If you’re involved in the world of building or marketing websites, it’s important for you to understand the fundamentals of conversion optimization. Better understanding of how conversions work, and how you can achieve more of them, can support more successful, better engaging websites.
So what exactly is conversion optimization? Why is it so important to learn? And how can you begin the process of learning it?
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What Is Conversion Optimization?
Conversion optimization is a set of tactics and experiments you utilize in pursuit of achieving a higher conversion rate on your website. A conversion is any meaningful action taken by one of your visitors, such as buying one of your products or signing up for an email newsletter; a conversion rate, therefore, is a measure of the number of people who convert when compared to total number of visitors.
Through conversion optimization, you can drive up your conversion rate; for example, you might start with a mere 1 percent conversion rate, but after making a few tweaks, you can push that to 3 percent or more. If you’re getting 10,000 visitors per month and each conversion is worth an average of $100, you’ll start making $10,000 per month and end making $30,000 per month.
As you can see, conversion optimization is a big deal. Even a handful of introductory techniques can multiply your earnings significantly.
The Fundamentals of Conversion Optimization
Conversion optimization forces you to pay attention to elements like web design, user experience (UX) design, copywriting, and behavioral analytics. By coordinating all these strategic elements, you can craft an overall experience that persuades people to take action on your website.
These Are Some of the Best Tactics to Push Your Conversion Rate Higher:
Increase visibility and prominence. Nobody will engage with your calls to action if they can’t find them in the first place. That’s why it’s important to make your calls to action as visible and prominent as possible. Obviously, you don’t want to bombard or annoy your visitors, but opportunities to convert should be plentiful and apparent.
Speak to a specific audience. Different people are moved and persuaded by different things, so there’s no one universal strategy for conversion optimization. Instead, you’ll need to optimize for your specific target audience, playing to their beliefs, desires, and station in life.
Make it fast and easy. There have been misleading claims that the average person’s attention span is now less than 8 seconds; while this isn’t exactly true, there’s no question that the average user’s attention span is painfully short. If you want people to convert, you have to make the conversion process as fast and easy as possible. Even a few seconds of an annoying delay could cause someone to bounce.
Speak to value. What is the value of what you’re offering? Conversions are typically an exchange, so you need to make it clear that users are benefiting from the deal. If you’re selling a product, convince them why it’s worth the money. If you’re asking for signups, explain why the signup is valuable.
Imply urgency. Some people fail to convert simply because they procrastinate. That’s why it’s helpful to imply some degree of urgency. If you convince people that there’s a limited supply of what you’re selling, or that there’s a limited-time offer on the table, they’ll be much more likely to pull the trigger.
Competitively differentiate. Most people are used to being persuaded by online businesses, so you need to find some way to competitively differentiate your brand. Don’t rely on the same tactics and phrases that you’ve seen a million times.
Experiment. Experimentation is hugely important; it’s practically the only tool you have to gather meaningful, actionable data on your users. Even simple AB tests can help you figure out which variables are useful in conversion optimization and which ones aren’t working.
Learning More
As you might imagine, there’s a lot to learn about conversion optimization – and much more than we can pack into an article that simply goes over the basics. So where should you turn to learn more about this topic?
These Are Some of the Best Choices:
Conversion and marketing experts. First, start following and reading content from conversion and marketing experts. There are thousands of seasoned veterans in the field with years or even decades of experience. With this experience comes wisdom – and plenty of cool ideas for you to try on your own website.
Existing successful websites. If you’re beginning to get a sense of how conversion optimization works, consider looking at some existing successful websites. What are the prominent websites that are most persuasive to you? Which websites have made you convert, and what was responsible for your conversion? There’s much you can learn from real-world example’s
Your own experiments. Finally, be willing to experiment. The more you experiment with your own website, the better you’ll understand your own users and the more effectively you’ll be able to optimize for them. This is an ongoing strategy, so keep making tweaks and gathering data.
Nobody becomes a master of conversion optimization overnight. In fact, you could make the argument that no one can ever be a true master of conversion optimization since there’s always more to learn. Keep practicing, keep learning, and keep optimizing if you want to push your conversion rate ever higher.
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