Things to do to improve your conversion

A website with terrible conversion is like having a leaky bucket – no matter what you do the water will keep leaking out as fast as you fill it.

So, how do you fix the hole, or to put it another way, how do you use your marketing to stop those who’ve been leaving and get them to take action instead?

It all comes down to optimisation. You need to optimise the conversion rate of your site before you spend budget attracting people to visit it. After all, there’s no point getting more people to visit your site if you don’t have the content ordered to keep them there.

As business owners we have seconds to get people’s attention before they click away to something else. So, it’s worth getting this right so they can take advantage of all the great things you’ve added to your site.

But what is a conversion?

Before we get into how to see and fix your leaky bucket, it’s first important to set out what exactly a conversion is.

It’s simply the figure that represents the percentage of your visitors that take an action, whether this is subscribing to your newsletter, booking a call, buying a product, etc.

Often, it’s assumed that conversion simply means sales, but it can also be other things – it just depends on what you’ve asked visitors to do.

An example of this is, if you sell products, then selling is going to be one of your primary goals, but if you run a service business, getting people to book a consultation might be a primary goal.

However, there are also micro-conversions, which are when visitors are not ready to buy but sign up for your email list or follow you on social. This is the first step towards getting that main conversion or macro-conversion.

Most websites have multiple conversion goals for both micro and macro conversions.

Micro vs Macro Conversion

Okay, so we’ve learned there’s two types of conversions, but which should you be focusing on?

Well you need to do both to get your customers to flow down that all important sales funnel. This is why, if you don’t have either micro or macro conversion points, your site is a leaky bucket.

But, sometimes there’s the situation where things seem to be good but are the opposite when you look closer.

These are:

1. You have high site traffic, which is great, but you don’t have any micro or macro conversions, which is not so good
2. You have high site traffic, which is great, and lots of micro conversions, also great, but no macro conversions, which is not good

Essentially, your site needs to cover all bases – you need to offer both micro and macro level options for people to choose.

Fixing the issue

Here’s where the difficulty lies for most people, because fixing these issues is different for each site and each industry.

If traffic isn’t your problem, it could be you need to tweak a few things like offering people a way to buy and to sign up to your email list, etc.

Have you tested what works with your customers or have you guessed at what you think they want?

Sometimes it’s as simple as getting to know what it is your customers are looking for, not just making assumptions.

It’s about testing different things and trying options to see what works and what doesn’t and moving on from the ones that don’t to try something new.

How to make changes

So, what practical ways can you improve your site conversion?

Here’s a few ideas to get started:

1. Focus your time by using analytics to identify which pages are getting the most traffic and attention, then focus on optimising these the most
2. Try running A/B testing on Google to see what’s getting clicks and use this data to learn
3. Start gathering data on how your site visitors behave, using your Google analytics to give you the info you need
4. Try not to get too hung up on charts and figures, use them as a guide but do what works for you and your site
5. Prioritise your customer’s desires and focus all your messaging around this
6. Get used to checking and tweaking things, just how you service your car, you should keep tweaking things that will help your conversions
7. Get into a habit of asking people what they want and what they like/don’t like

So, if your conversions are not what you want, try holding off from spamming your social media, or worse, going into panic mode. Instead look deeper at what you’re offering and how you’re offering it.

Your website will sell 24 hours a day, so it’s worth taking care of it and making sure it’s working as hard as it can.

It’s not just about pleasing the search engines, it’s about what will get those visitors to buy.