Once your site has an audience and traffic you should consider conversion rate optimisation to increase the inquiries or sales from your website.

This week we are going to share 5 top tips for improving conversion on your website.

So lets start at the top:

1. Relevant SERPS and Keyword Choice.

Its important that your traffic is targeted and users are looking for products or services that you offer. If you use a search agency then the keywords should have been selected to fit your business or products.

2. Usability & Design

Usability plays a big part in converting traffic into sales, if the site looks untrustworthy, has poor usability or a unstructured layout then users will be less inclined to browse the site or checkout.

3. Portfolio Examples

If you walk into a car showroom you interact with the product that is being sold, by adding portfolio pieces and testimonials you add value to your product or service.

4. Quick Enquiry Forms

If your offering a service, a quick call to action inquiry form can be an excellent method of increasing the chance of gathering potential customers.

5. A Clear Phone Number

Having various ways of taking inquiries is essential, A phone number will reassure the user if they have problems that they will be able to easily resolve the issue by talking to a member of staff. This adds more value than a contact form or email address.

Please feel free to add any additional CRO tips to the comments in the supporting blog post.

Thanks for watching.

My colleague Hannah sent me this article last week, I’m going to believe it’s because she respects my authority on conversion rate optimisation rather than her being lazy. It goes on about how your mother is a good guide as to whether your site is usable or not.

It’s right.  Your mother is a good guide as to whether your site is usable or not.

END BLOG.

Oh…I have to keep writing…okay.

Your website is your shop, and like a shop in the real world you want people to be able find what they’re looking for and then find the checkout and pay. In the real world you can watch customers come into, and wander around, the shop whereupon you can observe their actions.

Why did they go over there? Why didn’t they look at that display? Don’t they realise there’s another room in’t back?

‘shelling out for a usability analysis isn’t always (ok, is almost never) feasible.’

To observe a customer on your website you could consider paying for usability testing (heat maps, mouse trackers, A/B testing etc) and like Jennifer says in her article it’s not that economical for most people/businesses. So the cheaper alternative is to ask your mother (or somebody elses) to take some time and use your site.

Trying to explain or show something computer based to my parents can drive me to the brink of sanity but I know they can buy things on the internet and use it to find useless tat so I would be prepared to ask them to test a website that wasn’t converting its traffic.

The older generations don’t spend hours on computers and haven’t grown up with them so many things that younger people find second nature are harder for the baby boomers and former hippies.

The basics of the mum test (I will not write ‘mom’, I can’t stand that word, it’s just so American) are to ask the mum to perform a task; if your website is a shop ask her to buy something, if you provide a service ask her to find out if you cover Minchinhampton, ask her to subscribe to the newsletter and so on. Then sit back and see how she does. If see can’t find the checkout, has no idea which areas you cover or doesn’t know where to subscribe you need to make some changes.

Usability testing is a great place to start when you’re analysing the conversion rate of your website as it can be cheap (if not free) to check.

All products and services have a target audience but no matter what the education or intelligence of that audience make your site as easy and instinctive to use as possible, otherwise people will find another site that offers your product or service and offers no frustration.

With SEO you can become obsessed with getting your keywords to page 1 position 1, but never forget how important the site’s look, layout and usability are.

SEO and CRO aren’t mutually exclusive, there is overlap…significant overlap.

Let’s say you have a website, you’re getting the traffic, but barely anyone is buying/registering/enquiring, well what do you do now?

You need to find the problem and fix it. That’s the essence of CRO.

Audience, trust, usability, design, keywords and many more elements need to be considered when trying to improve your conversion rate.

I recently discovered an ancient set of catacombs below Leicester, where I stumbled upon a treasure chest of useful conversion rate optimisation links. There were too many for me alone, so I have decided to share them.

But first, here is the link to Google’s free website optimiser, it will hold your hand as you try to test and improve your conversion rate, have a look/gander/perusal.

Basic way to conduct CRO

Path to conversion

Landing pages

Don’t overwhelm users with too many options

Quick CRO

Influencing users

Different types of landing pages

Scientific papers about CRO

CRO with a focus on SEO’s role

Step by step process for CRO