According to Akamai, most users expect websites to load in 2 seconds or less and they tend to leave a site if it takes more than 3 seconds. When users leave, your CRO struggles. So, what needs to be done to improve conversion rate? Most conversion rate optimization strategies observe identical patterns: discover a component, modify a property (copy, color, size), and divide test until you gain positive outcomes. While these conversion optimization rate methods accomplish their purposes, they can also be challenging to pull-off. Moreover, since most of your rivals are already practicing them, you have no genuine competing use when you choose them. There are, nevertheless, some CRO techniques that do not receive much recognition but can produce dramatic effects.
Conversion optimization rate and SEO have a somewhat symbiotic connection—they depend on each other to operate correctly. Optimizing conversion optimization and SEO allow proportionate access to your marketing plan, discussing both facets of the comparison. Whether you are producing original content or just want to renovate your current landings pages, these contested and genuine conversion optimization rate techniques can enhance your rankings. Here are 5 such tried and tested methods to improve conversion rate.
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Improve Website Speed
It is widely known that site speed and search engine rankings are closely related, thanks to Google. Improvements in website speed immediately impact conversions. Studies by Shopzilla and Firefox found out that pages that loaded faster saw an increase of conversions by 7-12% and 15.4% respectively. Even Amazon can lose 1.6 billion dollars in sales if their site took even one-second extra to load. But how fast should your website be? As mentioned before, people desert webpages that take more than 3 seconds to load. To reduce the time it takes to load pages and create a high-performing website, you can:
- Change to a high-speed host
- Use a CDN
- Compress images and utilize browser storing
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One Purpose for One Webpage
This may appear like obvious information, but you’d be shocked to see how many companies continue to overlook it. Each page of your website must have one purpose that works with the title of the page. For example, if you are creating a page to catch emails, it should just catch emails and not make users download apps or purchase a product. The purpose here is to make the information move across swiftly and execute uniformity in the communication that you’re striving with your users via the website.
The Best Content Goes Above the Fold
The area that is instantly visible when you first land on a website with no scrolling is the “Above the fold”. As any user experience (UX) designer will tell you, this space is critical for conversion rate optimization for eCommerce. According to NNGroup, users spend 80% of their time reading through information above the fold and the average gap between how they treat content above the fold versus the bottom of the fold is 84%.
Below are two examples, one from Tatamagouche Brewing Company and another from Amazon. You will see how in the former, the image takes up all the space and tells you nothing important, therefore it does nothing much to promote the product. Meanwhile, Amazon gives you everything you need to know above the fold.
Ensure the above the fold space of each page of your site is not loaded with confusion and includes an obvious value proposition that describes precisely what the page can give.
Utilize Dynamic Pop-ups
You have seen something like this before, right?
While pop-ups are largely unavoidable, most just provide you the offer and request for your email address. Instead of requesting an email address in return for a free ebook, you can obtain more traction for conversion optimization rate through pop-ups if you focus on designing a more responsive experience. For instance, pop-ups that transform over a period are more efficient. For example, Groovehq managed to double its email subscribers in 6 months to 50,000 subscribers by applying a responsive pop-up.
Less Clutter on Forms
This application on Oracle’s website has 10 necessary fields including the address and phone number. These kinds of forms can easily make people leave the website never to return again. In many cases, the least number of fields you put in forms, the more conversions you get. If you want to improve conversion rate, then do practice the adage of less is more.
It is not just common sense. It is actually supported by a remarkable number of real-life instances. For instance, Expedia raised profits by 12 million USD just by eliminating one field from its checkout form. Your attention should be on reducing friction and providing users a flawless experience by applying the least numbers of fields as you possibly can. As a standard rule, the sweet spot is anywhere between 3 to 5 fields. You can accomplish this by reducing all the extra fields and requesting only data that you actually require. For example, do you really need an address if you are never going to ship them anything? In mostly cases, you will need is an email address.
If your business, however, needs more than 5 fields, then dividing the form into several steps can be considered.
Conclusion
There you have it—5 conversion optimization rate tactics that will increase your conversion rate. As a customary practice, lead generation is all about good traffic, significance, transparency, and fewer intrusions. When you have these assorted, you are ready to implement the techniques mentioned above.
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