You have a beautiful WordPress site, everything works fine, you’re active on social media, you’re even running a Facebook campaign and use SEO to increase traffic, so the visitors start coming in. But there are no sales. People leave too fast or maybe something stops them halfway through the purchase. Websites are great for presenting information, but for some businesses, they are also a major source of a headache. Just like a bad salesperson can turn the customers away, so does a WordPress site can fail to encourage action. Luckily, you have the upper hand in creating the right strategy to increase conversion rates.
Here are the most powerful ways to fix and improve your WordPress website conversion rates:
1. Investigate what causes the issue
Before you start fixing the issue you need to understand the roots of the problem. Optimizing conversion rates is all about observation, analysis, and testing. Start recording customer behavior on your site using tools such as Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, and Zopim to gain a deeper understanding of how your customers behave.
With the help of the aforementioned tools, you can see where customers spend the most time, how well they react to call-to-actions, what their main distractions are, and how well the follow the purchasing process.
You will also need the same tools to conduct A/B testing. A/B testing is a process that helps you choose the best SEO optimization tactic. For example, if you changed one of the call-to-action, you can see how the new call-to-action performs compares to the old one. A/B testing is the most effective data-based approach to help you increase conversion rates.
2. Create a great value proposition
The second most important thing in conversion optimization is your value proposition. Your site might be great but if your value as a company or product isn’t defined clearly, it’s unlikely that any conversion optimization efforts will yield results.
A value proposition is a reason your customers should buy from you and not your competitors. The work on value proposition starts long before your website goes live. Without a great value proposition, there is really no reason for your business to exist. However, the way to describe your value proposition matters too. You might have a great product or service, but if you use complex words and sentences, your website will likely repel customers.
Ideally, your customers should spend a minimum amount of time trying to understand and comprehend your value proposition. A good value proposition should be clear, concise, but still incredibly powerful, differentiating you from competitors and highlighting benefits that are unique to your company.
3. Provide personalized experiences
Many websites target several consumer groups, so the structure and the content tend to be overgeneralized. When your product appeals to a wide range of customer, consider personalizing the experience for each group. Millennials rarely respond to tricks that make older generations tick. Similarly, generation Z has different needs.
The biggest mistake that a brand can make is to ignore their audience altogether. Many websites don’t take into account their visitors’ demographics, age, occupation, and behavior patterns. Even if you’re targeting one audience segment, understanding the underlying needs and desires of this segment as well as collecting statistical information are crucial for website experience and conversions.
4. Give incentives to encourage a purchase
Incentives don’t have to be discounted. Anything can perform the function of an incentive – call-to-actions, testimonials, content, exclusive access to special offers and so forth. Before customers make a decision they need to see that the product is worth paying for. But since they are, essentially, purchasing online, customers simply don’t get the chance to touch, feel, and see the product. In such a case, incentives serve as an additional motivation towards the purchase by making customers believe they are getting more value for the same price.
5. Give them options
The choice is the enemy of purchase. When there is too much choice, consumers struggle to make a decision. But when there is only one choice, people don’t pause to think if they should buy at all. Three is a magic number that on the one hand makes visitors slow down and pay attention to the options offered, but on the other hand, it also provides just enough choice to not scare people off.
You should strike the balance of choice whenever you can. Think product offers, subscription offers or even the very unambiguous options you give to all the site visitors. We often only have two options when we land on the website and these are to stay or to leave. Try adding a third “to subscribe” option, and you’ll capture precious contact data which you can then use to encourage a purchase.
6. Use better call-to-actions
So many websites use boring and repetitive call-to-actions. But there is a lot of room for improvement here. Call-to-actions are crucial for conversions. They have the power to attract attention, increase sales, and push the visitors towards concrete action. So how do you create the best call-to-actions?
Best call-to-actions are clear, straightforward but still creative enough to catch attention. Be aware of the overused “Click here” or “Sign up now” – these call-to-actions are as clear as they can get, but since users are now familiar with them, they tend to scroll over them. Call-to-actions describe the action you want the users to perform. If you keep the action in mind and creatively use the unlimited choice of words in your language, you can easily come up with call-to-actions that attract and convert.
7. Set up a Sales Funnel
A lot of conversion optimization advice is based on tactics. Change that headline and test it. Make call-to-action color more bright and see how it goes. Put customer testimonials next to the product and watch your sales figures go up. But we sometimes overlook the bigger picture. For the customer to make a buying decision, they need to go through a well-defined process. You need to introduce your brand to them step-by-step and gradually increase the engagement. How do you do it? With the help of a sales funnel.
A sales funnel in WordPress website has the same mechanics as a sales funnel in the outside world. It follows a customer journey from the moment they hear about your brand to the moment of purchase. So for your website you need to define how your visitors feel when they land on your website, and what journey you want them to go through.
Usually, people land on the website following the paid ad link. Being already aware of the product, these people want to know more. Your task is to give them more information and then convince them to buy. You have to truly understand your audience here. If you ask for a sale too early, you might lose people right away. The more complex your product the more information and time people need to make a decision. This, in turn, affects your website’s length, content, and increases your conversion rates.
Final Word
In order to increase conversion rates, you need analytical and critical thinking. You need to see the bigger picture, but at the same time understand the techniques and draw conclusions from data. As with everything in marketing, you should define your goal first and then outline strategies and tactics to get to that goal. Conversion optimization is a human skill but you need technical tools to get access to data and come up with solutions plus a WordPress dashboard to implement and test those solutions. Don’t hesitate to contact our e-commerce website development company to build your online store.
