7 Tips to Improve Sales Conversions
In our last newsletter, we explored ways to audit your campaigns and landing pages. Today, we’re taking that idea and expanding it to highlight tactics you can use to increase your conversion rates.
The single most important factor in determining the success of your conversions is earning the trust of your prospective customers. This isn’t accomplished through any single transaction but through a series of impressions and experiences created during the pre-and post-click stages of the journey. Currently, the average conversion rate for organic search is around 16%—with the lowest average going to social media content at just 0.71%.
An ideal conversion rate is generally 10 to 11% of unique visitors, depending on your channel. Below are 7 proven tactics you can deploy to achieve higher conversion rates.
- Make security protocols table stakes: Anytime you ask your customer to input sensitive payment information, you need to provide the security of the HTTPS protocol. Not only do your savvier internet users know to look for it, but if your customers are using the Google Chrome browser, it will warn the user when they’re on a page that isn’t secure.
- Reduce friction wherever you can: On a sales page, customers will look for any opportunity to second guess your brand or the purchase, and even a slight barrier may cause them to hesitate and abandon the purchase. Make sure the UX is streamlined and intuitive and keep the form as simple as possible.
- Use video marketing: Moving images are more captivating, plus they can help you double-dip SEO and improve user experience. Use video in conjunction with images to supplement your content with how-to demos that show your product in action. You could also link to your YouTube channel and invite viewers to send in their original video content as part of your social media marketing.
- Incorporate retargeting technology: There will always be some prospective customers that make it to your sales page and then don’t convert. By using retargeting technology, you can direct different messaging to the subset of prospects that made it to the sales page—or other pages on your website—versus new ad clicks or even return customers.
- Follow the conversion with a “thank you” page: This isn’t merely a gracious gesture, though that is important too. Your post-conversion “thank-you” page is an opportunity to deliver value immediately with an additional offer or recommended content.
- Improve page load times: Even a one-second delay in page load time can cause a drop in your conversions. If you think you have a page speed problem, you should prioritize diagnosing and fixing it. Improving page load speed starts with choosing the right hosting platform and web developer, but you can go beyond that to optimize your page, such as enabling caching so not all parts of the site have to load each time.
- Test extensively: A/B, multivariate, and user testing are always good practices. And they are even more important on a sales page since this page is directly tied to revenue, and at this stage of the funnel, only your most qualified leads are passing through.
There are plenty of errors that can impact your landing pages. While poor conversion rates may be frustrating, you can make a few small changes and see results quickly. We have had great results using the above list for both customers and our own marketing, but it is by no means comprehensive. What other tactics do you use for sales pages? Share in the comments and let’s keep improving together!
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