The Often-Missing Piece
Almost every online business’s marketing team works to get people to visit their website, which will turn their interest into a lead, and to then turn that lead into a final sale.
This is a simplified explanation of a sales funnel, but it’s also one that applies to virtually any company whose goal is to sell a product or service. Many marketers, however, fail to take crucial steps to sustainably grow their business and position themselves for success by increasing their qualified traffic.
This is why the best online marketers understand the importance of conversion rate optimization (CRO).
What Exactly is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Your landing page’s conversion rate is the percentage of people who visit your website and take the specific action you want them to. If you want visitors to complete a form, give you their email address, or purchase a product, these are all actions that can be seen as a conversion – and the formula to calculate your conversion rate is simple.
Number of conversions divided by Number of site visitors multiplied by 100
So, if you made 23 sales and had 300 visitors, your conversion rate would be 7.6%.
Through conversion rate optimization, you make improvements to your website or landing page to increase this number. At a basic level, your goal is to make your website a more appealing, straightforward, and easy experience for your prospective customers.
Five Steps to Improve Your Conversion Rate – Right Now
Make sure your landing page has a direct call to action
Pull up your landing page in another window or tab as you read this article. Ask yourself (or, better yet, ask someone else who doesn’t know your business as well), “What is the first thing you notice when you look at this page? What is this page asking you to do?”
You want visitors to your landing page to know exactly what action to take, whether they’re looking closely at your page or seeing it from a distance. Make your page as simple and straightforward as possible.
On this same note, don’t make more than one offer on one landing page. By making multiple offers, you confuse and distract your landing page’s visitors – and risk knocking your conversion rate down by as much as 266%. Your offer should be clear, straightforward, and easy to take – and you must rework your landing page to ensure this.
Once you have fine-tuned your initial offer, you can start updating it, as well as utilizing tools like those provided by RevenueWire to effectively cross sell and upsell your customers.
Declutter your landing page
Though most websites are full of links, sidebars, and connections to other potentially valuable resources, having these on your landing page is setting your business up for failure. Like a good book, you want to keep people glued to your page, and that means eliminating distractions.
If you haven’t already, the first thing you need to do is get rid of any links, sidebars, or navigation tools. Doing this allows you to increase your conversion by as much as 100%, yet a very small number of companies – only 16% – actually make this a part of their marketing practice.
That said, do keep your logo and branding consistent to ensure awareness and recognition. Your goal is to keep the page as bare as possible while still communicating everything visitors need to know, and that means leaving just one link intact across your page: the call to action.
If you need help building a beautiful, effective landing page that gets to the heart of the matter quickly, RevenueWire makes it easy to get up and running, generate leads, and close your first sales.
Cultivate authority through testimonials and reviews
No one is better at selling us products and services than our peers and friends who have had great experiences. It’s why some of the most successful businesses don’t run marketing operations at all, relying on a steady stream of extremely qualified leads solely through word of mouth.
However, if you don’t have this privilege, all is not lost. 3 in 4 customers are more inclined to trust reviews over advertising, and by including authoritative, high quality customer feedback, you can quickly demonstrate your product or service’s ability to get results, solve problems, and make people’s lives better – and all of this can make it much easier to convert your audience when it’s time to make the pitch.
Don’t miss any of the main points
The copy on a successful landing page does two things:
- It identifies problems that the visitor may have
- It provides the visitors with clear action steps to take to solve this problem
No matter what industry you’re in, this strategy works – but you need to clearly understand the niche you fill and how you solve customer problems to deliver effective marketing via landing pages or email.
Everyone who visits your website is looking for something, so demonstrate clearly to your customers how you can add value to their lives.
If your niche, for example, were customers looking to save on high-end groceries, you could offer extremely high quality products in smaller quantities – and therefore more affordable prices, giving them an opportunity to sample items they otherwise couldn’t afford.
If you’re struggling to find examples, RevenueWire’s Performance Marketing team can help you find industry leaders to take inspiration from – and perhaps outperform.
Do competitor research
You can always take inspiration and learn from other companies in your niche, as well as other marketers who are simply very good at what they do. The highest-converting landing pages have been extensively researched, fine-tuned, and reworked over time to create the most powerful, effective marketing assets possible. Don’t simply steal their design or flow word-for-word, but do:
- Take a look at the visuals they use
- See what techniques, strategies, and tactics they employ
- Use what you’ve learned to create a powerful, effective offer
Time to Build a Winning Landing Page
Landing pages may seem simple, but they are one of the most powerful marketing assets – and trickiest to develop well. Following these basic steps are a great way to improve your conversion rate and grow your business.
If you need help, RevenueWire’s Performance Marketing services can provide you and your team with the partners to scale quickly and globally using their all-inclusive, multi-channel growth and monetization platform.
To find out more about RevenueWire and their services, click here.
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