Ten Tips That Will Increase Your Website Conversion Rates

A website’s first and ongoing priority is to increase conversion rates, that is, turn visitors into customers, since that is the purpose of the business. Once a website has been optimised for the search engines, it receives targeted traffic. When these visitors land on the website, they must be motivated to take the action you want them to take – this could be opting in or signing up, placing an order and coming back often for more. For this to happen, they must perceive value and quality.

The best way to get started is by building in good content, including relevant keywords, a well structured site that is easy to navigate and relevant back links. Since your website is your virtual storefront that provides the information your visitors need to convert into customers, care must be taken to ensure that it achieves this objective.

Websites continuously test their headlines, images, graphics, buttons and button text, location of these buttons, pricing, ease of ordering, etc. There are many ways to increase conversion rates, but the following ten tips are the most effective:

1. Make your headline effective as it is the first thing your visitor will read. Let this speak of the benefits of your product or service. Let your visitors know what they can get here.
2. Be clear about the “call to action” where you ask your visitors to buy, sign up or opt in.
3. The first paragraph on your page must be written in such a way as to grab your visitors’ attention and keep them reading to the end. It is a fact that visitors often spend only a few seconds on a website – and you want to keep them there.
4. Format content on your website in bullets – for example, list your benefits as bulleted points, mentioning the most important benefits first.
5. Images on your website must complement the content. Images have a major influence on your website conversion rate. A specific image that motivates your visitor to take action. Preferably, let the image appear near the first paragraph of your page content and make sure the image has a catchy caption. Ideally, this caption must be clickable so that your visitors can click through to your opt in form or order page.
6. How is the general look of your site? Does it have all the critical components that will make your visitors trust you? Websites must be designed professionally and be credible. One way to do this is to display your Better Business Bureau or Verisign logo so that visitors develop confidence and convert to customers.
7. Check buttons, button text, color and appearance. Check navigation links. There is nothing more annoying than links that do not work.
8. Include customer testimonials and press quotes on your website to build credibility.
9. Make sure your web pages load fast. All the elements on the page must be easy to view on slower connections as well.
10. Add your toll free phone number at the top of the page.

Apart from the above, websites that include all the vital information on one page rather than requiring the visitors to click through to find out more experience better conversion rates.

Optimising your website for better conversion rates must be done periodically as it involves testing, tracking and making improvements for good performance.

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