1,000 prospects come to your site or sales page. 1% of them buy a $50 product. You’ve made $500.
You invest 2 days trying a few different ways to increase your conversions, and 3 are successful. You only increased your conversions by 1%, yet you’ve doubled your income, selling 2% of the prospects who come to your sales page.
Now for every 1,000 prospects, you make $1,000.
And you send 1,000 prospects a day, meaning…
Well, I’ll let you play with the numbers. The point is, even a 1% bump in conversions can mean a significant pay raise for you.
Yet so many marketers never bother to do any of the things I’m about to suggest.
Why? I suppose it’s one of those things they’ll “get around to” but they never do.
So here’s what I recommend: If you don’t want to do any of the following, then OUTSOURCE it.
Let’s get started on boosting your conversions:
1: Create a compelling and clear value proposition.
Your value proposition can be the #1 element that determines if people will bother to read more on your page.
And it’s also the main thing you need to test.
The less known your company is, the better your value proposition needs to be.
In a nutshell, your value proposition clearly states:
- How your product solves the customers’ problem or improves their situation (relevancy)
- Delivers specific benefits (quantified value)
Tell why they should buy from you instead of your competition (unique differentiation).
I could do an entire article on creating a compelling value proposition – and I’ll do exactly that next month for you.
2: Do A/B testing
You create two alternative versions of your page, each with a different headline / color scheme / call to action, etc.
You do a split test to see which one works better. When you find out what converts better, then you test something else.
Generally you only want to test one element at a time – otherwise, it just gets confusing.
The more elements you test, the higher you can boost your conversions.
Things to test: Headline, page layout and navigation, the offer itself, using different media (such as a video) and even a radical change if you think you might want to start over.
You can use Google Optimize if you’re looking for a free A/B tester, or Optimizely if you want more options.
3: Set up a Proper Sales Funnel
Sometimes your conversions are taking a hit because you’re asking for the signup or the sale too soon in the process.
If people are still in ‘browsing’ mode, they might not be psychologically ready to subscribe or buy.
The general rule is, the more expensive or complicated the product is, the more time people need before they are ready to commit.
If you’re looking to improve conversions on a squeeze page that only asks for their email address, your focus should be on improving the reason why they would want to sign up. Making your offer more compelling – something that will immediately spark their desire – should do it.
But if you’re selling a product, it’s possible that you need to do more to build trust, develop a relationship and prove your expertise.
Remember, the longer and deeper the relationship with the prospect, the more likely they are to buy from you.
4: Address Objections before They Arise
No matter what you’re selling or how much you’re selling it for, there will be objections.
If I tried to sell $100 bills for $1, there would be objections (and you know what they are.)
Of course, since you can’t hear prospects speak their objections, you’ve got to know in advance what can kill your sale so you can make what you might call, ‘preemptive strikes’ on the objections.
Make a list of all the possible concerns your prospects might have.
And then address each one of those in your presentation / webpage / sales funnel.
5: Build Trust
People won’t buy from you if they have no need for your product, if they have no money to buy your product, if they’re not in a hurry, and if they don’t trust you.
There’s not a lot you can do about the first 2 items on that list.
You can create urgency by limiting the number of products to be sold or the duration of your sale.
But trust is a big factor you can definitely use to increase conversions.
So what makes people trust your website?
Several things:
- You’ve got citations and testimonials clearly visible.
- You’re endorsed by well-known people in your niche.
- You’ve got a physical address and maybe even a photo of your office.
- If you or your business has relevant credentials, you’ve got them displayed.
- You’ve got clear, easy to find contact information that includes a phone number.
- Your site looks professional – not something a kid whipped up on his Intel 486 in the 1990’s.
- Your site contains plenty of useful information.
- You update your site’s content often. If your latest blogpost is from 2016, you’ve got a problem.
- You show restraint with hype, blinking banners (please don’t!) ads, popups and such.
- You have zero or nearly zero errors (when it comes to trustworthiness, one error is forgivable, two aren’t.)
6: Stop Trying to Sound Smart
If I were to give you a value proposition that reads like this…
“Revenue-focused sales automation and marketing effectiveness solutions unleash collaboration throughout the revenue cycle,”
…would you have a clue what I was talking about?
Because I sure don’t. It’s not useful to the person reading it, unless your goal is to chase them off of your page. Then I suspect it’s highly effective.
Don’t use fancy or complicated language – instead, write the way people speak.
Just remember, clarity is key. If they don’t understand exactly what you’re saying, they’re not going to convert.
7: Remove Distraction
Your goal is to get people to focus solely on the action you want them to take and nothing else.
Take a look at your page for anything that might divert the visitor away from what you want them to do.
Minimize distraction, unnecessary product options, links and extraneous information.
Get rid of sidebars and big headers if they’re not helping your prospect take the desired action.
Remove irrelevant images, or replace them with images that help you make the sale.
And ask yourself if there is anything else you can remove that is not contributing to the conversion.
Increasing your conversion rate isn’t hard, but it does take effort…
Effort that will be well-rewarded in increased sales and revenues long after you’re done making the necessary changes.
