Every growing business owner has been through this at one point: you set up your new or refreshed website, ensure your analytics tools are connected, schedule promotional campaigns to your professional networks, and then… crickets?
Your website isn’t broken, but it’s not converting either.
Building and refining a business website that entices and converts leads into loyal customers entails more than inserting dynamic images and a sizable “Contact Us” button. It takes elevating your User Experience (UX), honing your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and coordinating cohesive branding and marketing strategies across platforms. To help, we’ve got all the website conversion optimization pro-tips and expert insights here for you.
Website Conversion Optimization 101: What is the current state of my website?
When we work with a new client and dig into their online marketing presence, especially our Website Rebranding clients, there are a few specific things we look for on their website:
- Is it clear what product or service your business provides?
- Is it clear how your business wants to be perceived by its target audience?
- Is it clear where you intend for a website visitor to spend their time on your site?
If your website’s purpose and design are unclear, visitors are less likely to spend time figuring them out. This leads to lost conversions, whether that be purchases, email sign-ups, contact messages, or whatever conversion is important to your business.
Before we dig into the analytics behind your website’s conversions, we want to understand your objectives and if those goals come across—or are even feasible to fulfill—for visitors to your current website.
Homework: Clarify your intentions for your brand’s website.
Whether your website is a single landing page or has branching pages of products and resources, a visitor should be able to easily find and identify three key things:
- What you do.
- Why it matters.
- How they can get involved.
Make sure your most important Call-To-Actions (CTAs) stand out and are available on every page, that your navigation (both the menu and the vertical scroll on any page) is unambiguous, and that your branding style (visuals and voice) matches your target audience and your other marketing channels.
By streamlining these aspects, website visitors are more likely to spend more time, attention, and clicks on your business.
Website Conversion Optimization, Introductory Level: Why isn’t my website converting?
This is where we start diving into your website analytics and how they align with your UX.
First things first, how are you measuring website conversions? Having a comprehensive view and understanding of your website data is key to optimizing your conversion strategy. We recommend configuring a web tracking tool like Google Analytics so you always have a full view of your website visitors’ behavior, trends, and sources.
Your website data will help reveal which strategies are working successfully and help inform the decisions for optimizing your website going forward.
Homework: Align your website optimization strategies to your audience’s behavior.
It’s possible that the intentions you have for your website and your audience’s expectations might not be in harmony on a UX level. For example, if your website data shows that most of your visitors are browsing on mobile devices, even the most beautifully designed website on a full-size computer will have disappointing conversion rates if it’s not optimized for mobile.
Images and text structures could be jumbled, buttons could be too many scrolls down, and important headers could be transformed into unclear icons. This is even more important if your target audience skews younger, as 27% of American young adults rely on smartphones for internet access (10%+ more than any other age demographic).
Having a modern appearance that appeals to digital-age audiences means optimizing for multiple device types.
We recommend reviewing Google Analytics reports that are important to you, such as “Traffic Acquisition” and “Pages & Screens,” on a weekly or monthly basis to identify trends in user behavior. Then, on a quarterly-to-annual basis, we recommend conducting a Digital Marketing Assessment to give you a full 360-degree view of how your online marketing strategies work together.
For our full tips and instructions on conducting a digital marketing audit, download our free “7 Step Guide to Running a No-Fluff Digital Marketing Assessment.”
Website Conversion Optimization, Intermediate Level: How can I improve website conversions?
Your website should be able to take visitors through the stages of your marketing funnel, conversions being one of those stages… just one, though! There are five in total that you need to keep in mind when optimizing your website:
- Awareness: Prospective customers learn about your business, perhaps through lead-generation campaigns on social media or through web searches for the type of product or service you offer. (More on this in the Expert Level below!)
- Consideration: Prospects compare your business against your competition, and when you nurture these new leads by demonstrating how your business can answer their questions and help them solve their problems.
- Conversion: Prospective customers usually “convert” at several points through the customer journey. This could include things like downloading content, visiting a product page, or making their first purchase.
- Loyalty: There are probably as many ways to retain the loyalty of new customers as there are businesses retaining it. Among the more common are offering special discounts for current customers and providing outstanding customer service.
- Advocacy: These are customers so impressed with your business that they’re eager to recommend you to their friends and family. Transforming customers into brand advocates ensures you’ll have a steady stream of new leads entering your marketing funnel.
By planning your website optimization strategies to fulfill all five stages, you’re more likely to propel your website visitors through them and turn them into enthusiastic, repeat customers. Use your brand goals and website data of user behavior to outline the Before and After of a conversion to set yourself up for success.
Homework: Increase opportunities for your website visitors to want to revisit you.
This is also an area where your website data can come to your rescue. Consider this example. If your website data shows that visitors spend ample screen time browsing your product listings and adding items to their cart, but then leave without making a purchase or signing up for future promotional notifications, this is a great opportunity to optimize your purchase page to help them make quick, easy conversions. Are there too many redirects to get from the cart to confirmation? Does the page offer a way to contact them about their cart status, even when not signed in to a customer profile portal? Do you have your Privacy Policy and Terms of Use accessible in the footer to help bolster trust?
Another strategy to boost website visitor retention, conversions, and repeat patronage is to provide high-value content on your website. This could include product demonstration videos, educational blog posts related to your industry, an email newsletter sign-up for discounts, and useful testimonials from past customers and reputable influencers. If website visitors know that even more content and/or products will be available to them if they come back to your website in the future, they’re more likely to engage with your avenues for keeping up with those updates.
Website Conversion Optimization, Expert Level: How can I improve website leads?
For potential customers to convert on your website, they must be able to get there. Your marketing program likely has several strategies in place to do this, such as social media promotions and Google Ads campaigns. One of the primary strategies to get people to your website, though, is ensuring that your SEO strategy is working.
We recommend connecting Google Search Console, formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, so you can review the Search Terms people type into Google that lead to your website being found. These include hidden keywords that even Google Analytics will not show you!
Are the keywords there the ones you expected or intended? Are your SEO settings aligned to the Search Terms that are proving to work? Google Search Console is also a helpful option for improving your team’s understanding of what keywords to add to your website.
Homework: Research and refresh your website’s SEO.
Other tools we recommend for optimizing your website’s SEO include SEMrush and Google Ads Keyword Planner. These can also help you build a list of relevant keywords for your website so that leads can find, follow, and frequent your brand’s website. We’d also like to highlight how optimizing your Google My Business profile can help drive your organic Google Search rank. Apply the same principles for traditional SEO when managing your business listing so Google can more readily suggest your website from their algorithm. This can be especially helpful for businesses looking to attract the local community around their brick-and-mortar location.
One other SEO strategy you’ll want to think about is Voice Search SEO. Retune your crucial keywords for how they may be spoken rather than typed, and make sure they’re implemented in both your webpage summaries and in featured content blocks. This is another important strategy for locally focused brands, as many voice-activated searches include the words “near me.”
Website Conversion Optimization, Next Level: So, what’s next?
Website optimization is never a one-and-done project. As the online face of your business, it should not only align with your business’s growth but also with the evolving digital landscape. The conversion strategies that worked ten years ago may not hold the same weight now and the same could be true in another ten years, especially with the increasing prevalence of AI tools changing how people spend their time, clicks, and cash across the web.
That’s why we recommend annual training on the current conversion strategies in your industry. The internet is a cultural landscape with different rules and best practices for various fields, platforms, and audiences. It’s a lot to stay on top of, but it’s necessary for sustained business growth and success in our digitally focused world.
Homework: Book regular training on updated website optimization strategies and digital marketing trends.
We’ve trained dozens of digital marketing teams, and the one thing they have in common is that they are very smart and savvy, but they want a professional to come in and help them assess where they can improve. A seasoned digital marketing trainer provides personalized guidance that prevents you from making costly, time-consuming missteps, plus offers insights and insider knowledge that only experience and expertise can provide, and helps you reach your goals faster.
Some of the trainings we offer at Go Getter Marketing Group that can help optimize your business’s website conversions include SEO Basics for Business, Google Analytics (GA4), and WordPress for Beginners, among others. To learn more about how we can customize a workshop to your brand’s goals, please contact us.
You can also check out how we can transform your digital presence with stunning, SEO-optimized website designs that captivate and convert, or book an analysis of your marketing performance with actionable insights to maximize your ROI, by requesting a discovery meeting.
