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How to Improve Conversion Rates

While having a lot of web traffic is great on surface level, turning those numbers and positive analytics into conversions is where your business really grows. Midway Marketing know, in fact, that although increasing your engagement with your target audience is what we all want, there’s no point in putting in all the hard work, devising a strong marketing strategy, social media campaigns, or investing in the potentially costly and time-consuming endeavour of video marketing, unless of course, you see results.

Returns.

Strong. Calculable. Conversions

Of course, in such a diverse and varying world, the goals and types of conversions will differ from business to business and industry to industry, but CRO (or conversion rate optimization) is undoubtedly a bedrock for success, regardless of the direction you undertake or the type of business you have. Whether it’s adding more clicks when it comes to the ‘add to cart’ buttons, or increasing your monthly subscriptions or even mailing list numbers (and of course sales), conversions ultimately make or break your business.

In this article, Midway Marketing will look at some of the most effective ways to increase your conversion rates, and strengthen your brand’s digital presence in the process.

Let’s get started:

  1. Make sure your call to actions are clear and organic and strategically placed in the right areas. While there is no way of knowing from the get-go what your users and customers will prefer, Midway Marketing suggest experimenting with different button combinations, colour schemes, wording, and placement frequency. By implementing small, ongoing changes with your call to actions, you can then analyse and closely correlate a better conversion rate as a result, or continue to experiment if it drops off. There are numerous surveys and online testing out there indicating that a simple rearranging of words of a call to action (as an example), has the potential to significantly increase your conversions.
    While subtle, the difference can be huge in the long run.
  2. Like your call to actions, Midway Marketing recommend trying a number of different variations when it comes to your aesthetic layouts, your content, and even experimenting with your site’s navigation systems (and UX interfaces as a whole). By monitoring these types of changes, and by emphasising the importance of optimizing your landing pages and the way your audience ultimately interact with them, you will, over time, ascertain the best combination depending on how it affects your conversion rate. You should be designing your content and web architecture with a focus on encouraging your customers to go further than simply browsing, in order to captivate them, intrigue them, and gently channel them to commit to your product or services. While this is the goal, subtlety and tact are imperative, in the hopes of not scaring them away. In other words, you need to do it in a way that doesn’t feel forced, irritating, or just plain pushy. Your customers will sense it a mile away.
  3. While testing is crucial, make sure you have a clear strategy in place in order to effectively manage all of your changes. Whether it is page elements, text bodies, or images and videos, you need to monitor fastidiously and regularly. While having clear goals are imperative with any type of concentrated effort, make sure you have all your site elements set up with the appropriate analytics attached. Without the information, you’re doing nothing but guessing. As an example, if you’re receiving a lot of clicks on a video but the conversion goal isn’t achieved, perhaps you can restructure or offer a new video in order to encourage your customers to follow through in future. We see it all the time. Engaging content with little to no return, so this information is vital and will go a long way in improving your conversions.
  4. And lastly, while we have focused heavily on testing and site experimentation, we do so with a simple message: Keep it up, long into the future. With the way the marketing landscape continuously evolves, you need to ensure your website is constantly updated and in the proverbial loop of what’s happening out there in the world, wide web. Even if your content is delivering the goods now, things can certainly change and if you’re not keeping regular tabs on performance and conversion rates in particular, then you may find yourself scratching your head with a seemingly sudden drop. It happens, all the time.

While testing may seem like a drag, it is certainly a tried and true method of maintaining the health of your website (as well as increasing its conversions) and even though some of the experiments you perform may be of little use or even redundant in hindsight, the main thing to remember is that by taking the plunge and striving for the best combination, your brand and online business will always be creating room for growth. Possibility. And regular engagement.

And that’s the key.

Midway Marketing understand that sometimes we can become emotionally attached to our business and act on instinct and emotion, rather than analytical data and objective truths, a pattern that is as intertwined with our inherent nature as any. We become comfortable. Resistant to change. Afraid of something new. With a constant protocol of A/B testing and regular reporting, however, your brand’s health and future will be in a much stronger position, considering it will be predicated on hard, undisputable data, rather than hunches, ‘what ifs,’ and emotional roadblocks.

Higher conversions, here we come!