18 Ways to Improve Your Website Conversions
Tips for improving your website conversion rate - to make more sales or get more client enquiries!
If you're struggling to get your website visitors to fill out your contact form, or you're not getting as many product sales as you'd like, there are plenty of reasons why this could be happening. I’m going to be sharing some practical tips and actionable improvements you can make to help with this in this blog post!
Table of Contents
Psst! You can listen to this in a podcast version, or keep scrolling to read on…
What do I mean by a website conversion?
By a ‘website conversion’ I mean when a visitor on your website goes from being just a visitor to someone who has taken a desired action. They have converted from a visitor to a lead, customer, or email subscriber, for example.
Examples of website conversions
Below are examples of what a website conversion (or desired action) could look like:
Filling in a contact enquiry form
Purchasing a product
Booking an appointment
Subscribing to a newsletter
Your website might offer all of these as conversion options, or just one.
What is website ‘conversion rate’?
A website’s ‘conversion rate’ is the % of website visitors who take one of those desired actions.
If you want to calculate this, you would divide the number of conversions by the total number of website visitors within a certain time period, and then multiply by 100.
So for example, if you have 100 website visitors, and 2 of those visitors fill in your enquiry form, your website conversion rate would be 2%.
What is considered a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ conversion rate?
This will depend completely on what type of conversion you are after (contact form enquiries, product sales, newsletter sign ups etc.) and also on what industry you’re in and what you’re selling.
You can find a list of average conversion rates from a study here but there are a lot of factors at play.
How do I find out my website conversion rate?
Your website analytics software should be able to show you how many website visitors you’ve had on your site, and you can then reference this with your total amount of form submissions, sales, appointment bookings or newsletter sign ups within a set time period.
If you have Google Analytics set up for your website, you can also create ‘Conversion Goals’ where it will automatically track this for you!
It’s a good idea to keep an eye on this and track it month on month, so that you can see if you are improving or not. Having a rough idea of where you’re at currently is important for monitoring your progress if you make any of the below changes.
Further reading: How to set up Google Analytics on your website
What else should I look out for on my website analytics?
Whilst you’re there, there are some other statistics that are helpful to keep an eye on as they can indicate whether or not your website is giving a good first impression to your website visitors.
Bounce rate
A bounce rate is the % of people who land on your website and leave after just viewing that one page. The higher the bounce rate, the more people are leaving your website straight away, so you ideally we want bounce rates to be lower.
There are plenty of things you can do to improve your bounce rate and keep people on your website longer, if that is an issue.
Pages per session / average time on page
These statistics will yell you how many pages on average people look at when they visit your website, and how long they spend on pages. Obviously the more pages and time, the better, as it means people are interested in your site.
Background things to get clear on first
Understanding Your ideal customer & what makes them ‘tick’
If you don’t actually exactly know WHO you’re trying to get to ‘convert’ on your website, you’re going to find it very difficult to appeal to them in the right way and get them to take action.
Everything in your business should stem from knowing your ideal customer deeply. I’ve outlined exactly why it’s so important to know your ideal clients in this blog post, and also busted some common myths around this too.
Useful Resource: FREE Target Customer CV template
Ensuring your branding is appealing to your ideal customers
Once you know who you want to target, you need to make sure your branding aligns with that and actually appeals to those people. And remember, your branding is much more than just a logo; it involves choosing the right colour palette, fonts, patterns and deeply understanding your market positioning and messaging too.
You may not think it makes a different, but even something like the wrong colour choice on your website could be the difference between turning your ideal customer off vs them becoming a loyal customer.
Make sure You’re actually getting people ON your website!
You can’t expect a load of sales / website conversions if you don’t actually have any people visiting your website to begin with! If you’re struggling to get much traffic to your website, you may need to invest more time, energy or budget into marketing your business in the right places.
This might involve improving your SEO (search engine optimisation) to make sure you’re appearing when people search for certain keywords in Google, or creating a content marketing strategy to direct people to your website.
If you need help getting people to your website, check out my online marketing courses!
Technical website improvements
Ensure your website is mobile friendly
Having a website that not only functions on mobile devices, but also looks GOOD is a necessity these days, as so many of our website visitors come from phones. You should be able to see the exact amount in your website analytics software!
Improve your website loading speed
If your website is taking ages to load, people won’t have the patience to wait and so are likely to leave straight away (therefore making your bounce rate higher). This is not good for your conversions and it’s also bad for your SEO as well as Google prioritises faster loading websites.
A big culprit for a slow website is large image files! I have a blog post about how to format images ready for your website here.
Get rid of annoying pop-ups
Cookies, newsletter sign ups, live chat, announcement bars - if you have too many things popping up at once this can be overwhelming and turn people off instantly! Keep pop-ups to a minimum and if you do add a newsletter pop-up, make sure it only appears after someone has been on the site for at least a few seconds to get their bearings.
Create a clear navigation & journey for your website visitors
A designer’s rule of thumb when it comes to website navigation menus to to keep the options to no more than 7! Any more than this can feel like too many options for a website visitor, so best to keep it less than this and use dropdown menus if needed.
Make sure it’s easy for people to navigate around your website and always have access to the navigation links they need to get where they want to go. Put yourself in their shoes and consider which pages they’re likely to visit in what order.
Tell your website visitors what to do next
Add plenty of ‘call to actions’ around your website (eg. links or buttons) directing people and telling them what to do next. If someone scrolls to the bottom of your About page, then what? Where do you want them to go next? Add a button here to take them to the next destination.
Discover & fix broken links
Make sure the links and buttons around your website are actually working! There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking a link and being taken to an error page. I recently created an Instagram Reel with easy instructions on how to find broken links in Google Analytics!
Ensure your design is modern & text is readable etc.
If your website is stuck in 2005, this is probably going to turn people off. Likewise, make sure your text is large enough for your audience to actually read, and background colours aren’t making it difficult to read either!
Create a seamless conversion process
Make the process for people converting as smooth and effortless as possible. Reduce the amount of steps or clicks it takes someone to actually take desired action (ie. check out and purchase a product). For contact forms, keep form fields to a minimum so that people don’t give up half way through!
Website content improvements
Make sure your messaging speaks to your ideal customer
Just as I mentioned with making sure your branding is appealing to your ideal customer, this includes your messaging as well. Use language and phrases that they identify with, avoid jargon, and ensure you have a ‘brand voice’ that aligns with them.
Your messaging should also clearly address your ideal customer’s pain points and desires, which is again why it’s. so important to understand who they are so deeply.
Use good quality images & examples of your work
Fuzzy images or cheap stock imagery is a big turn off for customers, as it suggests you’re not taking your business seriously and doesn’t come across as very professional. If you don’t have clear examples of your work this isn’t going to help people imagine what it’s like to work with you, and so they’re unlikely to get in touch.
If you’re selling products, your product imagery should be high quality and clear so that people can truly imagine what it’s like to own it.
Write copy that is succinct and clear
Copywriting is really difficult, which is why it’s a whole profession in and of itself! But the best tip I can give is to write in a way that makes it easy for your website visitors to scan through and pick out the most important pieces of information.
Long paragraphs of text are going to turn people off; make it concise and bit-sized, or else best case no one will read it, and worst case, it will send them elsewhere.
Include helpful product information
Try to include as much information about your products as possible on your product pages (in a succinct, scannable way - perhaps using bullet points!) so that your visitors aren’t left with any questions that could stop them from buying.
Include things like size, weight, how it will arrive / how it’s packaged, what people can expect after they pay etc.
Build trust with social proof / testimonials
Including product reviews, or testimonials and case studies on your website is really helpful for showing your expertise and authenticity. If you’re just starting out, let friends/family try your product or service for free in exchange for a testimonial - there is no shame in this! Just don’t make stuff up or exaggerate.
Extra ideas for what to add to your website
A live chat feature
Adding a way for people to contact you instantly can be a great way to quickly answer any questions they may have while they’re browsing your website and can help with conversions.
You can use a live chat / customer support software, or set up a live chat feature for free using Facebook Messenger!
Abandoned cart emails
Have you ever gone to the checkout on an online shop and then got distracted or not finished the purchase, and then received an email from that business a while later reminding you to finish the checkout? This is an ‘abandoned cart email’, and it’s a really effective way of recapturing people who nearly converted but didn’t.
Most ecommerce / online shop platforms have this feature for you to set up so that it sends automatically, and I’d definitely recommend it!
