There are countless conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools and strategies on the internet that promises businesses mouthwatering results and yet just a few of them yield the desired results.
When it comes to website conversion, there are fundamental factors that you must consider as they determine the rate at which your website’s visitors engage meaningfully with your contents and products.
Furthermore, the influx of mobile users over the years, which a new survey highlighted as the major contributor to the growth of voice search, establishes the importance of a mobile webpage-focused optimization (mobile CRO) along with the commonly emphasized CRO.
Here, we will outline the key elements to consider in web conversion optimization as well as the role of each.
1. Mobile Optimization
Mobile optimization basically refers to the ability of your website to adapt and consistently become accessible to mobile device users.
Although traditional devices remain relevant today, the introduction of the iPhone and smartphones, in general, changed the conventional way of designing websites. Now, mobile-optimized websites have become the standard and judging from Google’s commitment to using mobile compatibility as a major indexing tool, your website’s conversion rate is strongly tied to its mobile-friendliness.
In other words, your capacity to capitalize on various mobile optimization processes or techniques would either improve or put a dent on your website’s conversion rate. For one, your website must obey what experts call responsive design, which allows your webpage to automatically adapt to all types of screen sizes while ensuring that the content is in a well-presented form.
The first thing to do is to test your website’s mobile friendliness and implement suggested improvements. Also, you should include keywords in your contents as it goes a long way to ensure that your website ranks high in search results.
2. User Interface (Ui)
User interface relates to the design of a website and it is the first point of contact for visitors as well as an important factor that helps them create an impression about your business. Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology revealed that it takes a fraction of a second for internet users to create an opinion about a website, therefore, you should learn to create a website that projects a good first impression with good user interface that would go a long way to increase conversion rate.
To achieve this, consider using attractive and quality pictures, an easy to navigate design, and generally suitable tabs for both the fat and small fingered users. In addition to this, employing automated features that would curate contents (from data of the user’s last visit) that the users might find interesting could also do the trick.
Apart from this, ensure that you incorporate a search tool that comes with autocomplete, especially if you are running an e-commerce site. Apparently, this will help visitors to quickly access their desired products and it would encourage them to take swift actions.
Having said that, quick access to products and service does not necessarily equate to actual sales. For you to encourage your visitor to purchase your product, then you must put in place tools that would make payment easy.
Utilizing a complex payment process, as suggested by this study, will most likely result in incomplete checkouts. This becomes even more important if we consider the identity verification hurdles that most payment systems have in place, which is detrimental to UI. As much as you would want to curtail fraud, you should go for payment tools that establish a balance between security and user experience.
3. Speed
Speed is a key element that motivates visitors’ activities on your website that could improve website conversions. Needless to say, we often get discouraged to follow through with websites that are seemingly slow and this has driven the likes of Google to proffer solutions for optimizing the loading speed of webpages.
As a website owner, it is advisable to test the speed of your website, particularly the render start time (RST), which is the time it takes your site to load the first content on the display.
By doing this, you will have an idea of how much optimization your website needs in order to reach the required speed. In most cases, compressing the site’s pictures as well as opting for mobile-friendly designs will do the trick, however, you can also utilize a content delivery network or a caching plugin.
4. Personalized And Appropriate Marketing Campaigns
Optimizing your website without employing the appropriate marketing campaign that best suits your design would not yield the expected rate of conversions. While it is important to post discounted offers and affiliated products, yet, these features should not, in any way, interfere with the visitor’s main objectives.
For example, using pop-ads on a mobile webpage could inadvertently affect Users’ experience and therefore, lead to abandonment. Try as much as possible to personalize your marketing campaigns as this strategy ensures that the ads conform to the visitor’s interests.
Apart from this, you must utilize a well-defined and conversion-compelling call to action (CTA) that comes with embedded links to an appropriate page.
Conclusion
Improving a website’s conversion rate involves a level of technicality and commitment that separate mediocre websites from the high flying ones that successfully encourage visitors’ content engagement that will translate to profitability.
As mentioned earlier, there are countless strategies to attain desired website conversions, however, the tips listed above are some of the most crucial factors to consider.