Elements of a High-Converting Website

It’s not enough to have a website, not even if you have a beautiful one. If you want your site to generate a solid return on investment, it has to generate a healthy conversion rate.

This is where a majority of businesses miss the mark. It’s possible that you’re one of them; if so, here’s what you need to think about.

The Importance of Conversion Rates

A conversion rate is not a religious term or metric. It’s simply a measurement that tells you how many website visitors are following through on a particular goal of your business.

Examples of conversion events include purchasing a product, signing up for an email newsletter, submitting a form, calling your office, or requesting a fee quote for services. To calculate your conversion rate, take the number of conversions, divide that by the number of total visitors to your site, and then multiply the result by 100%.

For a website to be regarded as successful requires a healthy conversion rate. And although there’s no industry standard for conversions, most industries have a benchmark. Some simple Internet sleuthing will tell you what’s accepted for your industry.

Five Tips for an Improved Conversion Rate

Any number of factors may go into the creation of a high-converting site. But it ultimately comes down to smart design and development. From this standpoint, here are five tips you can employ to boost your site’s conversion rate with relative ease.

1. Eliminate Friction

Friction will kill your conversion rates. If you want to improve figures, start by addressing any facet of your site that might cause visitors to feel frustrated.

This begins with simplifying the website experience and removing all unnecessary components and steps. Consider an opt-in form as an example.

Do you really need to get a visitor’s first name, last name, email address, phone number, and mailing address? If their email address is enough to get started, a single-field opt-in will always convert better.

Simple tweaks like this one can make a surprisingly big difference. When you layer them together, multiple improvements lead to substantially greater conversion rates.

2. Improve Page Loading Speed

Nobody appreciates a slow and clunky site. A slow website could be holding you back in the conversion department.

“A slow loading site will repel visitors,” Website.Design explains. “When your conversion rate takes a dive, so does your revenue. Some experts estimate that slow-loading websites cause retailers across the country to lose $2.6 billion in sales every year.”

For every additional second it takes your website’s pages to load, you’re missing out on conversions. If someone chooses to leave your site because they’ve encountered a slow download, they’re not likely to return.

Instead, such a person will opt for one of your competitors who offers an easier user experience.

3. Use Exit-Intent Popups

As annoying as popups can be, there’s one situation where they can have a positive impact on your bottom line. We’re talking about “exit-intent popups.”

An exit-intent popup is a lightbox overlay that appears at the critical moment when your site has detected that a user is about to leave the page. The popup then asks a question, makes an offer, or gives the visitor one last chance to stay.

Regardless of how you personally feel about popups, the data on them is irrefutable. Research has shown that strategic popups can recover as much as 53 percent of visitors who are about to abandon a site.

4. Add More Social Proof

Your website should build trust. Social proof is arguably the best trust builder on the planet.

Social proof refers to almost anything you can include on your site that shows a visitor that peers have already approved and trusted your products/services. Examples include testimonials, trust badges, case studies, and media mentions. For an idea, check out the DoFasting homepage. On its website, you will find reviews and testimonials from clients, which help boost social proof and increase conversions.

5. Remove Risk

In addition to demonstrating your worth via social proof, you might also look for ways to strategically reduce risk from the equation. One of the best ways to diminish risk is to offer a guarantee.

This might consist of a money-back guarantee, a promise of on-time delivery, or a lifetime warranty. The great thing about promises like these is that you can tailor them to your strengths.

Choose items that play to the value you offer. It’s true that a guarantee might cost you something on occasion, but it’s going to help you far more in terms of customer goodwill and loyalty than it hurts you.

Set Your Site Up for Success

A website conversion rate will be variable. It fluctuates constantly and is highly dependent on both separate and interdependent factors.

Having said that, it’s your responsibility to track the data over time. This will keep you abreast of what’s happening on your site and empower you to understand the relationship between the various factors and conversions.

The more you can put your finger on what’s moving the lever, the better.