Chances are that your website is the most effective sales and marketing tool at your disposal.
A “good” website (one that converts at an impressive rate), will mean more sales and greater brand recognition. If your site has a high bounce rate, where users leave your page after viewing only one page, not only is this costing you sales, but your competition is likely benefiting from it.
Website design is a critical element of any digital marketing strategy. Factors such as landing pages with the proper conversion funnels, a homepage with good messaging, and strong calls-to-action throughout your site is a must. When driving traffic to your website from other platforms, whether social media channels or search engines, you want to make sure that your bringing users to a site that is going to be optimized for a great user-experience, and one that encourages a conversion.
CRO – a “must” for your brand
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of making improvements to your website in order to increase the rate at which site visitors take a desired action, such as completing a purchase or filling out a contact form. Conversion optimization can include anything from changing the color of a button, to changing the message on a landing page, to redesigning the hierarchy of a homepage to better match the way a user approaches information-gathering.
Conversion optimization is individualized to every brand — what works and what doesn’t will, for the most part, be specific to each website. However, there are a few tried and true methods for improving conversions that have the potential to be effective for all brands. Let’s take a look at some of these elements, and some brands that truly exemplify these factors:
Implementing a responsive design — where the content of your website adapts to fit the device on which it’s viewed — is one of the most powerful changes you can make to your site to improve conversion rate. We all know how ubiquitous mobile phones have become — we’re more and more inseparable from our devices, and our time spent on mobile is growing too.
The fact is that mobile users are visiting your website, and if what they find is a site designed for the needs of desktop users that has been badly adapted to mobile, they’re going to abandon it pretty quick. According to eMarketer, 55% of survey respondents in the U.S. said they wouldn’t buy from a brand if its website or mobile experience was poorly designed. That means if you don’t have a mobile-optimized website, you’re missing out on conversions. Redesigning your website so that it meets the needs of mobile users is key to boosting your conversion rate.
When a user comes to your site without knowing too much about your brand, your goal is to convince them quickly that you have the solution to whatever their problem is. It’s common for brands to feel the urge to list all the ways they’re unique and wonderful right there on the homepage. They end up cluttering up the homepage with competing value propositions or information that isn’t really critical for a user to have in the beginning phases of browsing. The problem is that when there are too many things to focus on the user will end up not being able to focus on any of them. Your company’s real value and message will be lost.
The better approach is to write a clear, focused value proposition and feature it front and center on your homepage or landing page. Make this message the hero of the page. If you pair it with a clutter-free design and an arresting image, you’ll stand a better chance of capturing the user’s attention and encouraging him to take the next step.
