10 Quick Ways To Increase Your Site’s Conversion Rate

Do some digging and you’ll find a lot out there on website tweaks to improve conversion rates. I chose these 10 because our clients have found success with them in the past. They’re also relatively quick and easy to implement, with high potential to drive an increase in revenue.

1. Create urgency
2. Highlight the benefits of your product in addition to its features
3. Add reviews or testimonials
4. Use free shipping
5. Use strikethrough pricing
6. Add a call to action on every page
7. Answer questions before they’re asked
8. Add related items to a product view
9. Show the product in action
10. Make it easy to read

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1. Create Urgency

It’s marketing 101. Offer limited time promotions to create a sense of urgency. This age old marketing tactic exists for a reason – because it works. Yet you’d be surprised at how many sites out there don’t give their visitors a sense of urgency! Use the following tactics to make sure that buying right now is a motivating factor:

• Give a clear deadline
• Use urgent copy, such as “Limited Time Offer”, “Offer ends soon”, etc.
• Use strikethough pricing
• Give users a clear next step, and funnel them towards making a purchase
• Sweeten the deal – give customers added incentives to purchase your already attractive offer, like free shipping

Here’s a great example from Holt’s Cigar Company:

During Holt’s Weekly Sale Special, there’s a clear deadline to create urgency, they explicitly list the savings by using strikethrough pricing, offer free shipping to sweeten the deal, and funnel customers directly towards making a purchase. Bravo Holt’s.

2. Highlight the benefits of your product instead of its features

A feature is a factual statement about a product or service being promoted. A benefit answers the question “What’s in it for me?”
Let’s pretend that I’m selling you air conditioners. Which AC unit would you rather purchase from me?
Air Conditioner 1
Description:

• Quiet condenser fan system
• Factory-installed liquid line filter dryer
• Contactor with lug connections
• Steel louver coil guard
• Heavy-gauge galvanized-steel cabinet

Air Conditioner 2
Description:

• The quietest air conditioning unit on the market – you won’t hear a thing.
• Cools a 50 square foot room from 90℉ to 71℉ in under 12 minutes.
• Built with your electricity bill in mind, this unit was rated the most energy efficient in its class.
• Extremely weather-resistant, built with industrial grade steel for long-lasting durability. Comes with a 10 year warranty.

If you’re not in the AC wholesale business like my friend John at BobsRedTrucks.com, you’d probably rather purchase Air Conditioner 2, even though Air Conditioner 1 and Air Conditioner 2 are the same product. Features aren’t what entice customers to buy, benefits are. Make sure that you’re describing the benefits in addition to your product’s features.

3. Add reviews or testimonials

Customers are listening to the word of advertisers less and less, and trusting the customers that purchased before them more and more. Think back to the last few purchases you made online. Did you read reviews before making your purchase decision? Most likely you did. This study published by Marketing Land revealed that 90% of customer buying decisions are influenced by online reviews. Adding reviews and testimonials builds trust, and adds credibility to your site.
Here’s how to use reviews to your advantage:

• Incorporate testimonials on pages throughout your sales funnel.
• Showcase positive customer tweets on your website. I worked for a company that embedded a live Twitter feed of the users Tweeting at them on their checkout page, which worked exceptionally well to increase conversions. It gave a face to the brand and built trust.
• Ask your customers to participate in case studies that you can then feature on your site.
• Create video testimonials that you can embed on your site and in a  YouTube channel for your brand.

 

4. Use free shipping

This is the number one promotion that drives online purchases. Make sure to watch your profit margins, but if you’re able to offer free shipping, it’s proven to entice customers to purchase more than any other tactic on this list.
Also, offering free or discounted shipping can curb shopping cart abandonment rates. According to kissmetrics, 28% of shoppers will abandon their shopping cart if presented with unexpected shipping costs. That’s the number one reason for shopping cart abandonment! It’s also important that if you offer free shipping, you advertise it loud and proud, and that you’re as clear as possible about your free shipping policy. Remember, no one likes unexpecting shipping costs.

5. Use strikethrough pricing

Everyone loves a deal. If customers perceive that they’re able to purchase a product for less than it’s worth (or less than they’re willing to pay for it) on your website, you’ve created demand for that product and proven the value of your site.
Use strikethrough pricing to show customers the value of your offer, and how much they’ll save by purchasing the product from you. Cross out the original price and highlight the sale price. Here’s another example from Holt’s Cigar Company:

Not only show how much customers will save by purchasing the product from your site with strikethrough pricing, but directly compare your cheaper prices to those of your competitors.

6. Add a call to action on every page

On every page of your site, you should be guiding visitors towards a desired action. Think of each page as an opportunity to funnel buyers towards a purchase, lead generation form, event promotion, social share, etc. in order to make more money and/or promote your brand. Persuading site visitors to do what you want is no easy task, but taking time to master the art of the call to action can dramatically improve your bottom line.
Here’s a few great examples of creative calls to action. A few best practices include:

• Less is more when it comes to choices. If you give multiple choices, give weight to one choice over another, so customers don’t have to think too hard.
• Give careful consideration to your call to action button colors. Different colors inspire different emotions, and some colors attract more attention than others.
• Large, visible text captures attention, but make it too big and you’ll offput potential customers. Here’s a nice balance from Coin:

• If you offer one main product, give customers a clear way to purchase it right away from the home page. Here’s a nice example from Tep Wireless:

• Keep call to action button text short.
• Movement attracts attention. Adding movement to your site in specific areas can draw visitors towards a call to action.
• Make it stand out. Your call to action button should have sufficient space around it so that it clearly stands out.
• Make your call to action contextually relevant to the content on that page. If you were shopping on BestBuy.com for a new TV and were scrolling through a TV category page, it would be weird if in the sidebar you were prompted to sign up for their camera lens newsletter.

 

7. Answer questions before they’re asked

People who visit your site have questions, and many want to know the answers before making a purchase. FAQ pages are great, but there’s more you can do to anticipate common questions, and provide contextually relevant information to answer them before they’re asked.

• Figure out what people want to know, and provide the answers within the content of relevant pages. Survey your customers after checkout, after they reach your customer service department, and a few weeks after purchase through email to collect this data.
• If there are too many questions, create multiple FAQ pages with a table of contents linking to each section.
• Don’t make customers click the Contact Us button. It’s frustrating, and will decrease your conversions.
• Continue to create interesting content around your most frequently asked questions. Consider leveraging your blog for this.

ProTip: Check out your top 5 landing pages on Google Analytics, and take an hour to brainstorm questions that customers could possibly ask about the content on those 5 pages. Filter out the questions that might not make sense after your brainstorm, and cross reference the remaining ones with your FAQ page to find gaps. Finally, create content around these questions on your blog or consider adding them to your FAQ page.
If you want to get even fancier, check out the channel breakdown for each of your top 5 landing pages. If most customers come directly to the page, then they’re most likely already aware of your brand/products, and might have less questions than if most of your customers are coming in via referral. If most customers are coming to one of your top landing pages via referral, you may want to spend more time brainstorming questions for that specific landing page.

8. Add related items to a product view

Adding related items to a product view allows customers who already have purchase intent to view products that they may not have considered (and may like more than the one they’re thinking about purchasing). It also allows you as the site owner to up-sell and cross-sell, which can have a dramatic impact on your average order value. If you use an ecommerce platform like Magento, this functionality is already built in.
Here’s an example from Urban Outfitters:

And an example from Fab.com:

9. Show the product in action

One of our clients, Revzilla, does an excellent job of showing their products in action. On their site, it all starts on their category pages, where they clearly label which products have video reviews.

On the individual product pages, Revzilla shows the product in action via these professional video reviews. In addition, they incentivize customers to leave a review, and allow them to upload their own personal photos with the product. It’s a genius way to show the product in action, while also creating added trust and proof of the product’s value.

To show your products in action:

• Leverage your customers for user generated content. Embed this user generated content on your product pages, category pages, and social media accounts.
• Create videos that showcase your products in action. Embed them into your product pages, and transcribe them so that Googlebot can index and crawl the content. Create a YouTube account for additional reach.
• If customers can post reviews on product pages, allow them to upload pictures as well.

 

10. Make it easy to read

The expression “less is more” should ring true when it comes to the design of your site, and the words that you use in your content. Sites that reduce clutter, have clear calls to action, and beautifully display information in a conversational tone set themselves up to convert visitors.
To make your site easy to read, use the below tactics:

• Use bullets
• Keep sentences and paragraphs short
• Use a conversational tone
• Don’t use too many font sizes
• Don’t use too many typefaces
• When emphasizing text (like, you know, a call to action) consider using a colored background as opposed to bolding, underlining, or italicizing the text

When you’re finished reading this post, play around with the rest of Seer’s site. I’m a little biased, but in my opinion this is something that we do very well.

Cool! Now What?

A/B test! You can test almost anything on your website that will affect the behavior of your visitors. Test variations of these 10 tactics to see what resonates best with your audience.

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/quick-ways-to-increase-your-sites-conversion-rate/

7 Blogging Tips From Top Bloggers

If you’ve been following the boom of social media marketing, you already know blogging is an essential ingredient to any social media strategy. Are you unsure about what to write, when to post, how to grow your subscribers and how to keep them coming back for more? If you’ve had any of these concerns, you’re not alone!

To help you take your blog to an entirely new level, here are 7 tips from the best-of-the-best in the blogging and social media arena. Every expert below has created a thriving blog with tens of thousands of subscribers who engage with their posts on a regular basis. If you want to know how to create and grow a successful blog, make sure to take notes (and take action)!

 

#1: Measure Your Blogging Success

“If you’re blogging for business, rather than blogging about your cat, baby, fashion addiction, or crush on Taylor Swift, you need to set some success metrics,” says Jay Baer, founder of Convince and Convert.

Without a statistical measure of your blogging progress, adding content to your blog on a regular basis can be an incredibly lonely proposition. Is anyone out there? Does anyone care?

However, within the business blogging arena there are a wide variety of potential metrics to gauge your momentum. It’s imperative that you select the most relevant ones that match with your blog’s purpose.

The first step in that process of course is to know why you’re blogging. This sounds simple, but it’s shocking how many bloggers aren’t clear on the core business rationale behind their blog initiative.

As I see it, you have 3 options:

• Blogging for Content
  This is the scenario where you are writing a blog with considerable emphasis on search optimization, attempting to drive traffic to the blog via strategic content creation and keyword inclusion. Your metric is search traffic.

• Blogging for Commerce
  Related to the first, but commerce-oriented blogs are more interested in conversion events than in traffic generation. Funneling traffic from the blog to some other web destination (typically a corporate site or lead form) is the primary objective. Here, your metrics are leads and conversions.

• Blogging for Community
  These blogs seek to build a consistent readership that interacts with the blogger(s) and advocates on behalf of the content on other social outposts.

 

 

Determine the main reason why your business has a blog and pick success metrics to match.

 

#2: Pursue Guest Blogging Opportunities

One of the best ways to get exposure for your blog is to blog for other people. Rich Brooks, president of Flyte New Media, offers some great advice to start building relationships for potential guest blogging opportunities.

“Find the influential bloggers in your related industries,” says Brooks, “and read their blogs. As appropriate, leave intelligent, thoughtful comments that further the conversation. This can drive traffic to your blog and may open up opportunities for guest blogging at their blog as they become aware of you through your brilliant insights. However, this must be a win-win for it to work. If you leave comments for completely selfish reasons, you can expect limited results.”

 

#3: Reframe How You Look at Business Blogging

“I often hear people complain that they don’t have time to write on their business blog or they don’t know what to write about,” says Denise Wakeman, founder of The Blog Squad. “Yet a blog is one of the best tools you can use to distribute your message across the web.”

One way to move away from this mode of thinking is to reframe how you look at blogging. It’s not about writing on a blog; it’s about taking advantage of a powerful marketing tool that works for you 24/7/365. Then, schedule writing time so it doesn’t slip through the cracks in the course of a busy day or week.

 

Here’s a 4-step process to get you started:

1.     Block out your writing time on a calendar.

2.     Plan your content in advance. Create an editorial calendar and plug in your topics 1 to 3 months in advance.

3.     For each of your blog categories, list a minimum of 5 topics you can cover related to your company, products and the solutions you provide.

4.     Pop them into your editorial calendar as prompts so you’re never at a loss for ideas when it’s time to create content.

 

#4: Add Keywords to Your Blog Titles and Posts

Rob Birgfeld of SmartBrief says keywords are the secret sauce to a successful business blog.

“It’s easy,” Birgfeld says, “to write blog posts on whatever topic springs to mind. But chances are your blog was created to help achieve business goals. In order to reach those goals, take data from your search engine marketing efforts and develop an editorial plan around your top-producing keywords.”

Gather your top 10-15 keywords or phrases and write blog posts specific to each one. Keep the content compelling, but be sure to sprinkle the selected keyword (and synonyms) throughout the post.

Most importantly, be sure to include those all-important keywords in the blog title and in the tags that you select. Not only will a keyword-driven blogging strategy help you build and plan out your editorial calendar, it will help you reach company goals via proven search engine marketing data. Thus providing you with something that’s hard to come by in social media: An easier sell to your CFO.

 

#5: Interview the Best in Your Industry

Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, suggests, “Hire a videographer and go to the biggest trade show in your industry. Interview all the leading book authors and thought leaders.”

When you do this, you’ll end up with tons of content you can release on your blog over months. And chances are, when the big names see your video, they’ll share it with their fan base, driving new traffic to your site.

 

Here’s Mike Stelzner interviewing Scott Monty of Ford at Blog World 2010. This is a great example of attending the best events in the industry and connecting with the influencers.

#6: Create Persuasive Calls to Action

“You’ve got anecdotes, case studies, top-ten lists, provocative insights and more on your business blog. Hats off to you. That’s a huge achievement, particularly if you’ve been publishing a blog for a year or less. But what’s your call to action? And by that I mean, what step is a visitor prompted to take after landing on your blog?” says Debbie Weil, expert blogger and author of The Corporate Blogging Book.

What obvious callouts do you have to attract a visitor’s eye after he or she reads your latest blog post? Think about it. Your blog reader, if a first-time visitor, has most likely typed in a keyword phrase and ended up on your blog through search results.

Readers may not even know that it’s a blog. So you’ve got their attention, at least for a few seconds. This is your real-time moment to prompt your visitor to take the next step. If I sound all salesy here I don’t mean to. This is permission marketing 101. It’s offering something unanticipated but relevant at the exact moment your visitor is looking for it.

Here are a few ideas for persuasive calls to action from Debbie Weil’s Social Media Insights Blog:

• Download our white paper
• Join us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
• Ask us a question
• Download our e-book
• Sign up for our free webinar
• Request our toolkit
• Sign up for our e-newsletter
• Request a demo

#7: When it Comes to Video Blogging, Forget Acting

“I remember the first time I was on camera,” says David Garland, founder of The Rise to the Top and author of Smarter, Faster, Cheaper. “I was trying to be someone I wasn’t… with an awkward spray tan. (Stop laughing.)”

For some reason, our personalities can sometimes change when on camera (something about that scary lens). What the audience craves is to see the real you. All the good stuff, quirks and everything else.

Try this. Invite someone over with whom you are VERY comfortable. Have him or her ask you a question and simply answer it. Then, have the person hold a camera and try it again. Rinse, wash and repeat until you feel comfortable. When you talk into the lens, picture that person. It will make all the difference.

Here's David Garland interviewing Mike Stelzner about the success of SocialMediaExaminer.com.

 

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/7-blogging-tips-from-top-bloggers/