23 proven strategies to boost your website's conversion rate

While owning an online store increases your visibility, it doesn't automatically translate into conversions. Many businesses still struggle with converting visitors into customers. To succeed in today's digital era, businesses must focus on providing a seamless user experience, creating targeted content, building trust with their audience, and optimizing for search engines through their CRO strategies.

This blog post will cover 23 proven methods to help you improve your website's conversion rate.

1) Define a goal for every webpage

Every webpage is designed with a goal in mind. Whether it's guiding visitors towards a purchase, encouraging engagement, or providing valuable information, every element should contribute to achieving that goal. Take the homepage, for instance. Its primary purpose might be to introduce your brand and direct them to explore further. In this case, the goals would revolve around session duration and engagement. Assess the performance of the defined goals to optimize the design and content of each webpage.

2) Set up your conversion funnel

Only a few website visitors are likely to convert. A conversion funnel can help you pinpoint the exact step where visitors are dropping off. By mapping your visitors' journey from their first interaction to the final step, you'll see where they're losing interest. This approach visually represents where they drop off within each funnel. With this information, you can optimize the specific webpages to reduce your drop-off rate.

Source: Zoho PageSense

3) Optimize critical webpages

Adding to the previous point, you can start the optimization process by focusing on critical webpages. These are directly associated with your conversion goals, acting as guides for visitors towards conversions. Examples include landing pages, product or feature pages, and the checkout page. It's essential to prioritize factors like layout, design, and readability to ensure the content is easily digestible for visitors.

4) Run A/B tests on your webpages

Run A/B testing or split testing to experiment to test different headlines, images, copy, layouts, and other elements to identify what resonates best with your audience and drives the highest conversions.

Here are a few A/B testing ideas that you can consider.

• Call-to-action (CTA) variations: Test different wording, colors, or placements for your call-to-action buttons to see which variation yields more conversions.

• Navigation and site layouts: Experiment with changes to your website's navigation or overall structure to determine if a different layout improves user engagement and reduces bounce rates.

• Product/feature page elements: Test variations in page elements such as images, product descriptions, videos, and the placement of customer reviews to optimize for higher conversion rates.

• Pricing strategies: Explore different pricing models, discount structures, or promotional strategies to identify the most effective approach for maximizing revenue and customer satisfaction.

• Form and checkout process: Optimize forms and the checkout process by testing different form fields, lengths, and the number of steps to reduce friction and increase completion rates.

5) Be mobile-responsive and friendly

Ensure your website is seamlessly accessible and user-friendly on mobile devices. Curious about user interactions on your website across devices? Use heatmaps to visualize engagement levels, identifying hotspots and cold spots. Leverage this data to optimize the positioning of crucial links, buttons, and CTAs for enhanced user interaction.

6) Keep website navigation easy

Maintain a consistent navigation structure with descriptive labels for the menu across all webpages to help users easily find the content they're looking for. If you're an ecommerce store, prominently incorporate a search bar on every page, allowing users to search for specific products or information.  

7) Make your website load quicker

Did you know page speed is an important ranking metric for both desktop and mobile search engines? If your page takes more than 5 seconds to load, the probability of people leaving your website Is 90%. There are many free tools like PageSpeed Insights that provide you a detailed overview along with diagnostics and suggestions to optimize the page speed. 

Source: Think With Google

There are various factors that can impact the page speed.

• The hosting provider that you choose

• The size of the image/video that you've put on your website

• Unwanted plugins

• Your site's coding and server-side scripts

8) Shorten website forms

According to The Manifest, 81% of people have abandoned a form after beginning to fill it out. Lengthy and complicated website forms cause drop-offs. Optimize forms by testing different form fields, lengths, and the number of steps to reduce friction and increase completion rates. Use a form analytics tool like Zoho PageSense to break down visitor form interactions. It allows you to deep dive into field-level metrics that are influencing the drop-offs on your form. Uncover issues and get actionable data on problems faced by visitors in your website forms.

9) Create compelling CTAs

Use clear, persuasive, and action-focused Call-to-Actions (CTAs) to guide your visitors toward taking the desired action. Phrases like "Shop Now," "Sign up for Free," and "Get Started Today" can communicate the specific action you want your visitors to take. It's important to place CTAs prominently on crucial web pages and make them easily visible to visitors. Consider using contrasting colors and placing them strategically above the fold to attract more attention to the CTA.

Online Mastery, a digital marketing consultancy, used its blogging site for most of its lead generation. They realized that their blogs were getting good traffic, but they needed more conversions. They implemented funnel analysis to identify which part of their blog was killing the conversions and ran a heatmap to analyze what the blog post was missing. They realized that the lack of CTAs significantly impacted their conversions. With this change, they instantly saw the conversion increase and the drop-off rate reduced by 40%.

10) Offer discounts and coupons (at the right time!)

Offering discounts during peak holiday season to maximize their effectiveness always works, but the timing matters. There are many pop-up tools like Zoho PageSense that allow you to set triggers and target the visitors at the right time. Here's a breakdown of the triggers that you can configure on your website.

• On-page scroll trigger: Triggers once a visitor has scrolled down to a certain percentage (25%, 50%, 75%, etc.) of your page.

• Time spent on the page trigger: Triggers after a certain amount of time has passed since a visitor landed on a webpage.

• On-page trigger: Triggers when the visitor lands on the specific webpage.

• On-page exit trigger: Detects when a visitor is about to leave a webpage and triggers the pop-up—typically indicated by the movement of the cursor towards the browser's navigation bar or closing button.

• Visitor inactivity time trigger: Triggers your pop-up automatically once the visitor is inactive on your website for a certain amount of time.  

• Element click-based triggers: Triggers when a visitor clicks on a specific element or link within a webpage.

• Custom triggers: Customize your experiment based on the actions that visitors perform on your webpage, such as watching a video, submitting a form, viewing an out-of-stock item, or any other action that isn’t always related to clicks or page views on your site.

11) Incorporate FOMO tactics

Most ecommerce websites use the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) as a psychological trick to compel consumers to purchase out of fear of losing a valuable opportunity. This is why you often see countdowns, limited stock alerts, coupons with time limits, and out-of-stock tags on the website's storefront.

12) Add product reviews and testimonials

Bring authenticity to the forefront by showcasing product reviews for each item. Display feedback and product testimonials on your website to provide credibility and reliability on your quality and offerings, influencing purchasing decisions.

13) Offer live chat support

Chatbots help in initiating support conversations with customers, seamlessly transitioning to live chat with human support representatives when necessary. Offering real-time assistance through a live chatbot further enhances the shopping experience by reducing waiting times and ensuring prompt resolution of customer concerns.

14) Remove unwanted distractions

Remove unwanted CTAs or elements from your website that distract users from converting. Optimize page layouts, simplify navigation, and minimize intrusive pop-ups to create a seamless and focused browsing environment.

15) Maintain consistency across all webpages

Ensure that your website is consistent in its branding, messaging, and UI elements to help establish trust and brand recognition on your website. Uniformity in visuals, tone of voice, and user interface elements create a cohesive and memorable experience for visitors.

16) Fix your 404s and broken elements

Broken links and error pages can frustrate users and hinder their browsing experience. Identify your website for 404 errors, broken links/CTAs/ images, or dysfunctional features. However, pinpointing these issues and comprehending the underlying reasons behind metrics can be complex. Session recording emerges as a valuable qualitative tool, offering insights into visitor interactions with your website. Play back the recording to see what your visitors expect, what frustrates them, and which pages they’re switching between.

17) Use social proof

Add social plugins to your website. When new users visit your website, they tend to look for assurance, especially in online shopping. Strong social proof acts as evidence that your brand is a reputable one within your industry. Plus, it shows that others have had a decent experience with your brand, influencing them to make purchasing decisions in your favor.

18) Implement social commerce features

Implementing social commerce features similar to Instagram Shop and Pinterest allows users to shop directly from images, thereby reducing the friction between product discovery and purchase. Users tend to make impulse purchases that require minimal effort, which leads to more sales.

19) Personalize the user website experience

Offer personalized user experience according to individual preferences, browsing patterns, and demographic information. According to a survey conducted in 2017, customers tend to spend more when their shopping journey is personalized. There are several tools available in the market, such as Zoho PageSense, that offer advanced filtering and segmentation options for behavioral targeting. These tools can make it easier for businesses to deliver unique and personalized customer experiences.

20) Localize your content

Localization plays a significant role in businesses expanding to more significant markets. Translate text, images, and videos into the languages spoken in the target region. Incorporate cultural nuances, expressions, and other factors that may affect how the content is perceived.

21) Reduce cart abandonment

Reduce cart abandonment through a simplified checkout process.

• Reduce checkout form fields

• Allow customers to checkout as guests

• Display customer reviews and security and trust badges

• Be upfront about the taxes, shipping fees, and any additional charges

• Offer multiple payment options, including popular ones like digital wallets

• Use exit-intent pop-ups with attractive discounts/coupons when users are about to abandon the carts

22) Be transparent about shipping, refund, and return policies

For a positive shopping experience for your customers, it's essential to set the right expectations. Be transparent about the shipping times, refund eligibility, and return procedures. Communicate any shipping costs and estimated delivery time upfront. In addition, it's mandatory for businesses to display clear and transparent return and refund policies on their website. Ideally, these policies should be easily accessible and prominently displayed in the footer or the About Us page. By doing so, you can establish trust with your customers and ensure that they have a hassle-free shopping experience.

An online retail store ran an A/B test on two versions of their checkout process. One version had a postcode (zip code) checker for calculating shipping costs above the "Secure Checkout" button, while the other version removed the checker and replaced it with a line of text indicating that delivery costs would be calculated at checkout. The purpose of this test was to reduce cart abandonment, which was a significant drop-off point based on analytics.

Variation A won! This test highlighted the importance of transparent shipping costs before checkout. Removing the postcode checker, which was confusing due to the lack of clear labeling, resulted in less friction and increased conversions. It's recommended to continuously assess your cart pages to ensure clarity on shipping costs and remove any confusing elements to boost conversions.

23) Use surveys to collect insights

Directly engage with your audience through polls and surveys to gather specific feedback on their needs and preferences. Use those insights and customize your website's design, content, and functionality to align with their expectations. Allocate resources effectively by pinpointing priority issues or desired enhancements, focusing on areas/features/products that will significantly boost user satisfaction and optimize website performance.

Wrapping things up...

Remember, optimization is ongoing as you embark on your CRO journey. Regularly assess your website's performance, leverage the insights from a tool like PageSense, and implement the suggested optimizations to stay ahead in the competitive online landscape.

PS: If you're interested in implementing CRO on your website, get in touch with support@zohopagesense.com. We would love to help!