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Have you ever landed on a website and immediately felt confused? Did the copy & design fail to inform you who the company was, what they sold, or why you should buy from them? This terrible user experience is the result of a poor branding strategy or a lack of a brand in the first place.
If you want your company to be successful in the modern marketplace, you have got to have a professional website with a good knowledge of website conversion rates. It represents your brand and acts as the backbone of your business by supporting all the digital marketing efforts.
Having a strong brand and communication strategy can position your business competitively in your industry. Without it, your website and brand become void. Considering that consistent presentation of a brand increases revenue by 23% on average, it is vital for your business to have a well designed website that helps in building brand credibility.
As both are interrelated it is vital to focus on increasing website conversion rate.
Here are some staggering stats that validate improving website conversions is crucial.
- A typical website conversion rate is about 2.35% on average. But the top 10% of companies are seeing 3-5x higher conversion rates than average.
- 7 in 10 marketers using conversion rate optimization (CRO) look to results to inform other marketing initiatives.
- User-generated content can increase your CR by 161%.
What is Website Conversion?
A website conversion refers to a scenario wherein the customer completes the desired action on your website by clicking the CTAs, signing up for a newsletter, sharing a blog post to social media, or buying a product. The percentage of people that complete your desired action refers to the conversion rate.
Website conversion is a very important factor in any type of marketing strategy as getting users do what you want them to do is necessary for every business. To increase website conversion rate is related to the overall business goals.
To achieve an average website conversion rate, you have to first determine that what you want your site to achieve for your business. Every business website is built to generate conversions. There are two types of website conversions – (i) micro conversions (ii) macro conversions.
What is Website Conversion Rate?
Website conversion rate can be defined as the percentage of site visitors that complete the desired action. The action converts the visitors into your customers and varies from across different websites.
For example, completing a purchase, membership registrations, email subscriptions, signing up for a trial, downloading an ebook or app, booking a demo, etc.
Website conversion rate is a key metric that helps in determining how well optimized your website is and shows potential opportunities for greater sales. If your website conversion rate is higher it indicates three main things:
- You are able to capture the attention of the right audience for your products and services
- The website copies, messaging, calls to action (CTAs), etc. resonate with your audience
- You have put on the right efforts to make your user journey easier and intuitive.
The website conversion rate improves by enhancing the user experience.
Average Website Conversion Rate by Industry
Website conversion rate benchmarks varies across all industries. However, one thing is evident. The higher the price, the lower the conversion rate. Buyers behave differently when making purchasing decisions that involve high ticket items.
As a result, the customer journey often becomes long and complicated.
People don’t buy high-cost items over the internet, as many factors need to be considered before making the final purchase.
That said, it doesn’t mean that online research doesn’t play a significant role in the customer journey.
The below graph represents the average website conversion rate by industry.
Marketers calculate conversion rates by dividing the number of users who complete an action by the total number of visitors or unique site sessions.
In the B2B industry, this action could be subscribing to a newsletter, requesting a demo, or signing up for a product trial. In e-commerce, conversion goals may include adding an item to cart, making a first-time purchase, or increasing the cart value with an upsell.
By seeing the difference between the number of visitors your website gets and how many of them convert, you can determine whether your website and marketing initiatives are effective.
How to Increase Website Conversion Rate? (Tips & Best practices)
Getting a good flow of visitors to your website is great, but if they are not converting by taking the desired action, it means something is not working. It is critical to identify what are the loopholes in your website and work smartly to get over it.
Here is a summary of 15 practical strategies for getting your visitors to take the right action and increase website conversions.
- Assist your website visitors with live chat
- Deliver right value proposition
- Create compelling headlines
- Strengthen your call to action (CTA)
- Make navigation easy to use
- Make your website visually appealing
- Improve conversion rate by using bots
- Add social proof
- Show your credibility
- Perform A/B testing
- Reduce friction to improve website CRO
- Add incentives to take action right away
- Add a pop-up to your site
- Make your website loading faster/ optimize your website loading time
- Make your website mobile responsive
Let us discuss the tips and best practices for better website conversion optimization.
1. Assist your Website Visitors with Live Chat
Longer wait times is a frustrating factor why visitors hang off. 59% of customers are more likely to buy when brands answer their queries in under a minute. Implementing live chat is an excellent way to increase website conversion rates.
Live chat empowers you to assist your website visitors in real time, which is what they expect. When you engage customers when they need the most, there is a positive impact on conversions and customer satisfaction giving you the best return on investment (ROI).
Businesses that offer live chat witness 34% improvement in customer satisfaction rates and 2.6x improvement in customer care costs.
How live chat helps to improve your website conversion rates?
- Increase sales conversions – Promptly addressing the sales queries impacts positively of conversion rate. Goinflow says that there was a 3.84% increase in conversion rates, with a 6% overall lift in revenue. When you assist customers with the right information in real time, it helps them to make quicker decisions.
- Higher customer lifetime value (CLTV) – Personalizing customer service chats with empathy statements can drive conversion and customer satisfaction that converts visitors to loyal customers by increasing their lifetime value (CLTV).
- Delight your customers – Emarketer says, “More than 60% of consumers would return to a website offering live chat.” It helps to deliver real time response to customer queries, unlike reactive channels that greatly impact the buying decisions.
2. Deliver the Right Value Proposition
The value proposition is a major thing that needs to be cross-checked on your website. If you get it right, it will be a huge boost in website conversions. If you can perfect your value proposition, you can increase your average website conversion rate and improve your marketing strategies across many channels.
The value proposition has a great role in creating the first good impression by conveying the potential customers that you have got exactly what they need.
Essentially, it is the brand’s promise to deliver great value to the customers via clear features and solution-oriented. So, value propositions need to be crystal clear on your website and it should have a certain sense of urgency to compel customers to purchase your products or services.
Here are some best practices to be followed for using value proposition to increase web conversions:
- Highlight the benefits your customers will receive in order to make your value proposition work.
- Strive for the clarity of your value proposition – What is it? For whom? How is it useful?
- Use the right language for your value proposition. It should join the conversation that’s already going on in the customer’s mind.
3. Create Compelling Headlines
One of the simplest ways to increase your website conversion rate is by creating compelling headline copies to grab your visitor’s attention. Whether developing your website, select the right messaging that will resonate with your audiences, from their point of view.
As per Conversionxl.com research, “97 percent of people pay attention to the headline of a content.”
A website infused with the core messaging can:
- Increase visibility among the right audience and improve the conversion rates.
- Improve your leadership profile and position as an industry expert.
- Bolster your lead generation.
If your headline copies are not clear visitors might get confused and end up declining your website. So, it is imperative that you know your target audience and set messaging accordingly.
Pro Tip:
Brand messaging should always be specific to articulate benefits, not the features. And to connect with the audiences you are targeting from their standpoint.
4. Strengthen your Call-To-Action (CTA)
If you want to set your website apart from others then call to action (CTA) is an important marketing strategy.
The key to making your CTAs stand out is using the right language according to situations and consider their placement carefully. The business profits and revenue greatly depend on judiciously using CTAs.
Note: It is recommended not to use multiple CTA. It will create confusion and end up diluting the main goal of conversion.
You can take special care to make your CTA prominent and direct – giving it special emphasis by making it blue. Having a CTA on the landing page increases conversion rates by 80 percent.
Follow the below guidelines that will help you to increase your conversion rates.
- Place your CTA on the landing page – It is useless if you have a stunning CTA but nestled behind the landing page with the navigation menu. Make sure that the CTA should be the first thing visible to the customer.
- Keep your CTA simple – If you don’t want to overwhelm your customers with too many choices it might decrease your conversion rates. Keep it as simple as possible.
- Personalize your CTAs – Personalized CTAs perform 202% better than basic CTAs. There is a subtle difference, instead of offering a “free download,” the personalized CTA promises to show shoppers “how to attract more customers,” which is a much more compelling message.
5. Make Navigation Easy to Use
According to Stanford University, “46.1% of people say a website’s design is the top criterion for deciding brand credibility. So it’s extremely important that your design looks professional.”
Simple and easy navigation is something everyone looks for when they land your website. Great navigation is one of the most important aspects of website conversions.
In order to increase your website conversion optimization(CRO), you need to build your website by understanding your audience, how they will interact with your content, and figure out the most intuitive ways of organizing, and representing it.
How to improve website conversion by keeping website navigation simple?
- Focus on user experience – Building a website prioritizing customer experience helps users to navigate through your website smoothly.
- Proper layout – Choosing the proper website layout is very important as it encourages visitors to spend more time and explore your site.
- Check on colors & style – Using the right colors and style that matches your brand successfully creates a good impression about your website.
6. Make your Website Visually Appealing
According to the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, 46% of site visitors say a website’s design, including font size, color scheme, layout, and site navigation, is the #1 criterion for discerning the credibility of the company.
So it’s extremely important that your design looks professional.
If your website is not attractive, customers will actually leave your site altogether. Here are some tips for great visual design to increase website conversions.
- Communicate credibility – If you have an amazing product, but if no one understands what you are saying, then you won’t be able to sell it.
- Design & color – Visually appealing website first catches your eye and provides an instant layer of communication.
- Picture & graphics – The photos and graphics used can go a long way toward communicating an authentic, solid first impression.
7. Improve Conversion Rate Using Chatbots
Deploying chatbots to automate your support tasks can be excellent website conversion tips.
Bots empower you to reach out to a bigger audience and help your business to improve website conversions.
Ubisend found that 35% of customers want to see more companies using chatbots.
Chatbots can help to prequalify leads during peak hours or when your sales agents are busy or unavailable. You can prepare industry specific questionnaires and use it to qualify your sales prospects, then direct them to the sales team or schedule an appointment.
By engaging with customers 24×7, you can answer their simple queries promptly and reduce the number of support tickets raised.
How bots can improve website conversion rates?
- Prompt response – AI chatbots can immediately answer sales FAQs and improve the chances of conversions.
- Qualify leads – Bots can be used to qualify leads by asking sales questions and direct them to the next level of your sales funnel.
- Scalability – Chatbots can be scaled easily when there is a high volume of chats without altering the service quality and extra resources.
Amtrak used a chatbot named Julie to answer 5 million questions a year, save $1,000,000, and increase bookings by 30%. The bookings through the chatbot produced 30% more revenue.
8. Add Social Proof
Social proof is powerful.
Social proof plays a huge role in shopper’s buying decisions. When someone is mulling over a purchase or trying to decide between two different brands, they’ll often turn to other people that have experience with the products for guidance.
70% of people said they trust consumer opinions posted online, eCommerce sites are wise to use social proof to increase buyer confidence.
Social proof can be in the form of testimonials, reviews, star ratings, and real-time statistics. Businesses can help increase conversions by validating the buyer’s decision, which is why it’s essential to incorporate it into your marketing strategy. In the long run, it helps in building brand credibility.
Source: Hubspot
How social proof can increase website conversion rates?
- Build customer trust that validates and simplifies customer’s buying decisions.
- Social proof adds credibility for your business and improves brand presence.
- Using testimonials is a common form of social proof. 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer, and 70% of people will trust a recommendation from someone they don’t even know.
9. Show your Brand Credibility
How much time and effort do you put into boosting your brand’s credibility for making your marketing strategy successful?
Customers are skeptical by nature and it is for you to convince them that buying your products or services is a good choice. You need to instill confidence in your visitors that your brand is credible and helps to resolve their problems thus, worth investing in.
Brand credibility is vital to prove your worth to potential customers. It helps you to generate more leads, boost conversions, and enhance engagement on your website.
Testimonials are a great way of strengthening your brand credibility and increasing website conversion rates significantly. Testimonials are a vital part of your marketing strategy as they can persuade consumer decisions.
Hence leveraging testimonials can be a great website conversion tip to capture customers with the right information at the right time.
10. Perform A/B Testing
Businesses expect their visitors to take action on their website. The more optimized is your funnel, the higher is the conversion rate. A/B testing is the most popular form of website conversion rate optimization (CRO), with 56% of marketers using this method.
A/B testing is a great way to optimize your website’s funnel. The web variant out of two that gives higher online conversions is the winning one and can help you optimize your site for better results. The conversion metrics are unique to each website. For eCommerce, it may be the sale of products, while for B2B, it may be the generation of qualified leads.
Source: Reliablesoft
A/B testing is one of the components of the overarching process of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) using which you can gather both qualitative and quantitative user insights and use them to understand your potential customers and to optimize your conversion funnel.
How does A/B testing help to increase website conversion rate?
- Resolve pain points of website visitors by using the data collected by behavioral analytics tools such as Google Analytics, heatmaps to resolve visitor’s issues.
- Gain better RoI from the existing traffic by allowing you to make the most out of your existing traffic and increase online conversion without having to spend on acquiring new traffic.
- Reduce the bounce rate by testing multiple variations of a website element until you find the best possible version. It improves your user experience, making visitors spend more time on your site and reduce bounce rates.
11. Reduce Friction to Improve Website CRO
Friction occurs when website visitors come across your offer. They have their own set of thoughts about taking the offer. It is difficult to address customer hesitations online. The solution is by addressing all the possible issues in your sales copy right away.
How can you reduce friction?
Make a note of all the possible hesitations and objections your potential customers might have. Add maximum information to your sales copy to eliminate or alleviate those concerns.
Note: You can use website surveys to identify visitor frustrations. You can collect feedback from actual visitors in real-time, while they are experiencing your website.
Here is the example of Norton that uses the best practices to increase the average website conversion rate. You can follow the tips to increase your site conversion. These tips could also serve as powerful thank you landing page examples and ensure a boost to conversion.
- The headline conveys the benefit immediately. Visitors to this post-click landing page quickly see what Norton Security is offering. Precise copy provides visitors with the information they need to make a decision.
- The gray and white buttons allow visitors to learn some key features and benefits and compare three Norton products. Award badges highlight industry accolades Norton has recently won.
- Two collapsible tabs at the bottom provide detailed technical information and free trial details. These tabs help keep the page simple and not overwhelming with the copy.
12. Add Incentives to Take Action Right Away
Note that your prospects take action for their personal gains. And the best way to encourage visitors to take action right away is by offering instant offers and incentives.
Discounts & incentives came in as the top-ranking tactic for driving loyalty with 61% of consumers saying they use them.
For conversion optimization, incentives are factors that motivate the visitor to act immediately. They play on the potential customer’s emotional motivation by increasing the reward for action and reducing the emotion of regret.
How to increase the online conversion rate of your websi e with incentives and discounts?
Nobody wants to miss out on a good opportunity.
By driving a sense of urgency and triggering fear-of-missing-out (FOMO), limited-time offers (free discount, extended trial, bonus for quick action) nudge consumers to make a quick decision about a potential purchase.
Tarte cleverly uses the word “flash” that already implies urgency, and combines it with the use of emojis to make the subject line stand out.
The use of numbers helps to grab attention, in addition to proving that the offer has a strict time limitation. Using numbers, emojis, and persuasive words, Tarte implies urgency by all means and make you open this email:
Pro tip:
While time-sensitive offers work well-converting on-the-fence prospects, you need to ensure that your campaigns reach as many prospects as possible within a limited time. Combined with website popups, email marketing is the best way to achieve that.
13. Add Pop-Up to Increase Website Conversion Rate
Pop ups when used correctly, meaning they appear at the right time, in a timely fashion, and offer something relevant to the user, becomes an effective tool that pushes users to move forward in your sales conversion funnel.
The bottom line is, the more helpful your pop ups are, the more likely they are to increase conversions on your website.
Here are some quick tips for getting the highest website conversions from them:
- Capture attention in the landing pages – Pop ups can grab your visitors’ attention at the right moment.
- Experiment with several offers (PDFs, premium content, different products) until you find a winner that you can feel right away.
- Set a cookie by using pop up tools so the pop-up only appears once per user. Make pop ups easy to close to avoid customer frustration.
Combining all the above tips can give a huge boost in conversions and reduce customer complaints to zero.
14. Optimize your Website Loading Time
The average time it takes a mobile landing page to load is 22 seconds that impacts the average website conversion rate significantly. It clearly means that even the least wait time in website loading can negatively impact user engagement and online conversions.
Website loading time is one of the common challenges reported by many customers. Your website pages should load instantly for visitors if you wish them to hand on to your website and smartly engage them with different web elements.
It helps to enhance web engagement and boost customer satisfaction.
How can you optimize your website loading time to increase average website conversion rates?
Google Analytics offers speed suggestions under the heading speed of the website. There are tools like GTMetrix that can be used to get website speed suggestions if your site happens to load slowly.
15. Make your Website Mobile Responsive
Mobile devices are an integral part of everyday life that we all see our phones once we leave the house. Mobile users accounted for a whopping 56% of website traffic.
For website owners, such a shift in how people interact with the web is quite normal. But it increases the urgency you need to have in making your website mobile responsive. If your mobile visitors don’t have a good experience when they land on your website, you are possibly driving away from a huge portion of your potential traffic.
Best practices to appease your mobile as well as desktop op users to increase online conversions:
- A responsive website includes the same content and information on mobile devices you access.
- Make sure that the information users are looking for is easier to find when they land your website.
- You need to ensure that the button sizes are designed to work on the mobile should be good enough.
- At times, mobile users prefer to see the desktop version of your website so allow an easy way to switch to desktop view.
- It is better to use larger font sizes as it makes reading easy on the smaller screen.
Tools for Website Conversion Rate Optimization
Turning leads into conversions is what marketing is all about, but without the right tools, conversion rate optimization can seem like a mammoth task. Website conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools collect data about your website and its visitors to help you understand how people use your site and identify and test potential changes to increase conversion rates.
Here are some of the best website conversion rate optimization tools:
- Google Analytics – Powerful free analytics tool with useful conversion features.
- ConvertBox – The best conversion optimization software for deploying and optimizing opt-in forms, and CTA’s.
- Unbounce – Popular landing page builder. Can be used for deploying forms and CTA’s too.
- Mouseflow – Powerful heat map tracking software to drive more conversions.
- UserTesting – Gather user feedback to improve your site’s CRO.
- Lucky Orange – Dedicated conversion rate optimization software that’s budget friendly.
Frequently Askes Questions (FAQs)
When using analytics on your website, what do we mean by the term ‘conversion’? are some kind of questions that usually come to the minds of the people. Some of the commonly asked questions related to increase of website conversion rate are as follows:
Q.1. What is a website conversion?
A website conversion is an event in a web analytics system that marks the completion of a website goal. Goals vary depending on the aims and type of your website and business.
Q.2. When using analytics on your website, what do we mean by the term ‘conversion’?
While using analytics on your website, it refers to the act that the user takes for completing the main goal that impacts the website conversion rate.
Q.3. What is the average conversion rate in the eCommerce industry?
The average ecommerce conversion globally is at 2.58% The average ecommerce conversion in the US is at 2.57%. The average ecommerce conversion globally is at 3.81%.
Q.4. What factors do affect the conversion rate of a website?
There are six common factors in each improvements established in a website to improve the conversion rate. They are as follows:
- Value proposal
- Relevance
- Clarity
- Anxiety
- Distraction
- Urgency
Start Improving your Website Conversion Rates Now!
Website in your most important channel for business communication and in fact is the face of your brand. Delivering the right customer experience and using your website for customer acquisition are a few key metrics you should aim to achieve.
Implementing REVE Chat’s digital customer engagement tools like live chat and chatbots empowers businesses to engage customers in real time with relevant responses that increase website conversion rate.
Hence, improving your average website conversion rate is so crucial, not just to convey your brand value proposition to your potential customers but also to act as a gateway to increase your sales conversions significantly.
