So you’ve done all the hard work with SEO and all the marketing ideas to get your target audience to your web-site, now you want to ensure that their visit converts into the purpose of the site (sale, registration, download etc.). This is where optimising the conversion path your visitor has to take to reach that goal is so important. Donal Langan, Senior Consultant at Stream:20, offers 20 tips to convert searchers into buyers.
Conversion is without a doubt the most important lever an online marketer can pull. If you have a strong converting website – there are a whole host of benefits to the marketer.
1. Put the best information and ‘Calls to Action’ above the fold – avoid false bottoms that make users think there isn’t any more content. You’d be amazed at how many of your site visitors don’t scroll down a page and if they can’t see it, they wont know it’s there.
2. Repeat your ‘Call to Action’ throughout a longer page – don’t let the visitors miss your main message. And be sure to make the ‘Call to Actions’ focused and specific to the content of the page. Weak, generalised ‘Call to Actions’ don’t motivate anyone to do anything.
3. Get visitors’ email by making this mandatory (with an opt-out radio button if the user has no email). You now have a way of contacting your potential customers, need I say more!
4. Copy should talk benefits not just features and should be focused on what’s of use to the customers.
5. Remove clutter and focus on making the path through your site as obvious as possible – you can even lead the visitors if you’re clever about it. This is the true ‘conversion funnel’.
6. Use large headlines with clear benefits and emphasise important content using bold, larger/coloured fonts and italic etc.
7. Include a tagline or USP in the header that provides distinct positioning and differentiation.
8. At the bottom of the page, remember to summarise the benefits or put into bullets.
9. Use fewer instructions. Just make sure the site is easy to use. This obviously requires good design.
10. In the cart, offer other ways to order whether it’s by phone, email or in store.
11. Employ Ajax/DHTML to hide optional form elements unless they are needed.
12. Remove unnecessary fields and change the order of the fields so that you maximise the flow. Visually group and separate related fields in a form as well.
13. Repeat your main offer and benefits in the cart and up-sell in the ‘add to cart’ action or in the cart itself.
14. Check out what is clickable on the site. People today expect almost everything to be clickable, and if an element they expect to click isn’t, this can have a negative impact.
15. Add testimonials, with a photo, name, title, company, logo and add media logos, if featured in the news, or other logos that add credibility and establish trust.
16. Add reviews and positive user feedback – people tend to follow the ‘most popular’ user choices.
17. Add visible guarantees, return policies, privacy protection, if asking for personal email/info to really establish trust with your visitors.
18. Include credit card and other payment logos when asking for payment info and add reassurance logos like Verisign, BBB online, McAfee Secure, Trust etc to once again establish trust.
19. Increase or decrease prices, so that they are more or less in line with your competitors. Bear in mind that prices that are lower then expected, especially compared to your competitors, can raise alarm bells for some people. Also, consider odd pricing ending in 9s and 7s.
20. Introduce a variety of offers. Just as you’ll find that your site shouldn’t be one size fits all, different offers will appeal to different people. Also add a sense of urgency with messages such as ‘Sale ends today’ or ‘Only 10 left!’.
A final takeaway is to make sure your site takes into account the fact that not all visitors are the same – it may sound obvious, but it is often overlooked. Not everyone who comes to your site will fit in a neat little consumer group. Keep this in mind and you may just find that you start attracting a whole new group of visitors.
By Donal Langan
Senior Consultant
Stream:20
www.stream20.com
