7 Ways to Increase Website Conversions (2014)

Do you know your conversion rates? What is your cost per conversion? Are you even tracking conversions? Are you starting to freak out because you don’t know any of these things?

If so, you’re not alone, unfortunately, and you should probably keep reading. Conversions (i.e., web leads) are the life-blood for many businesses and should not be taken lightly.
There are two fundamental rules of digital marketing you need to understand if you want to generate more leads:

• How to increase conversions
• How to measure conversions

Let’s begin with 7 of the most effective tactics

(adjust the order of importance based on your audience’s personas)

1. Show more proof

Add a “glory banner” of endorsements, client logos or social follows. For example, Voices.com, gained 400% in conversions after implementing this.

2. Test your headlines

This is the oldest tactic in marketing, but most websites still fail to do it. A/B test headlines for product pages, blog posts, and other landing pages.

3. Use live chat

A/B testing showed that by having a live chat option conversions increased 211% for Intuit, 31% for EzTexting.com, and jumped 20% for Abt Electronics.

4. Add a security seal or trust logo

Add credibility by including a trust logo such as VeriSign, Norton or BuySafe on your forms. Most companies see a 15-30% increase of form completions.

5. Include videos on product pages

Even if visitors don’t watch your video it boosts credibility for the seller based on the fact they’re willing to put their face behind the product. After adding product videos Ice.com increased sales by 400%, Zappos by 30% and Shoeonline.com by 44%. For example, AppliancesOnline.co.uk doubled conversions and customers spent 9% more money on average using videos like the one below.

6. Test different images

A/B test different images and layouts for your homepage or landing pages. Most companies don’t do this often enough because they’re afraid design changes will create a poor user experience. This isn’t entirely true, just limit testing to once a quarter or twice a year. We’ve seen positive results with government, private, and even healthcare websites where conversions have increased by 10%  to over 300% after testing images, layout and forms.

7. Shorten your forms

This is another classic tactic that almost always yields higher conversion rates. The downside to shorter forms is you’ll receive a lot more spammy leads too. However, it’s no surprise that most case studies show that more form submissions lead to more sales at the end of the day. You can cut down on spam, without sacrificing leads, by using methods like honeypot instead of CAPTCHA which can cut your conversions by 3-14%.

Not sure where to start?

Consider these A/B testing tools:

• optimizely.com/
• vmo.com/
• unbounce.com/

Once you’ve implemented some of these tactics it’s time to measure the results. The tools mentioned above along with Google Analytics will give you great data for determining what’s truly successful or not. But to look deeper and focus on what really matters you need to understand your options for measuring conversions – with more accuracy.