10 Ways to Effectively Increase Your Website Conversions for Small Businesses
If you’re a small business owner, you know that everything matters. One bad customer experience can make or break your company. And when it comes to online experiences, the same goes for getting website visitors to become customers. Business is tough enough, and you need every advantage possible. Here’s how to convert more website visitors into customers:
1. Social Proof
Social proof can be a powerful way to increase conversions to your website. It is the belief that other people’s opinions and experiences influence our own decisions. When we see that others have made positive choices, we are more likely to choose the same thing ourselves than if we had no information.
When considering how you want to implement social proof in your business, it’s important to consider where exactly you should be putting it and what type of social proof will work best for you. For example: Do reviews from large review sites like Trustpilot or TripAdvisor fit well on your website? Would customers trust them as much as a review by an individual experience? These questions will help guide you towards finding a good solution for your business needs.
2. Social Media Links
Website visitors will look for social media links to learn more about your company. It helps them build a picture of how trustworthy you are. If they can’t find any, they may be confused by the lack of information or think your company is untrustworthy.
To ensure that people know where to find you on social networks, make sure your pages are active and have content. It’s better to go all-in on one social media channel than post poorly and infrequently on all channels (which confuses users).
3. About Page
The About page is a great place to let customers know about you and your team. People remember faces and names, so it’s important that you create an about page with an appealing image of yourself and your team members.
Be sure to include information about the journey or story behind your business. You may add struggles you overcame to build to create trust. The more connected people feel with your business on social media and in person, the more likely they will convert to your website.
4. Differentiate Yourself
You can’t be everything to everyone, so why try? Instead, you need to choose a niche market or audience and cater to your website’s content and features around them. This will help you stand out from the competition and give you insight into what works (and doesn’t) as far as marketing goes.
When talking with potential customers, ask them why they chose your company over another one. Did they like how long it took for the product to ship, or was there something else that stood out? You may want to use this information when creating future ad campaigns or adding new features to your site. Obviously Awesome is a nice guide to help you in good product positioning for visitors to convert into sales.
5. Guide the User
It would help if you focused on what you’re trying to do. It might be selling a service/product, getting someone to fill out a form or downloading an e-book. It would be best if you answered the questions “who is this product for?” and “what are they looking for?”. This will help your website visitors know if they’re at the right place.
If you run an online window fitting business where customers want triple glazing installations, ensure each high objective page has contextual call-to-actions. This encourages people toward these solutions with the most appropriate messaging from their point of view.
Finally, use testimonials on those pages which specify the service and not just say “great company”.
6. Exit-intent Popups
Exit popups are the opposite of timed popups. They only appear when a user is about to leave your site without engaging with it. They’re triggered when your visitor’s cursor or mouse reaches a certain point on your page.
They can effectively capture information from visitors who were about to abandon their shopping carts and were waiting for one final push before doing so. For example, if you’re a dentist and they are on a ‘teeth whitening service page, then show a popup with an offer like ‘20% off your first next teeth whitening service.
7. Secondary Conversion
Your primary conversion will be completely different depending on your business type. For example, if you’re a software tool expert, creating an account is probably your primary conversion. But for a local service business such as a restaurant or spa, someone contacting you or giving you a call is most likely your primary conversion.
But what about the people who are interested but not quite ready to call or contact today? This can be frustrating as many small businesses don’t have time or resources to nurture leads and build relationships until they have decided about buying from them.
You want to capture and nurture those leads now. When they are ready to sign up for your service or buy one of your products, there is no competition waiting in line with identical offers.
Try and add ‘download our feature wall inspiration gallery’ as a secondary conversion on top of capturing their email address with relevant content pieces. Then you can add them into an automated email campaign to provide more value and position yourself as an expert.
8. Specific Landing Pages
Create landing pages specifically for those target niches you go after. If you’re a joiner, you should have pages to capture search engine traffic for long-tail keywords. You can use “patio deck installer Northern Ireland” or “panelled feature wall fitter Belfast”. Your freelancer agency should research which keywords are worth going after and prioritise them based on volume and keyword difficulty.
9. Shorten Forms
Shorten forms to encourage more visitors to complete them. The first thing is to ask yourself: How important is this field? Is it critical? If not, leave it or put it in later as an “opt-in” request. This allows users to sign up for information via email or SMS. Here are some simple tips to help you shorten forms.
10. Speed Your Website
We all know that website speed matters. Mobile users are twice as likely to leave a site if it takes more than five seconds to load on their devices. Ensure your site uses the latest web technologies (especially HTTP/2) and that all of the files are optimised for your visitors’ devices. Some other things you can do to improve website speed include:
Statically build your website
· Use a content delivery network for assets
· Use an application cache if you can’t statically build
· Use next-gen image formats like WEBP
· Compress images
· Minify assets like JS and CSS
· Combine your JS and CSS assets into one request
· Resize your images if they are too large
Take Away
With the above 10 proven ways, you can increase your website’s conversion rate. If you would like any help with that or want a partner to talk through your digital marketing strategy, please contact us at Siguro or book a call.