5 Website Conversion Optimization Tips That Increase Online Sales

These proven website conversion optimization tips can increase your online sales quickly. If you are getting traffic to your website but visitors aren't engaging, making the following website design changes can increase your lead funnel. Here are 5 tactics that work.
website conversion optimization tips

These proven website conversion optimization tips can increase your online sales quickly. If you are getting traffic to your website but visitors aren’t engaging, making the following website design changes can increase your lead funnel. Here are 5 tactics that work.

Website Conversion Optimization Tips

One of the biggest website marketing issues that small businesses face is how to turn more online visitors into actual revenue-generating customers. While it is nice to see traffic coming to your website, it’s frustrating to see just a small fraction become qualified leads, let alone customers.

According to Statista, website conversion rates typically hover around 3%. When you sprinkle in a little website conversion optimization, you can increase that number to 5% or more. Websites that are well-optimized can churn out a whopping 10% website conversion rate.

What are these sites doing to increase their website conversion?

When someone lands on your website, they are looking for something specific. If they don’t see what they anticipated within a couple of seconds, they leave your site. This is known in website marketing terms as a “bounce” – meaning that the visitor bounced off of your website without going to another one of your web pages.

Website conversion optimization involves creating compelling reasons for your web visitors to stay.

1. Offer a Free Guide, Checklist, or Tip Sheet

One of the best website conversion optimization tips is to post an irresistible offer that requires your web visitor to provide their contact information, such as their name and email.

Popular freebies that increase website conversion rates:

  • Guide – create a helpful online guide that your visitor can download. If you sell consumer products, create a guide that helps customers use your products. Examples: recipes (food), fashion tips (clothing, beauty), and productivity improvements (software, professional services).
  • Educational Webinar – design a webinar via a Powerpoint presentation. You can automate webinars using our favorite tool, EasyWebinar, which allows you to record your presentation as a video and then use it as your webinar. EasyWebinar will take care of the registrations, reminders, follow-ups and so on automatically. We use it for our webinars.
  • White Paper – a white paper is an in-depth document about a particular topic related to your business. It discusses a specific problem that your customers are experiencing and offers solutions, which likely include your product or service. It can also be an informative document on how to use your product more effectively.
  • “Top 10” Report – Offer the visitor to view a helpful “top 10” list of relevant websites, uses of your product, or anything that provides value to the customer.
  • Newsletter – Invite the visitor to receive your regular small business newsletter. Be sure to include the fact that they can receive exclusive deals and timely coupons.

Irresistible offer examples:

Creating a “freebie” or irresistible offer isn’t difficult. Think of an issue that your customers face and write a one-page (or longer) document to help. Post your offer on the top portion of your page so visitors can see it immediately. This website conversion optimization tip can start generating qualified leads for you immediately.

For example, on the right side of this web page, you’ll see our offer for our free marketing plan example. This is an incredibly useful document that visitors can copy/paste to create their own custom marketing plan.

The download button displays a pop-up requesting basic contact information. Once someone has provided their contact information, we make sure that we don’t inundate them with useless follow-up. We only send them relevant tips to help them use the templates they downloaded.

2. Add a Call To Action

A web page without a call to action is a missed opportunity. Help guide your visitors into taking the action you want. For instance, you might include a prominent link to your main product on the home page. Then, give visitors an overview of the product with a clear link to more details on product features. That page should then have a very prominent “add to cart” or “have a question?” link that visitors will click next.

The easier it is for your visitors to find the next answer to their question, the better your website conversion optimization. So, steer them toward your final goal of a sales transaction or filling out a contact form to learn more about your company.

Also, make sure your call to action button or link is clearly visible. If it is too difficult to locate, visitors will not click on it.

One way to make it easier to find is to use a contrasting color. If your website design is predominantly blue, for example, using a call to action button in red or orange will make it pop out.

3. Encourage Visitors to Participate

The more “sticky” your website is, the more likely your visitors will stay and result in a website conversion. Therefore, encourage your visitors to get engaged. Here are a few ways to do just that:

  • Participate in a poll – invite them to offer their opinion on a topic. Entice them with the aggregate results after their input.
  • Invite them to your Facebook page – if you have a small business Facebook page, invite your website visitors to participate in the discussion. Provide clear links and reasons to click and follow your Facebook page.
  • Provide a search tool – install a search feature on your site. Most website themes include this option. If a new visitor reached your website, it was likely due to a search result. Help them find precisely what they are looking for.

4. Automatically Record Website Visitor Sessions

You can implement many website conversion optimization tips, but if you don’t know what your visitors are actually doing, you won’t know what to improve.

Tools like Lucky Orange can record how your visitors are interacting with your website. It’s a fairly inexpensive service, starting at just $10/month, yet it allows you to gain insights that you would otherwise miss.

User sessions are recorded anonymously. You can watch your visitors’ mouse movements to see stumbling blocks in your website conversion optimization strategy.

For example, you might find that your contact form is too long and visitors abandon it before filling out all of your fields, or that your irresistible offer or call to action is buried so visitors don’t see it easily.

Watching a user session can be invaluable in improving your website conversion rate.

5. Improve Website Conversion with a Chat Widget

You may have seen this clever tool while visiting another website. Suddenly, a new window pops up and asks if you would like to speak with a sales representative. You can then start a live chat with someone, ask questions, pose problems or make any other inquiries.

This software is amazingly easy to install and use. Chat programs available for as little as $15-20 per month. Just copy/paste the code they provide and your site will instantly have a chat bot. You can also use Facebook’s chat bot, which is configured to respond automatically and notify you when a visitor is engaging with your Facebook page.

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