Conversion Optimization: How to Transform Casual Visitors Into Prospects.

by | Nov 18, 2020 | Content | Social Media | Email, Blog

Why should you care about conversion optimization?

When I ask business owners about their website performance, most can easily tell me how much traffic they get in a given week or month. Even if they don’t have the number top of mind, they can hop into Google Analytics, and in just a moment see exactly how many visitors viewed their website.

They feel good if the number is increasing every month. While that is a nice thing to see it is not the best metric of how well your website is performing.

The real measure of web success is conversion.

How many people take the time to fill out a contact form, download a resource, or sign up for your newsletter? How many people are you adding to your prospect list, every day, week, or month?

What percentage of visitors should turn into prospects?

That’s a simple question with a complex answer, it will depend on the industry you are in and the traffic source. A study by Wordstream shows conversion rates from Google Search ads vary widely from 2.7% for apparel up to 7.9% for vehicles. Facebook ads range from a low of 2.3 for technology ads to a high of 14% for fitness products.

You can make yourself crazy trying to compare yourself to someone else or an industry standard. The simplest method is create more conversions this week than last. Whether your number is high or low, taking the time to improve your conversion process. and optimize your blog posts and landing pages for conversion will drive more sales down the road.

Answer a question

People come to Google, they come with questions. They find content on websites to answer those questions. So what question is your blog post or landing page answering? If you don’t know the question that the post is answering, why are you writing it?

Make it readable

People have questions, and the internet is filled with crappy content which promises to answer it, but doesn’t.  Make sure your content is high quality, providing information which makes it worth the trip. Substantiate your claim that you’re a good resource with case studies, graphs, testimonials, and other types of social proof. This content helps make a compelling argument to every visitor as to why they should give you their contact information and become a prospect. Finally, read the content out loud and ask yourself does this sound interesting?

This content optimization process will help you deliver the best content to your readers, and improve your results

Have one call to action

All too often I see pages with multiple, competing CTA’s. Sign up for this, register now, and oh by the way, be sure to download this too.

This overload occurs because business owners are afraid if they forget to mention all of those things, they’ll miss an opportunity to appeal to a prospect. But the research shows the more different options you give someone, the less likely they are to select any of them.

So pick one compelling call to action that makes sense for the page that the customer is on. Then optimize the experience after they take the first action. Fulfill their first request, then direct them to new pages which have more offers, social proof, or information to keep them engaged.

Grab attention with the headline.

Once you have finished your landing page, it is time to focus on a compelling subject line to grab people’s attention. This is where your page will live or die. If you can’t capture attention and drive visitors you will have no chance of converting them to prospects.

Take as much time to write a great headline as you do the entire page. Then whether prospects see it on social media, in an email, or just landing on your blog they will be intrigued enough to learn more.

 

Conversion optimization is a continous process.

Over time watch your numbers, you will see some of your content will perform better than others. Your mission is to find the best posts, the best calls to action, and divert more of your marketing energy and more of your resources to those pages. Spend time enhancing  individual pages by improving the layout, adding new graphics, and testing different headlines.

When you do these things, you will see an increase in your conversion results.

 

 

 

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