5 Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion Rates: Part One

Businesses spend a lot of money setting up their website and driving traffic to it. However, converting visitors into customers is an important part of a digital marketing strategy that often gets forgotten.  In day one of our five day series Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, Tanya Hemphill writes about the importance of your website's landing pages. 

Optimise your Landing Page

If you are running an effective online marketing campaign that includes tactics like search engine optimisation (SEO) andPay-Per-Click advertising (i.e. GoogleAdwords) you should never drive all traffic to your home page.

 I’ve heard that just 5% of all John Lewis’ website traffic comesfrom their home page. Instead, your digital marketing efforts should drive visitors to the page that’s most relevant to their online search. These ‘landing pages’ should link to the visitor’s online search query.

The next stage is to make sure every landing page is optimised to achieve the highest conversion rate possible. Unfortunately, this is a weak area for most businesses with many driving traffic to a particular page in the hope that the content and design works for them. To help improve landing page conversion

rates, the following elements should be considered:

•  Highlight how you resolve your customer’s problems 

•  Explain how you help reduce buying risk – i.e. how do you overcome consumer concerns such as quality,cost, service, etc?

• Communicate a clear online value proposition (OVP) - i.e. why should they buy from you and not a competitor?

• Have a clear call-to-action - highlight what you want them to do next, such as go a particular page, sign up for a newsletter, call to make an appointment, etc.

•  Layout - improving the area ‘above the fold’ almost always accounts for increased conversion rates (a traditional publisher’s concept that also works online)

According to conversion expert and author Benji Rabhan (see further reading), most people think about design before lead generation / conversion and this is the wrong way around. He believes that

half of conversion rate optimisation is about ‘tweaking’ and testing design / layout and the other half is about the message and words on the page.

Further reading:

The Hubspot Blog: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/26866/9-Must-Haves-for-the-Perfect-Landing-Page.aspx 
Recommended book: Rabhan, B., 2013. Convert Every Click: Make More Money Online with Holistic Conversion Rate Optimization. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Marketing and Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester).
@DigitalTanya 
@WSofManagement

STOP PRESS:

The Warrington School of Management is launching an exciting new business service that will include networking events and ‘Master Classes’ to help small and medium sized businesses grow. If you are interested in registering for more information, please send your details to Beth Morris at b.morris@chester.ac.uk