Every e-commerce business spends thousands of dollars and hours to generate leads. But the fact is that not every lead will convert.
Conversion rate optimisation helps reduce these drop-offs while at the same time increasing your revenues. It’s about testing which content – the keywords, the widgets, the colours, and so on – delivers on your present goals, before you make it permanent.
In this article, we talk about the written text and how you can run small tests, in order to determine its effectiveness in driving conversions.
How to Analyse Your Website Content
Content is king. Most marketers are familiar with the tenet; and it is certainly true in the land of SEO. With proper planning and the right keyword optimisation, your content has the power to drive search engine traffic to your website.
And what happens when the lead gets to your landing page? At this point, the role of content gets even more critical; its quality can spell the difference between a bounce and a conversion. From your text and layout to your photos and videos, your content is responsible for shepherding the website visitor through every stage of the conversion funnel.
How effective is your content in its current state? Can it retain the lead and execute on its ultimate objective of making a sale? Here’s where CRO testing comes in, and it starts with analysing your calls to action.
Calls to action: Focus on your customer
Are you still giving your visitors the generic “Buy Now” line? If every other website already uses a call to action (CTA) like this, how effective do you think will it be in encouraging user action?
This is why the different CTAs on your website are always a fantastic place to begin, if you’re investigating the discrepancies between the number of leads you generate and your final conversions. Imagine if all it might take to fix your conversion problem was a small tweak in your “Click Here” button! Of course, it is never that simplistic. But nevertheless, when trying to improve your clickthrough rate and conversion count, it can help to make your CTAs more customer-focused and, to whatever extent possible, personalised.
Besides the phrasing of your text prompts, placement and visual styling are also useful in convincing your customers to take action. For example, to use a catchy colour scheme and to place CTAs at the top of your forms is the standard practice. This shouldn’t dissuade you from experimenting with new techniques, however. Slide-in CTAs, for instance, have been seen to boost clickthrough rates by up to 192% and form submissions by 27%.
Smart headlines work
Testing your headlines is a good next step, once you’ve combed through all your calls to action. Whereas CTAs are essential elements in making a sale, it is your headlines that bridge users from search engine results pages (SERPs) to your landing pages.
Use a smart mix of keyword embedding and the latest copywriting techniques, to almost compel your users to click. Neil Patel recommends constant A/B testing, until you find smart headlines that work for your brand. In one such test, Neil reports a 127% increase in conversion rate and a 38% increase in form submissions.
Here are just some tried-and-tested template headlines that have helped marketers gain more sales:
- The secret to… (for example, “The secret to getting more followers”)
- What you need to know about…
- [Achieve something] like [example (as in, Get rich like Bill Gates)
- How to [achieve something] without [common obstacle]: How to untie your shoes without wasting time
Try using numbers and negative words
Readers are naturally drawn to numbered lists and “Top X” types of articles. Thus, listicles and similar content naturally rank higher in SERPs. Increase your traffic by putting numbers in your headlines, calls to action, and other content. They help make your copy look specific, credible, and reliable.
Negative keywords such as “worst” or “never”, surprisingly, have a strong impact on website conversions, also. This is because the audience tends to feel curious about negative words and is compelled to take action and dig into the dirty truth.
Aligning Landing Pages with Referring Sources
Once you’re done going over your website’s written content, spend some time on your landing pages. Are they aligned with the source of your leads?
Let’s say most of your visitors are being led by SERPs to a specific landing page on your website. That’s fantastic! You just need to make sure that the meta title and meta description on that SERP match what is on your landing page in the exact same form. Aligning a landing page with its lead source can increase the total number of leads generated by up to 39% and generally improve the effectiveness of the referring source.
Social media share buttons
Because they prompt action that’s technically favourable to your website, social media share buttons can be mistaken for calls to action (that is, your visitors are invited to share the page content on their personal accounts), when in fact, the opposite can be true!
Not all share buttons or icons have a positive impact on conversions. Think of it this way: if you remove share buttons from your page, you increase the focus on the main call to action. For some websites, removing the share buttons helped raise conversion by 12%.
That said, if you like your website with buttons, pay close attention to their location: Are they placed in the right places? Do they obstruct from any important material or message on the page?
Optimising the visual experience
Finally, take a general look at your website. Does it give your visitors a cohesive experience? Testing will be particularly helpful here.
Try out different colours for your CTA buttons and see which ones performs well. While there is no “‘universally highest converting” colour, you can test between two and three colours and find that one “unicorn colour”.
Do you have images inserted within large bodies of text on your page? It wouldn’t hurt to include testimonials from satisfied customers – with photos, if possible – to start getting the word out there about your product or service. In one test, the addition of images alone managed to push up conversion rate up to 102.5%.
There are no hard and fast rules in CRO; nothing can truly guarantee that your conversions will skyrocket and boost your website rankings, after a tweak or two. But tools like A/B testing are there for you to use, to help you see which concept, text, or widget can deliver on your current goals, since plans do change from time to time, as they do for any dynamic business.
Having worked with many e-commerce companies to run their advertising campaigns, Digital Excellence is an expert in implementing a variety of tactics, in order to optimise your conversion rate. How well are your CTAs, headlines, and copy working for you? Let’s have a chat.
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