As a business owner, you might notice people are coming to your website because you have killer content and pretty pictures buuuuut all of that traffic is just traffic. People are essentially lurking on your website without turning into customers or clients. What gives? What you have is a web conversion rate problem – something we, as a Charlotte web design company, can help you with.
To be clear, a web conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who are taking action – signing up for your mailing list, making a purchase, scheduling a call, etc. It’s how well your website is turning those “looky-loos” (aka the “just-browsing” folks) into paying customers or clients. The conversion rate is calculated by the number of people who acted divided by the total number of visitors. For instance, if 100 people signed up for your newsletter last month out of a total 1,000 visitors, your conversion rate is 10%.
Does that seem low to you? High? The web conversion rate varies by industry but the average rate across all industries is about 2.2%, according to Statista. There are variations across industries of course. Here are the industry-specific averages:
- Food and beverage: 3.7%
- Beauty and skincare: 3.3%
- Sporting goods: 2.3%
- Toys: 2%
- Electronics: 1.9%
- Furniture: 0.8%
- Luxury handbags: 0.4%
I mention all this so you’re realistic about conversion rates. If your rate is low, don’t be discouraged! As a Charlotte web designer, we can help with your conversion rates and improve your business’s bottom line. Even a small increase can make a huge difference. Instead of trying to attract more traffic (which is also a good idea), you’re focusing on your current traffic but getting more out of them. Sounds great, right? So where do you start?
Use A/B Testing
You knew this was coming. You may create something or other – a headline, call-to-action (CTA) button, or layout – and think it’s the bee’s knees buuuuut how do you know that’s true? Specifically, how do you know if your target audience will like it? A/B testing, also known as split testing, is how you figure that out. You’re using data to determine what your customers or clients want.
Test one element at a time and use a tool like Optimizely to set up your test. For instance, you might create a landing page (which we do as a Charlotte web design company) and determine which CTA button gets the most clicks. Is it the blue one or the green one? You’re not guessing because you’re making decisions based on people who are already visiting your website.
Strong Verbs Create Strong Impressions
So you’ve run an A/B test to learn which colors your clients and customers prefer, but it’s not only the colors that count – it’s the language. (I’m very familiar with this as a professional wordsmith.) Wimpy words don’t inspire action in clients and customers – strong words do. That’s why you’ll notice almost every CTA says “get,” “start,” or, “claim.” My personal favorites are “grab” or “snag” because everybody says “get.”
Speed Up Your Site
This is a small thing that you may be overlooking because you’re not a web/tech person but your site speed will greatly impact your web conversion rate. The longer your load time, the higher your bounce rate. It could be as much as 32%! A way to help with site speed is to compress large images, enable browser caching, and minimize CSS and JavaScript files. If all of that sounds like gibberish to you, don’t worry, as a Charlotte web design company, we know exactly what that means and we can help.
If you want to figure it out on your own though, use free tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to identify speed bottlenecks and apply simple fixes to supercharge load times.
There are more things you can do, but these are the suggestions from a Charlotte web designer on improving your web conversion rate.
If you’re looking for help with anything I mentioned above, get in touch with us via email or call (704) 336-9113.
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