Is it just me or do you find that most of the Conversion Rate Optimisation advice you find online flies by right over your head?
I casually browsed a leading CRO blog to find what’s being written these days. There’s talk of multi-channel optimisation, measurement protocols, BigQuery, and other big things.
If you go by all the advice you find online, you might start harbouring the myth that CRO is tough.
Dispelling this myth is the inspiration behind this post. There are stupid simple ways that can improve conversions on your site in the blink of an eye.
I’ll also walk through examples, so you can see how these simple techniques can help boosting online conversions with conversion rate optimisation.
Minimise Distractions
If your website is full of calls to action, graphics and links, it can overwhelm the visitor. The visitor pays attention to all these elements willingly or unwillingly.
When someone comes to a site there’s a lot of things he’s faced with. There are text fields to fill up, there are bulleted information points, a list of the most popular blog posts, a link to subscribe to your podcast and so on. There are multiple calls to action, lead magnets and other things.
That ruins the goal of the landing page.
The solution? Cut the noise.
The advice may not be easy to implement. For starters, you have to know which elements are a distraction. You have to remove ones that are hurdles in the path to conversion.
Some of the elements are easy to discard. Calls to action to social media pages. Unnecessary sidebar optin forms and so on.
The fix? Use a heatmap tool to understand which areas of the site don’t get any attention. Remove those.
A/B Test
Walmart.com is one of my favourite sites online. I love browsing through their site, and I love shopping and buying. It’s as simple as it gets. For such a large site, they convert really well. There are lots of calls to action. But, when you visit for the first time, they do a great job of segmenting visitors well.
You know why? Because they understand their customers well.
Whether small or big, to convert, you need to know your customer well. And a lot of this boils down to how well you research your customers.
Once again, use heat maps, scroll maps, and other tools to get a sense for how visitors are interacting with your site. Get a bird’s eye view of which internal links are getting clicked on with Google Analytics.
Are there elements you want them to notice but aren’t able to with the current state of things? A/B tests can help.
All this analysis shows us actionable information.
With this, you’re able to make informed decisions on what you should test. In all likelihood, you will find a version that beats the control.
Your heatmap test can reveal hidden problems on the site. It might be that navigation on the checkout page was too complicated. Or that something was broken
Based on what you find you can wireframe your new site design that eliminates everything that’s causing problems.
Compare your homepage to what competitors in the niche have. Is the explanation of what you offer less/more than what the competition is offering?
What to A/B test?
Here’s an example to learn from:
A case study outlined on the CrazyEgg blog shows how Humana increased their conversions. Humana wanted to increase the CTR on the banner they had on their homepage.
The original banner sported a lot of text.
The variation made it simpler by removing most of the text.
As it turns out, cleaning up the copy and making it simpler worked. The results? 433 percent increase in CTR.
The simplicity of the test belies the improvement in conversion rates.
As these tests demonstrate, simplicity is often the best new feature for your website.
Conversion rate optimisation
Test The Strength Of Your Call To Action
You’ve gathered all of your data so far. You know exactly who you’re targeting and where they are. You’ve collected the number of visitors who have been to your website and analysed their behaviour.
Conversions depend on the might of the call to action. That’s why it’s so important to test the CTA.
First, decide what the goal of your test is. Is it to increase sales of one of your products? If so, then choose that goal.
Simply put there could be a few goals such as this. (I am listing these to give you a primer. This isn’t an exhaustive list)
- Account signups
- Subscriptions of an email newsletter
- Video views
- User clicks
- Sales
Don’t just do what you do. Do it better.
You have to isolate your goals and understand the components of a website.
If you have multiple CTAs you raise the odds of a person not converting. That doesn’t stop you from including the same CTA multiple times. Just don’t have three different CTAs pointing to three different pages.
Keeping it focussed only improves visibility and ups the odds of action taking.
After you’ve determined the goal of your test, you’ll need to know what the current numbers are.
This will help you measure growth.
Finally, Talk To Your Customers
You don’t need research to understand that customers want to be treated like human beings. If you treat your customers right, they’ll trust you more. By talking to customers not only can you improve conversions you understand what kind of content they want to read. Killer content by itself isn’t enough if your customers don’t want it.
Consumers also have a greater understanding of the issues, concerns, and motivations that led them to choose your product. Hence they’re the best people to give your ear to.
Set up an A/B test on the website to see which version brings in the highest conversion rate.
Optimise based on customer feedback.
What do you think of our boosting online conversions tips?
About the Author
George is a freelance writer and blogger who’s been working with several SaaS startups for over 8 years now. He has years of experience using the power of words to make a compelling case for noteworthy products. Check his work on his website.