5 Ways to Increase your Website Conversion Rates: Part Two

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 two of our five day series Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, Tanya Hemphill discusses how to optimise your website to suit your potential customers' browsing behaviour.

Make your website 'mobile friendly'

More people are now browsing on mobile devices such as mobile phones and iPads, instead of using traditional desktop computers. The majority of websites have not been mobile optimised, which means

that navigating around a site on a mobile device is difficult and some content /design disappears from the screen. Even large brands fall into this trap.

To check how your website appears on different screen resolutions, I highly recommend the free testing tool at http://mattkersley.com/responsive. Before you think about allocating budget either to change your website into one with a responsive design (i.e. it adapts to the device you are viewing it on) or to create a separate mobile site, it’s important to check what your ‘actual’visitors are using. 

This is where the free software tool Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) can help - it will tell you what devices your visitors are using to access your website. I’ve found that most consumer orientated

sites generally have a 50/50 spilt between mobile and desktop devices. Recent research suggests that brands can increase their mobile conversion rate by 19%-100% with responsive design.

It can therefore be argued that the ROI against the cost of implementation is potentially high. If you do have a mobile optimised website, think about using ‘click-to-call’ buttons instead of asking visitors to complete data fields for email addresses, etc. which can be ‘fiddly’ on a small hand-held device. Try to make the user experience as simple and easy as possible.

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