It's not easy and economical to bring traffic to a website. Whether you run a PPC campaign, SEO campaign or any other type of marketing campaign, it's costly to get new visitors. Therefore, it becomes even more crucial that you retain and convert as many of those visitors as possible into leads and customers. The art and science of achieving that maximum conversion is known as conversion optimization. We're calling it both art as well as a science because it's a tricky thing. Yet, we'll try to simplify it for you by providing 8 simple hacks of conversion optimization in this article. Without taking any more time, let's jump straight into them:
1. Follow Hick's Law
Though this is not a web design principle, it's perfectly applicable for all sorts of webpage designs. Formulated by British psychologist William Edmund Hick, the principle is as follows:
"The time it takes for a person to make a decision is a result of the possible choices he or she has."What it means is that increasing the number of options for someone also increases the time they take to decide. And it's not hard to understand what it means for your conversion rate. So, it'll be better if you limit the number of options your visitors need to consider.
2. Install Live Chat
Live chat is not just for e-commerce sites - it can help in boosting your conversion rate even if you're developing any other type of website. Because regardless of what you're trying to sell, your customers will have some questions before they make the purchase. And if those questions are answered in a quick manner, people can take their decisions quickly, which will boost your conversion rate. So, you should consider adding a Live Chat plugin to your website.
3. Use Exit Pop-Up Offers
Pop-ups are generally used within a few seconds of a visitor's arrival on a website to make them submit some of their contact information with us so that you can convert them into leads. However, pop-ups can also be used when a visitor is about to leave. The marketing solutions based on Exit-Intent technology monitor user behavior on your website. As soon as a visitor is about to leave, he is presented with an offer through a pop-up. The primary purpose of such exit pop-up offers is to convert as many of your visitors as possible before they leave, and statistics say that they remain quite successful in achieving this goal. According to a study, exit pop-up offers successfully convert as many as 53% of leaving visitors into leads.
4. Include Your Testimonials, Reviews, and Other Trust Elements
Testimonials, customer reviews and other similar trust elements eliminate the doubt that may be existing in the minds of your customers. And as you may know already, removing doubt is the key to quick decision making. Therefore, not only it's important to put these trust elements on your site but also, it's important to put them in the right place. Try putting a few of your testimonials in the top slideshow of your site along with a call-to-action (CTA) button and see what changes it brings. There's a very good chance that it'll boost your conversion rate.
5. Try Some Videos
Video has emerged as a strong new medium of marketing. Not only there are dedicated sites and apps related to video content (i.e. YouTube and TikTok) but also there's a lot of emphasis on video content among other social media platforms. So, if you can create a few explainer videos related to your brand/product, it can do wonders not only to boost your traffic but also your conversion rate if used on your site. You can also consider creating some video testimonials, if possible, which look more reliable than text-based testimonials. There're various other ways too in which you can boost your conversion rate from videos, and you should discuss them with your marketing department.
6. Use SSL Certificates
Though it's not a web designing hack, it's essential to talk about it whenever we talk of boosting conversion rate. An SSL certificate makes your website load over the HTTPS protocol of the web instead of the default HTTP. Websites that don't load over HTTPS are marked as 'Not Secure' by web browsers, which erodes user trust in them. And you can imagine what happens when trust is eroded - people stop taking interest in your brand, thus hurting your conversion rate. To prevent that from happening it's essential that you install Wildcard SSL certificates for your websites and subdomains.
7. K.I.S.S
Keep it Simple, Stupid. You might have heard about this principle before. And we'd like to say that it is unarguably the most important principle in web design. Stuffing up your webpages with a lot of information can hamper the processing ability of your visitors, thus making it harder for them to navigate through your webpage and make sense of everything. If you want to see an example of how simple webpages should look, visit the website of Apple. Those guys are masters at marketing, and if they're keeping their webpages dead simple then there must be some solid reason behind it.
8. Test, Change, Repeat
Finally, testing is most important to boost your conversion rate. Doing changes to various important elements (i.e. buttons, testimonials, color scheme, etc.) and tracking how they perform on the criteria of conversion is the constant process through which you derive the best possible conversion rate for your traffic. This process is known as A/B testing in marketing lingo, and you should keep doing it until your conversion rate becomes the best in your industry. In fact, I would suggest that you never stop this process, because as they say, there is always room for improvement!
Conclusion
As we said in the beginning, conversion optimization is a tricky thing. However, these 7 simple hacks can simplify it a lot for you. So, apply them and share what difference they bring in the comments. Also, if you know any other conversion hacks that can bring considerable improvement to all websites, share it in the comments below.
