Website Conversions: 5 Easy Ways to Increase Conversions
By Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group
Website Conversions and How to Increase Them
Are you in charge of website conversions and are in need of easy ways to increase that? Well, when I started my career in marketing (lo, these many years ago…), the only thing we assumed to be important were responses. We were concerned with the stack of cards filled out at our Comdex tradeshow booth, the number of BRCs (business reply cards) we received after our mailing, and the quantity of people willing to talk to us on the phone. The more, the better. Quality wasn’t an issue – we thought EVERYONE was a viable prospect!
The world has changed dramatically for marketers and although we would still love to see BIG numbers such as a 50% response rate to our email offer, today’s marketing performance is often judged on conversions. In other words, did we influence our target audience to take an action to fill out a form, download an offer, opt-into a newsletter, view a video, give us a call, or attend a webcast?
Now some of you are saying “there’s more to marketing than just a high number of conversions” and I would agree. If you dig deep into metrics, for example, you may find out that those that converted at a 10% rate actually purchased more than those who converted at a 20% or 30% rate. But that’s a topic for another day.
Quick and Easy Ways to Increase Website Conversions
Jayson Demers of AudienceBloom wrote a great article on 39 Quick Ways to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate posted on Entrepreneur.com. Each of his 39 ways is relatively painless and easy to implement, such as…
- Use only a few fields on the form. According to some research I’ve seen, three or less is ideal. More than three fields and the conversion rate drops precipitously.
- Use testimonials on the opt-in/offer page to reduce risk and provide social proof.
- Use “Download Now” or “Register Today” buttons (especially good on mobile devices) instead of text.
- Try a single column layout. In Jayson’s article he notes a test that showed a 681% increase in conversions when changing from a double column layout. (Sounds like it’s well worth testing!)
- And 35 other tips on designing and testing your conversion page. Well worth reading.
I’m going to be trying a few of the tips on our next landing page. Stay tuned to see if I did it right but in the meantime, I’d love to learn more about your experiences in this area.
