Strategies to Improve Your Site’s Conversion Rate in 2019
With a host of marketing channels available today, it’s easy for your website to take a backseat to all the trending platforms like Facebook marketing and paid stories. But your website is still where the conversions that matter happen, which means you need to pay close attention to the strategies you implement on it.
Here are the best ways to go about improving your site’s conversion rates in 2019.
Voice Engine Optimization
Voice search continues to gain popularity and acceptance, with research firms predicting that by 2020 up to 50% of all searches will be conducted via voice. This means that brands need to optimize for voice search if they wish to stay ahead of the game.
As pointed out by Search Engine Journal, the first organic search result on Google’s SERP (search engine results page) gets up to 35% of clicks. When it comes to voice search it’s even more crucial to rank at the top, as only the top three results are shown on mobile, and just one for smart speakers.
The key to voice engine optimization (VEO) is to optimize content, location and page/product/brand information. Voice search is quickly penetrating across industries, particularly for those looking for answers and information on-the-go.
Here are some of the things you should do for VEO:
- Optimize Business Information – Some $10.3 billion are lost annually just because of inaccurate or unavailable listings. That’s just far too much business to lose for something so rudimentary. Make sure your business listings (name, address, email, phone, socials, etc.) on your website are clear and consistent.
- Improve Page Load Time – As mentioned above, voice search is mainly utilized by those looking for on-the-go results. You may have the info/product they’re looking for, but if your page won’t load, you can kiss your chances of converting goodbye. Simply making your page load faster can improve your ecommerce conversion rate.
- Focus on Questions – Users have learned to speak to voice search like they were actual people. Instead of typing keywords as they would on a standard search, they ask questions. This means that you should work on conversational, long-tail keyword phrases in your site’s content as this enables you to answer natural language queries.
Email Marketing Hacks
Email marketing remains to be a powerful tool for customer acquisition – 40 times more effective than Facebook or Twitter. Additionally, marketing emails are six times more likely to earn a click-through than tweets. This means that if you aren’t focusing on optimizing your email marketing, you’re wasting a golden opportunity.
Personalized content has been all the rage for the past couple of years, but email personalization begins with the sender. Check out the image below. Names, even if you don’t know them, catch your attention better than “Grammarly Insights” or “Blogging Wizard.” It’s also easier to tune out promotional emails.
Once you get a sender name and subject line good enough for your email to be opened, you need to make sure that there’s value in the body. Understanding your segmented list allows you to provide content and a CTA that would resonate with the receiver.
Optimize Your Message Across all Social Channels
There’s layers to this strategy. One is you need to identify which platforms your audiences are in. Then, you need to understand the strengths of each network and the type of content that works best in each platform. For example, on Facebook, images get 53% more likes than average posts. The same applies in LinkedIn where posts with images get 98% more comments.
Once you establish a brand messaging, tailor it to the different platforms you’re utilizing to make sure they perform at optimal level.
Invest in Product Video Content
You can include the more comprehensive product specs. You can even display the most honest, useful user reviews. But unless they can see how your product actually works, your chances of converting remains mediocre at best.
Product videos provide them an up close look at what you’re selling without them actually using it. To see if it’s worth the investment, test it by producing video for your top performing products. When you see an uptick in sales, move on to the next tier of products.
Increase Conversions with the Help of Your Fans
As customers’ trust for brands continue to decline, and conversely trust their peers more and more, social proof and user-generated content (UGC) become an increasingly powerful conversion tool.
Here are some of the ways you can encourage fans to help you out:
- CTAs – You don’t get what you don’t ask for. Having strategically placed CTAs on your sites that encourage customers to share their thoughts and experiences helps in this regard. You can also put social buttons next to the CTA to allow them to share their thoughts in their preferred space. Additionally, you can even start a forum right in your website.
- Post-purchase follow-up – Send an email after a period wherein customers have had a chance to use your product asking them for a review. As noted by Search Engine Journal, UGC there are UGC marketing platforms that can automate this for you.
You can even offer incentives like a 10% discount on their next purchase if they leave a review.
Gamify
Gamification used to be a popular persuasion tactic (think being the mayor of a location in Foursquare, or getting badges in Waze) but has since waned in mass appeal. But, the reason why you should still implement some of its aspects is to tap on people’s need to be rewarded.
Instead of offering badges that are meaningless, cook up rewards that provide actual value. A simple yet effective example of this is Dropbox. They’ve come up with a list of CTAs that, in exchange for, they’ll reward you with additional storage space. This is simple, yet genius, as they’re not only offering a valuable reward, the reward is what their actual product.
Prioritize Human Intelligence
AI is the shiny new toy everyone’s looking to get a piece of. But the reality is, not everyone has the resources, or even the need to justify the infrastructure investment. What’s feasible for every business, though, is to invest in its people.
This popular joke concisely explains the concept:
CFO to CEO: “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?“
CEO: “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?“
To optimize every aspect of your operations, you need to invest in human intelligence – developing them to a level where it is both easy to trust their decisions, and allow free reign to experiment with ideas.
Use Exit Intent Polls
To optimize your website for conversion, you need to understand two main things:
- Where your visitors are leaving from
- Why they are leaving
The first part is simple enough, just go to Exit Pages in Google Analytics and request for a report.
Getting insights to the next one is where exit intent polls come in. This basically means that when visitors are about to leave the page, a poll is shown asking them why, for example, they are abandoning a cart. Does shipping take too long? Would they prefer same day fulfillment?
This will allow you to get a clearer picture of why visitors are leaving, and what you can do to improve the user experience on your site. You can find a complete guide on how to set up exit intent polls here.
Advanced SMS Marketing
While it seems outdated in the face of all other marketing channels, SMS remains an effective tool because they go straight to where people spend their time the most – their phones. Additionally, SMS is set up that even when you don’t tap it, you’re able to see the message. This leads to over 90% of all text messages being read within five minutes.
Another benefit of utilizing SMS marketing is that not a lot of brands are using it. This means that while people have been accustomed to ignoring promotional emails, people still read their texts. So if you find yourself with the resources (meaning enough mobile numbers), SMS marketing is a solid avenue you should tap.
Takeaway
Conversion may not always equate to sales and revenue, but it is almost always tied up with the bottom line. Analyze which of the points above are applicable to your business and see your conversion rates rise.
The post Strategies to Improve Your Site’s Conversion Rate in 2019 appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.