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You’ve invested in search engine optimization (SEO), and you’re starting to see more organic visitors to your website as a result of your efforts. While an increase in traffic to your website is certainly a positive development, it’s important to ensure that you’re driving the right kind of traffic to your site. Specifically, the kind of traffic that takes some kind of action on your site once they get there.
Oftentimes, companies become so wrapped up in optimizing their websites for search with the goal to drive as much traffic as possible to their site, that they forget about this very important next step: converting them into leads or sales. If your website's visitors are not taking the next step in their journey and becoming a customer or a lead, then this traffic likely isn’t doing much to help your bottom line. This is where conversion optimization becomes a crucial part of the website success equation.
One of the main goals for a website is to improve the business's bottom line and generate leads and sales. Conversion optimization helps businesses achieve these goals by making it easy and simple for website visitors to become a customer or prospect.
A conversion can range from an online purchase of a product to downloading a guide or filling out a contact form. What counts as a conversion on your website will depend on your goals and the nature of your business.
In order to generate conversions, there has to be qualified traffic coming to your website. This can be accomplished using a variety of digital marketing tactics, such as digital advertising, social media, content marketing, and link building, to name a few. The more specific or intentional you are in your digital efforts, the more qualified the traffic coming to your site will be.
Any good web design and digital marketing agency understands the importance of generating conversions and will work to ensure that a website is designed to accomplish this goal. As such, there are numerous ways to optimize a website for conversion generation. Below are some tips that may help increase the number of qualified leads that your website delivers.
Examining the keywords and phrases that visitors type into search engines to access your site can provide a great deal of insight into what your customers are looking for, what problems they want solve, or what jobs they need to do. When developing a content or paid search strategy, these queries or keywords can help you better cater your website to meet the needs of your audience. When you can provide a solution that meets their needs, they will be more likely to take action than not.
To conduct keyword research, you can use a variety of tools like SEMrush, Moz, and Answer The Public to see how much search volume exists around different keywords. Additionally, Google Search Console can show you the exact queries that users are typing into Google when they access different pages of your site through search.
When people visit your website, you don’t want them to find what they want (or worse, not find what they want) and leave. Rather, you want to keep your audience engaged on your site long enough that they become convinced to take the next step, whatever that may be. This process starts with understanding how users are engaging with your site.
Implementing heatmaps can show you how visitors navigate your site, whether they scroll down the page or click on your call to action (CTA). For example, if you have a “Request a Demo” button all the way at bottom of your page and users aren’t scrolling down that far, then moving it up toward the top of your page can be an easy way to try to increase your conversion rate.
Targeted landing pages are not only important in online advertising and SEO, but also in driving conversions on your website. Consider the product or service pages on your website. Do you have one big page that details all 10 of your services? Or, do you have 10 individual service pages that focuses specifically on that service alone?
With the latter, you are able to not only optimize for that specific keyword, but also increase your chances of converting someone who is specifically looking for that service. By saving them the time of having to dig through all nine other services you offer, targeted landing pages will help visitors find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
People like to know what they are getting before committing to a purchase or filling out a form. The fewer unknowns there are about you and your business, the more likely―and comfortably―a visitor can take the next step. It’s important to build trust and expertise early by providing them with the relevant information they need and answering their questions firsthand.
When creating your CTAs, make it clear what the user is getting. For example, if your CTA is to download a guide, be sure to explain what the guide is about. Additionally, creating an FAQ section on your site can help address any qualms a customer on the fence might have about making a purchase or taking the next step in your sales process. If customers don’t understand what your product is, how to use it, or what the benefits are, then they likely won’t feel comfortable making the investment.
Make it easy and clear to visitors how and where to take action by including strong, well-written CTAs throughout your entire website. The CTA doesn't have to be a hard sell like making a purchase either. A soft sell, such as obtaining a visitor's email address by downloading a guide or subscribing to your newsletter, is still a huge win. Soft sells are low commitment ways to capture visitors' information, so you can contact them in the future and nurture them throughout your sales process.
One bit of advice—be careful not to overwhelm your user with too many CTAs. It’s important to make it clear to the user what their next step should be. If you provide too many options at once, then they may get confused and not convert at all.
The last thing you want is for someone to come to your site with the intention of contacting your company or making a purchase and not being able to figure out how to do so. Frustrated users can easily leave your website and go to a competitor if they can’t find what they need.
To ensure this doesn’t happen, make it easy for your visitors to convert. A few easy ways to accomplish this could be providing your phone number in the top navigation of the website or using contact forms on product or service pages (if not all pages).
Very rarely will you create the perfect website for driving conversions on the first attempt. It is imperative to never stop testing the changes you make to a website. Using multivariate or A/B testing will provide invaluable data into what is working and what is not. Consider free A/B testing programs like Google Optimize to test things like button copy, CTA placement, and more to ensure your site is optimized to get the most conversions.
From the very start of your optimization efforts (for search engines and conversions), it is essential that tracking is in place to measure results. Once enough data has been generated, you should use these metrics to shed light on adjustments that should be made to your site. Some metrics to pay attention to include:
This information will help you identity and improve the underperforming areas of your website.
Your website is a sales tool for your company and should be treated as such. In order for a website to drive the highest level of leads and sales, it has to be optimized for the conversion process. The tips above provide a solid starting point for your optimization efforts. However, it is important to note that every website is unique, and results vary from case to case and industry to industry. Similar to SEO, conversion optimization is an ongoing strategy that takes effort, time, patience, testing, and data analysis.
Need some help? Contact us today to see how we can help build and optimize a website that goes beyond simply driving traffic and generates leads and sales to improve your bottom line.
