Helping your SEO translate into sales results.
Is your website getting a lot of hits but no conversions? Sometimes, you build an amazing website, optimize your pages just right, run an ad, draw in a lot of traffic, and then… nothing happens. What went wrong?
That’s an important question, and one every decent marketer obsesses over. Even when things go right, we wonder: how could they go better?! But it’s particularly frustrating and discouraging when you’ve done everything right and still no one’s making the purchase.
Some factors are outside your control: maybe you’ve missed your target market, or it’s just after a major purchasing season and no one has the budget. But it’s far more likely that aspect of your site is letting you down, and with some adjustments you can turn your traffic around and increase conversions on your website. Let’s take a look at some common failings and see how you can address them.
Dummy test for anything gone wrong.
If your low conversion rate appears to come as a sudden drop, rather than a gradual decline, look for any functional reason why something might be wrong on your page. If you’re trying to increase conversions to an email list, check to see if something’s wrong with your form submission. Make sure your shopping cart is functioning correctly, and that there aren’t any broken elements preventing someone from completing a critical action in your sales pipeline.
Check to see what users are doing on your site.
We talked recently about the importance of user experience testing, and how your work is never done. This is a prime example of how you can and should a tracking and monitoring tool such as Inspectlet to help you understand where your site is failing you. Before you leap to any conclusions, you should identify where the broken link is: do your users leave on the home page, or the a few pages further along? Does your site path lead them to a dead end (ie: to a page without a high exit rate)? Do your visitors begin to complete a form, but then leave with it only partially filled out? Are they clicking on a button expecting it to take them somewhere it doesn’t? All this information is key to helping you understand why your visitors aren’t converting. Explore your data and see if you spot any clues.
Tell your visitors what to do.
One of the simplest ways a page fails to convert is by not including a strong Call-to-Action. Every page on your site should have something for your visitors to do: a blog to read, a contact form to fill out, a piece of gated content to download.
Ideally, you know the path you want your visitors to take through your website to have the greatest conversion results. Maybe you know that your home page alone won’t convince them, and that if you put a “contact us” button at the top you’re asking too much too soon in your sales process. So instead you direct your visitors to a piece of in-depth content so that they can learn more about your product, and from there you use some premium content to ask for their email. Now you’ve made a conversion, and you don’t have to wait for your visitors to contact you: you can contact them.
All this simply by telling your visitors where to go next. Take a look at where your visitors go on your site and if they’re exiting because they came to the end of the road and have nowhere to go.
Cut down on the clutter.
Sometimes you go the opposite way and you add too many CTAs. Now, instead of not giving your users enough direction, you’re giving the too much. Or maybe all the content is crowding out your CTAs, making them hard to notice and damaging the user experience. Either way, look at how you can reduce the content density on your page. Focus on where you want your visitors to go, and clear out any obstacles from their path.
Reexamine your keywords.
It’s possible your site is not attracting the right visitors. Maybe you’re bringing in a lot of folk who are interested in your company because they’re looking for a job, or they’re confusing Toledo, Ohio with Toledo, Spain. Or it’s possible your chosen set of keywords is being mixed up with something else, and this contributes to your high bounce rate. It doesn’t matter which way you cut it: you’re simply drawing the wrong crowd.
Look for ways to re-write your copy to include more specific keywords. This may mean boosting your blog content so that Google has more context to judge the content on your site, or you could check to ensure your images and other site elements contain appropriate alt attributes. If your conversion rate is due to poor SEO, it may take a little time to sort out, but it will certainly improve your conversion rate once you have the right visitors on your site.
Don’t forget to remarket to cart abandoners.
Sometimes you get so close: a visitor not only lands on your site, they add your product to their shopping cart. And then… they walk away. Maybe they had to get a certain way through your sales process before they saw the price and then changed their mind. Or perhaps they saw a competing product on another store and make their purchase elsewhere. But more than likely, they simply got distracted, or decided to wait another week till their paycheck cleared.
By following up with some remarketing emails, you can convert 10–30% of cart abandoners. That’s a massive conversion boost, and all you have to do is remind those folk who already expressed interest in a specific product that the product they were curious about is still available, still waiting for them to drop by. (Although maybe for not much longer, so come back soon!)
Conversion rate is a UX issue at heart.
At the end of the day, your conversion rate reflects user experience. The best way to increase conversions on your website is to focus on UX. Find out how your visitors use your website, and work to make that experience as seamless as possible.