list is a great way to regularly share content after they have left the site. Creating interesting content like tips, videos, and how-to articles drive home your credibility and know-how in the industry.
• Measure the conversion, not the click. If you are running online search or display advertising, chances are you are measuring how many people click your ads and visit your website. But do you have tools in place to measure how many people you convert? With simple and easy to manage tools like Google Analytics, you can track the conversion paths of people who visit your website and complete an action – as well as the ones that bounce during the process. Tracking your conversions will help you see the effectiveness of the elements on your site.
Through adding these five suggestions to your marketing mix, your business will become more valuable to your customers and more competitive against your competitors.
Steven Prestidge is general manager of ReachLocal Australia, which offers a suite of online marketing solutions targeted to the SME market.
Contact Steven through the website www.reachlocal.com.au
