Awesome Conversion Hacks

A high conversion rate is like the Holy Grail we all aspire to obtain but with so many elements in motion it can be downright frustrating trying to reach a number that satisfies.

So what can we do to improve our conversions?

You need to do a bit of hacking…

Take what you know about marketing and advertising and really dig deep into what lies beneath – become the hacker that isn’t satisfied with what shows on the surface – be the one that continually strives to increase performance.

These are just a few (of the many) strategies you can employ to boost your conversion rates:

A. Understanding User Interaction & Experience

A question to ask yourself is “do I really understand how visitors use my website?”

The site design was most likely made using best practices in the design industry but you can’t be sure that people will interact with the site as you envision. To improve your conversions you need to step away from using your “gut intuition” about the site and use tools, like heatmaps, to see what draws interest on your site.

The “hot” areas are the attraction point so you know what you do to bump conversions? You place the offer or call-to-action in this area of the page. You keep doing this until you’ve tweaked the website so it feels streamlined.

B. Trust and Association

If you were to land on a website that looked nice, had a product you’re willing to buy, but didn’t really show any signs of it being legitimate would you continue to checkout? Of course not.

The Web is still very impersonal because we’re all still adjusted to the human interaction we have in daily life when we’re out shopping. If we don’t see signs that a business is professional then we’ll just move on to the next since we want to assure our money isn’t being swindled.

There are two main items in this conversion hack:

• Use trust badges (security, guarantees, return policies) to show that your business stands behinds it products, its customers, and is willing to work with people if the experience didn’t go as planned.
• Associate your brand with other, bigger brands to create a sense of authority in your industry. People stick to big brands because they know they are consistent in their value. When someone sees your business working with a major player in your industry they feel you are on the same level and project that value onto your business.

This is all quite basic but it’s easily passible when you’re too wrapped up in the marketing & advertising and not focusing on improving the landing page. Make it known you can be trusted. Make it known you are one of the major players.

C. Give them Contact

As mentioned – people are skeptical about websites when they lack information regarding the company. A simple about us page doesn’t cut it because, honestly, who really reads these pages outside of a few individuals that have extra time?

What needs to be visible:

• Phone number
• Physical address and map
• Support page
• Live chat
• Social profiles

44% of online consumers say live chat is one of the most important parts of completing a transaction. If you’re neglecting to include features like live chat (and the others) then you’re already shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to conversions.

D. Retargeting

Retargeting is absolutely amazing and every business should include it in their budget.

Why?

Imagine this:

Someone stumbles across your site, reads your copy, feels like you offer a good product, and places the item in the shopping cart only to wait a few moments, say “never mind”, and abandon ship. With retargeting you can setup a set of action that will contact that individual through multiple means to coerce them into completing the transaction. The retargeting can catch people at the right time to buy which may not have been that initial moment.

There are a few ways to go about doing this:

• Using CRM services to schedule a phone call to those that may have submitted information so that your sales rep can do their pitch
• Using retargeting advertising which places a cookie on the visitors browser so when they are on other websites they see your advertisements (instead of the usual ad run)
• Using email, staggered out, with a special coupon code to bring them back over to the site to complete their purchase (bonus if the cart saves their selection)

E. Highly-Targeted Offers

Hubspot is amazing at this and it’s something you should strive to replicate: highly-targeted offers and opt-ins that pertain to target content.

As per examples:

• Including a whitepaper that neatly matches a new report that covers the same subject
• Including a worksheet after a piece of video content so people can follow along
• Including a small ebook that expands on one of your evergreen content pieces

Once you’ve hooked the individual into the piece of content they will continue down the page and the stopping point will be the offer/opt-in. It takes a lot of work but it would be wise to create some kind of valuable download for each of your main categories you cover on your website.

The thing that increases conversions on this is that you are able to divide your email into different segments based on the offers they chose to except so now you have a highly targeted, qualified set of leads in your email marketing list.

There’s Always More

Every element of your website is part of the funnel that leads to conversions. It’s your duty to continually test and push these elements. Don’t settle for a best practice or that gut feeling – be bold, try new things, have fun with your work, and keep your eye on the metric that matters: conversions.

‍