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Website Conversion

How to Run A / B Tests on Your Website in 4 Easy Steps

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The article by Samantha Rodriguez will run through a step-by-step guide on how to run the A to B test on your website. A to B tests are often called A / B tests.

If you are not using A / B testing data science, A / B testing tools, and A / B testing in marketing and your landing pages.

Your A / B testing statistics from your A / B testing calculator will show you which element had better results. 

If you are not running A to B tests how do you know how well you could be doing. Do you just throw up ads and spend thousands of dollars? Recall the quote?

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half. John Wanamaker

When you’re working on a website, you may often rely on your intuition and experience to decide what designs work best.

Too many marketers have low conversion rates and don’t know why. This is often because of a poor call to action, poorly optimized landing pages, or a lack of effective pop-ups.

The reason for this usually comes down to simply being unaware of the benefits of A/B testing or of not being sure how to get started.

It is also a result of marketing professionals failing to utilize A/B testing in digital marketing strategy properly. Luckily for you, that’s where this blog comes in!

However, using data to make informed decisions is an even better approach. The question is: How can you figure out which design users will prefer?

The answer lies in A / B testing, which is the process of presenting two versions of a web page to visitors and collecting data about which one they prefer. With this information, you’ll be able to create pages you know users will love based on factual data.

Let’s move over to the lab! In this article, we’re going to give you a crash course in A / B testing and explain why you should consider conducting tests on your website.

Then we’ll teach you how to A / B test your site and introduce you to some WordPress plugins that can help.

Overview of How to Run A to B Tests on Your Website

run a / b tests

1. What Is A / B Testing?

2. Why Should You A / B Test?

3. What Can You A / B Test?

4. How to Run A / B Tests

4.1. Step 1: Identify Potential Test Subjects

4.2. Step 2: Decide on Your Goals

4.3. Step 3: Choose a Hypothesis

4.4. Step 4: Run Your Test and Analyze the Results

5. Tools to A / B Test Your WordPress Website

5.1. Nelio AB Testing

5.2. Popup by Supsystic

5.3. WordPress Landing Pages

5.4. Instapage

5.5. Google Optimize

5.6. Split Hero

6. A / B Testing & The WordPress Digital Experience

What Is A / B Testing?

A / B testing, at its most basic, is a way to compare two versions of something to figure out which performs better. 

Imagine, for example, that you’re adding a new Call To Action (CTA) to your landing page. You’re not sure what design will work best, but you’ve narrowed the choices down to two options. If you set up an A / B test, you can track which CTA your visitors respond to better by measuring how many clicks each version gets.

That’s just a basic example. In practice, you can use A / B testing to measure all kinds of variables. A / B testing is something you can benefit from in a broad range of situations, whether for a website, a product design, an email campaign, or something else entirely.

Why Should You A / B Test?

Why Should You A / B Test?

If you’re an experienced enough developer or designer, you might be able to rely on your intuition to determine what designs work best. However, if you want to know what your users want, running some tests is a smart idea.

Let’s break down exactly how A / B testing can benefit you:

  • It can provide you with highly targeted data about what your visitors prefer.
  • You can run successive A / B tests to fine-tune almost every aspect of your website.
  • Implementing the results of this testing can help you improve conversions across the board.

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What’s more, you can use A / B testing for all kinds of variables. However, there are some limitations to what you can A / B test, which we’ll talk more about in a moment.

What Can You A / B Test?

a to b testing website landing pages emails

The good news is that you can get informative results by testing almost any element on your website. You might create variations of your: 

  • Copy 
  • Color schemes
  • Ads
  • Website layouts
  • Email subject lines
  • Titles
  • Forms
  • Graphics
  • Fonts
  • CTAs
  • Widgets
  • Menus

The possibilities are just about endless. However, there are a few mistakes new A / B testers sometimes make when choosing what to test.

First, you should only test one highly specific element at a time. For example, don’t change your button’s text and color – only pick one aspect to alter.

Changing multiple variables will make it harder to analyze your data because you can’t be sure which factor influenced users’ behavior.

There is an alternative testing strategy known as multivariate testing, which you can consider if you want to test multiple elements in combination with one another. However, A / B testing will give you the clearest and most specific results.

The second mistake people sometimes make is focusing only on the big elements and passing over the small details.

However, you can also get interesting results from testing button styles, shapes, and sizes. For instance, it can be beneficial to test your button’s text and color.

Finally, it’s best to avoid testing new content that you’ve just added to your site. If you published some new copy yesterday, you’ve not gone to get accurate results from using it in an A / B test.

There’s no way to account for whether users’ behavior is due to the new element’s existence or the changes in your variations.

How to Run A / B Tests

When you run an A / B test, it helps to think of your website as a lab. If you want to get accurate results, you’ll need to follow strict procedures to ensure the data you gather is accurate.

Wrap Up on How to Run A / B Tests

COVID-19 accelerated the digital transformation that has been occurring in larger operations for years. Walmart opened its e-commerce store to fight Amazon. Small mom-n-pop stores were faced to move to an eCommerce platform and fast.

A/B testing shows the effectiveness of inherent changes, enabling data-driven decisions and ensuring positive impacts on your goals.

If you are not running A/B tests on your emails, workflows, landing pages, or website who do you know if you cannot do better? You can.

Here’s the approach we suggest you follow.

Posted in by Samantha Rodriguez, Last updated on July 25, 2021

General FAQs

What Is A / B Testing? 

Simply put, A / B testing, at its most basic, is a way to compare two versions of something to figure out which performs better. 

Why Should You A / B Test?

A/B testing shows the effectiveness of inherent changes, enabling data-driven decisions and ensuring positive impacts on your goals.

What is the difference between Split Testing vs. A/B Testing?

The terms “split testing” and “A/B testing” are often used interchangeably. They’re two different types of tests.
A/B testing involves comparing two versions of your marketing asset based on changing one element, such as the CTA text or image on a landing page. Split testing involves comparing two distinct designs. I prefer A/B testing because I want to know which elements contribute to the differences in data. For instance, if I compare two completely different versions of the same page, how do I know whether more people converted based on the color, the image, or the text?

How to Run A / B Tests.

A/B testing shows the effectiveness of inherent changes, enabling data-driven decisions and ensuring positive impacts on your goals. You should compare two completely different versions of the same page. How do I know whether more visitors converted based on the color, the image, or the text?

Website Speed: Get Better Search Ranking with Better Site Speed

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Website speed can generate more sales, more web traffic, and a higher ranking.

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Website speed is a critical factor for ranking on Google but more important the user experience (UX). DO you like waiting around?

For those that remember dial-up and modems know what speedier websites are like. Have you heard of this? Watching a web page load over a dial-up modem is like watching paint dry on a wall.

When was the last time you did a speed check on your website?

How fast your website opens upon clicking the link is a matter of serious concern because your SEO performance depends on it. Website speed is a very important factor that influences user experience, and you cannot ignore it. Well, I guess you could. But don’t.

How much people like your website depend largely on how quickly the pages open. The faster the website speed higher the chances of people liking it.

However, website speed does not always live up to the expectations of users for various reasons, and as a website owner, you must know what ails your website.

Did you know that 70% of the clicks go to the content on the first pages of Google?

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Website Speed
Matrix Marketing Group
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If you are not seeing results like these it might be time for a website redesign.

Look for the root cause of the problem, and once you know what causes the web pages to slow down, you must act fast to set things right.

Monitor each aspect of the website from its design to other optimization measures taken to identify the factors that hinder website speed.

Which cars can go from zero to 60 mph in less than 3.0 seconds? The Porsche 911 Turbo S and the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. 

You want you website to load in less than 3.0 seconds. Where are you now? Do you have a plan to boost speed?

Here’s a site that Matrix Marketing Group tuned for speed and UX. It’s a before and after look.

Before the site was tuned for website speed

gt metrics test vertek
Before

After the site was tuned for website speed

seo speed tuning

What is website speed?

Website speed relates to how fast your website loads when someone manually types in the URL or clicks on a link that directs them to your site. The average load speed across all industries and countries is about 8 seconds, but the recommendation is to reduce that time to three seconds or fewer.

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Faster websites drive more sales

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In search engine marketing, website speed equates with revenues because having good website speed drives more traffic and leads to higher conversions. More revenue is the goal of all marketing, and the website speed contributes to it.  

A study about mobile website speed has revealed that there is a direct link between the earnings from websites and its speed because speedier websites earn higher ranks and attract higher traffic.

The result showed that while the top-ranking website took 2.20 seconds for opening a page, the fifth-ranked site took about 2.60 seconds, and the revenues differed drastically. Do you know how to increase website speed WordPress? We’ll dig into how to check website speed.

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Website speed is a ranking factor

It is almost a decade now that Google had declared that website speed for desktops is a ranking factor. Now, Google extends that philosophy for mobile websites too.

A website speed test for mobile is important to pay attention. Check to see how many of your visitors are on desktop vs mobile devices.

It is ready to use the Speed Update parameter for all mobile sites no matter if it is a dedicated or responsive design. The move is surely going to hit the slowest pages hard. Therefore, you must be sure what your website speed is today and what you can do to improve the load times and speed.  

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Users love website speed

Your audience loves fast websites and to keep them happy; you must ensure that your website performs at top speed on desktops as well as mobile devices that Google also wants.  Buyers are restless at least when it comes to page opening speed because they want a page to open in a split second.

Ideally, this translates into page opening time of 2 seconds and failing to achieve it will not only drive away users but also become very costly for your business.

For the speed difference of websites between 1 to 10 seconds, the corresponding increase in the bounce rate could be as high as 123%, according to Google.  

US-based SEO marketers have their task cut out because to survive in the intensely competitive market they must slash down the average website speed from 9.8 seconds to anything as much close to the targeted 2 seconds.

Does your website require website speed optimization? Do a website speed load test with a website loading speed checker. Try the website speed test by Pingdom.

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What must e-commerce websites do? Fast website speed

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The challenge is tough for e-commerce websites because unless there is a significant improvement in website speed, it could be doomsday for many of them. So, what can e-commerce websites do to meet the user expectations of website speed?

They should begin by knowing the current website speed and then continuously go through optimizing and testing it by taking professional help from some companies that specialize in SEO Philadelphia.

Using some tools can make the task easy. Firstly, obtain a Chrome user experience report that contains user experience data related to some popular websites that capture the real-life experience of Chrome users.  

Secondly, to know how a page performs based on the Chrome User Experience report, you must use the tool Page Speed Insight that suggests the optimizations necessary for improving performance. And thirdly, there is the automated Chrome Developer tool Lighthouse that is useful for web page auditing to ascertain its quality in terms of performance, accessibility, and some more parameters.

Once you know the speed performance of the website, you can draw a plan for improving it further.

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Optimizations needed for page speed improvement

denver web design agency
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Optimizing certain website design elements should help to improve page speed. By compressing some page elements, you can make the pages open faster.

Looking beyond the website, there are some more factors that you must address because it impacts website speed. Let us look into the various things to do that improve overall website speed and assures speedy page opening.

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Compression of page elements

All the elements of design used on the web pages might not help in maintaining good page opening speed.

To know which elements are hindering page speed, you must look at the report provided by Page Speed Insight that points to the problem makers, especially images which in most cases slow down website speed.

After identifying the elements for compression use the feature gzip compression that reduces HTTP response time by almost 90%.

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Steer clear of landing page redirects

The Page Speed Insight report might show that there are multiple redirects to the landing page from the URL in which case it is natural that the page will take a longer time to open.

This happens because of multiple HTTP requests triggered by too many requests that prolong the time taken by the page to respond.

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Image optimization and speedier websites

Images are mainly responsible for longer page opening time because poorly optimized images or images not at all optimized will take much more time to load.  

Therefore, you must not only ensure the use of optimized images for the website but also optimize the existing images. The speed improvement happens almost immediately.

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Server response time improvement

If your server takes longer than 200 ms to respond, it surely needs improvement. Identify what makes the server response slow and rectify the problems to ensure that the response time is under the specified limit.

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Enhance browser caching and website speed

If the resource caching is set to happen in a short span or the caching headers remain excluded when the server responds, there is scope for improving browser caching to present pages faster.

How much good happens from speed improvement will reflect in the revenue figures.

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Wrap Up about Website Speed

Website Conversion - Matrix Marketing Group

How long do you wait for a website to load? Me? Not long.

Half of us don’t even wait two seconds for website content to pop up! Is it impatience or is it trust?

Let’s face it speedier websites tend to have more traffic, higher rankings, and more sales on their e-commerce webpages.

You can run a website SEO audit it will show you what needs to be done to make a speedier website. Some tasks you can do yourself while others may take a professional SEO expert help to improve your speed.

Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to help, among the other tools mentioned above, with your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

From your SEO audit be sure to look for broken links, title tags, meta descriptions, load times, likes to your site, organic traffic, search rankings, and bounce rate. These will all help with your ranking and conversion to sales.

Check your site speed check with website speed test Google here.

We’re listening.

Have something to say about speedier websites? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Are you not getting the results you had hoped for with your current marketing agency? Let the experts at this Denver marketing agency help you generate more web traffic, converts more leads, and close more sales. Our team knows just what it takes to build and maintain a proven marketing strategy that drives high-quality leads. For more information, check out our marketing services or contact us to schedule a free consultation to discuss your needs and our services.

General FAQ’s

What is good website speed?

Website speed varies from user to user, but average page speed also varies from industry to industry: Automotive: 6.3 seconds. CPG: 6.6 seconds. Finance: 5.9 seconds. Average page size: 1.56MB; the location you are accessing the website plays a significant role in the response time, but the average is around 3.5 seconds. “The lower, the better” rule applies, but if your site can fully load under 2 seconds, you are doing great.


Why is website speed important?

User experience affects SEO, Paid Search, and Paid Social Media, which is why website speed is so important as it plays a direct role in user experience. Site?speed is a huge reason why people bounce off of sites. If a website has a slow load time, people will not stick around, and they will bounce.


How can I increase my website speed?

Here are seven top ways to increase your page speed:
1. Enable compression.
2. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.
3. Remove render-blocking JavaScript.
4. Leverage browser caching.
5. Improve server response time.
6. Use a content distribution network (CDN).
7. Optimize images.


Does Google page speed matter?

The simple answer is that page speed does affect SEO. Page speed is a direct ranking factor, a fact known even better since Google’s Algorithm Speed Update. It’s is important to improve the Page Speed Score.

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Top 11 Ways to Get More Web Traffic In 2019

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Web traffic is what exposes your brand, and if done right, can generate leads and sales.

Web traffic may not be the only indicator of a website’s performance, quality, or amount of web traffic, but it is definitely one of the most important parameters. After all, having 100 thousand unique visitors a month is almost always better than accumulating only a thousand sessions.

However, it’s not easy to get the foot in the door and have your website rank with almost 2 billion websites available online. While a large portion of these websites is not active, or website owners have moved on.

The fact remains that you still have to struggle with dozens or even hundreds of competitors in your niche just to attract users to visit your site. In such circumstances, using old traffic generation mechanisms will only get you so far. Just look at your traffic stats.

You need to be proactive and consider new solutions to the same problem. While there are many ways to increase the number of visitors, some prove to be more successful than others. This post will show you the top 11 tactics to get more web traffic in 2019.

web traffic plan template

Website Traffic: Background and Benefits

Website traffic is simply a number of Internet users who visit your site. You can use free tools such as Google Analytics to measure website performance and follow the number of sessions on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis.

What makes this little detail so important? Higher website traffic can bring you substantial benefits:

  • Increasing website traffic will earn you more revenue.
  • Attracting more visitors to the site means maximizing brand awareness and exposure.
  • If people keep coming back to check out your pages, they gradually build a notion of loyalty and become brand advocates.
  • Websites with lots of web traffic attract direct advertisers and sponsored content.

Best Tactics to Grow Web Traffic

The introduction is over and it is time to focus on what matters the most, and that is how to raise the number of website visitors. We made a list of 11 practical tips, so let’s take a look!

1.     Update old posts

We start the list with a suggestion to update old posts and give them a subtle touch of freshness. This should be an easy task for you because it doesn’t require too much work.

You need to find old and outdated articles containing a lot of obsolete information. These are usually ancient statistical findings and tech recommendations that no longer apply. Our recommendation is to replace obsolete details with fresh ones, but you can also add new images, examples, and screenshots to support the whole story.

The only thing left is to double-check the changes you made. Once you’ve got that covered, you can click the update button and re-publish an old post.

Being old is actually an advantage here since the content already has some SEO authority. Besides that, a content overhaul represents an amazing traffic generation mechanism because it usually requires no more than a couple of hours per post.

2.     Use Quora for referrals

Speaking of website traffic, Quora is one of the largest Q/A sites with over 300 million unique monthly visitors. As such, it makes a precious source of online referrals and you should utilize this channel to bring in more users.

How does it work? The process is simple: Quora users ask questions and other users answer. What makes this tactic so valuable is the fact that Quora answers frequently pop up as number one entries in Google search results. In other words, users who write the best answers can expect a significant spike in web traffic.

Your job is to come up with the most relevant answers. Of course, you need to focus on your own niche and give explanations that make you a genuine industry thought leader. Users will quickly recognize the quality and skyrocket the rating of the answer by giving you thumbs up.

The ultimate goal is to link answers to the corresponding content on your own website. Such backlinks must be natural and lead users to the content that really supplements a Quora answer. Doing so, you will earn tons of new website visitors.

best seo plans

3.     Click to Tweet

Social shares are the way to go if you want to boost web traffic. One of the simplest and most effective tactics is to use the “Click to Tweet” sharing option.

Firstly, you need to find a short line that sounds “tweetable.” Such lines usually come in the form of a small tip, a statistical insight, a quote, or a joke that sheds light on a common problem. The famous quote makes a good example of a tweetable line: “Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.”

When you find a tweetable line in your post, you must go to the Click to Tweet website to create a special link. This tool helps you to generate new links, save them, and track activity in real-time. It’s a simple but highly practical content promotion process.

4.     Join Facebook communities

You probably know that Facebook is introducing all sorts of obstacles to limit the reach potential of business pages. This makes the job more difficult for all organizations out there that want to promote their services organically.

While you can’t do anything to avoid the notorious algorithms on a grand scale, you can take the shortcut by joining relevant Facebook groups. There are all sorts of communities out there, so you just need to look for the targeted keywords in order to find the most popular groups.

Once you get in, your task is to become an active member who engages in discussions and shares highly relevant content. It should evoke curiosity among participants and they will be eager to check out more content on your website.

However, you cannot afford to be spammy or share links from your website at all costs because it will have a counter effect. Keep your efforts discrete and add links to your site only in case it really helps the audience to solve a problem or learn something.

5.     Organize giveaway contests

If there is one thing people love more than buying quality items, it is getting things free of charge. A study reveals that brands increase the number of followers by over 30% using this marketing tactic. After all, who doesn’t enjoy an occasional present or a giveaway?

Your job is to exploit this trait and use it to drive web traffic with giveaway contests. Most companies give small gifts in exchange for an email address. It’s a win-win situation as users receive a small prize, while the business acquires a fresh lead.

At the same time, you can add social share buttons so that participants can let their friends know about your campaign. This is yet another way to grow the number of visitors and accumulate additional email addresses for your newsletter.

marketing web assessment

6.     Reach out to popular bloggers

Here comes another well-known tactic that still plays a major role in 2019. If you feel like you’ve just published an excellent piece of work, there is no reason not to give it some more push by reaching out to popular bloggers.

You probably know a few key opinion leaders who are interested in the same topics, so make sure to send them emails. But before you do, there are a few details to take care of:

  • Don’t be pushy. Instead, be polite and don’t directly ask people to share your posts.
  • Keep it subtle and explain what makes your post relevant to theirs.
  • Write a personalized message and use their first names.
  • Make it short and concise.

If your message is clear, and the content is indeed interesting, rest assured it will be enough to get their attention.

7.     Don’t forget podcasts

According to the report, more than a quarter of the US population listens to the podcasts each month. It’s a huge trend that you must exploit to drive additional web traffic to the website.

The first option is to start your own podcast, but it requires a lot of work and preparations. That’s why we recommend you stick to the second solution for the time being: appear as a guest on other people’s podcasts. This technique works because it gains you exposure to new audiences, so you can expect more people to start searching for your website.

At the same time, it is a big chance to prove your skills and expertise. But there is more – podcasts usually contain show notes with URLs included, so you can add links to your website as well.

8.     Create YouTube content

Video content is flooding the Internet. This year, 80% of the global Internet consumption will be video content. As the largest video-sharing platform, YouTube gives you the opportunity to promote your website and earn a plethora of new visitors.

The content itself should be enough to evoke curiosity and encourage viewers to look for your site. But the thing that matters the most here comes in the form of video descriptions. This is where you get to introduce the business to content consumers and add a link to your website.

Content writers at the essay on time agency say a description has to be short and informative. It also needs a little tweak or a delicate touch of humor to drive user engagement, inspiring more people to follow the link to your site.

7 Reasons to Consider YouTube Live as a Content Marketing Strategy in 2019

Use YouTube Live with your content marketing strategy and boost leads.

7 Reasons to Consider YouTube Live as a Content Marketing Strategy in 2019

9.     Mobile optimization

It seems a little strange to be discussing mobile optimization in 2019, but the fact remains that it’s one of the most important preconditions of the website performance. In case you don’t know, Google introduced mobile-first indexing more than a year ago.

It means the largest search engine will predominantly use the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. In such circumstances, you have to make sure that your content if perfectly optimized for mobile experience.

The simplest control mechanism, the so-called Mobile-Friendly Test, is also created by Google. The platform conducts a quick analysis and shows whether your website is optimized for mobile experience. If not, it gives you recommendations on how to improve it.

10.  Voice search optimization

Voice search is yet another major SEO trend you need to take into account because 41% of adults and 55% of teens are using the feature daily. It can give you exposure to tons of new visitors if you behave proactively and voice-optimize before the biggest competitors.

These are the two critical features of voice-based searches:

  • Conversational tone: Generally, voice searches are questions that use 5W+H words (who, what, where, when, why, and how).
  • Local inquiries: A lot of people use voice assistants to conduct location-driven inquiries like “near me” or “in downtown Minnesota.”

Creating content that answers these questions is the first step toward optimizing website content for voice-based searches. This is great localized web traffic.

11.  SEO

Although there are tons of other mechanisms to help you grow site traffic, it would not be wise to leave out good old SEO. This is still by far the biggest driver of targeted web traffic. You need to follow the state-of-the-art trends in order to fulfill modern optimization requirements.

You probably know everything about keywords, meta tags, and similar SEO concepts, but we want to highlight the importance of LSI keywords. By definition, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Keywords are semantically related terms that search engines use to deeply understand content on a webpage.

In other words, these are not regular keywords but rather closely related search terms that reveal the true meaning and purpose of your topics. If you want to find the best LSI keywords, you should use online tools such as LSI Graph.

website audit

Conclusion

Running a website is by no means an easy job. It takes a lot of work and strategic planning to produce quality content while you also have to compete with dozens of niche-related sites. It means that only the best and the most agile webmasters can keep attracting a sufficient amount of users month after month.

In this article, we presented the top 11 ways to get more web traffic in 2019. These are not the only traffic generation tactics you can use, but they are certainly the most efficient. Make sure to give them a try and you will notice the growing number of website sessions soon enough!

We’re listening.

Have something to say about web traffic? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or our LinkedIn.

Lauren Adley is a writer and editor at UK Best Essays. She is dedicated to her family, work and friends. She is keen on reading, playing the guitar and traveling. She is interested in educational, marketing and blogging issues. Feel free to connect with her on Twitter and Google+.

How to Boost Your Website Conversion Rate

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Learn How to Increase Your Website Conversion Rate

Nothing delivers supreme ROI quite like website conversion rate optimization because everything about it is in your hands. You can make changes one day and see real results by the next. Compare it to efforts to attract more traffic, which are often arduous long-term wars of attrition, and it’s so clear why CRO demands focus.

Marketer and web designers want to the following:

But while the need for CRO is simple and obvious, the execution is another thing entirely—  if it were that easy to convert users to customers, everyone would be doing it, and there are a lot of important factors to be taken into account. Let’s run through them as we identify some great tactics for boosting your website conversion rate.

8 Ways To Get Higher Conversion Rates for Your Website

To start converting more of your existing website traffic and set your ROI rising, here are 8 methods I recommend you work into your overall marketing strategy to increase your website conversion rates:

Simplify your layout and options

A choice is stressful. Having too many opportunities presented to us tends to give us what is often referred to as analysis paralysis— a breakdown in tasks that results from being unable to reach a conclusion about the preferred option from a wide selection.

If you’ve ever been to an ice cream store with millions of possible flavor combinations, you’ll know that having choices, however wonderful, can feel very frustrating.

This is exactly why the best thing you can do with a conversion-geared website is to cut out anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Strip it down to its essential parts, then weigh up every additional piece of content and every single CTA to see if it’s truly justified. Most likely, you’ll discover that there’s room for further brevity.

Now, this isn’t to say that you should only ever provide one option, because multiple options can be reassuring and help users feel that they have more freedom to choose. Just don’t assume that more options will be better— find the middle ground. If you have five pricing tiers, for instance, and your analytics reveal that only two are ever used, ask yourself: It is worth having those tiers there is no one ever wants them?

Use emotive and conversational copy

social conversation

People aren’t compelled to buy things by stiff, formal, dispassionate business talk. They’re motivated by subconscious feelings, desires, and impulses. Whatever you have to say in the conversion-focused parts of your website, it needs to be worth caring about and make the user feel something that makes them want to act in a way that aligns with your interests. 

There are numerous viable emotional motivators (you can read about the most effective ones here, but there are hundreds at least), so it shouldn’t be creatively stifling in any way. How do you want your users to react to your website? What kind of offering will push them to buy? Most businesses will aim squarely at emphasizing the positives to make users feel good about buying them, but if there’s an awful negative from which your solution can save them, you might want to highlight that instead.

Think about the difference between selling a hat and selling a bug zapper. For the former, focusing on how happy they would be with the hat would be more effective than suggesting that a hatless life is terrible. For the latter, making it clear that you can get rid of the visceral annoyance of being bothered by bugs would be more effective than implying that the zapper would radically improve their happiness.

Add slick and compelling imagery

Visuals reach us faster than words do, and often more powerfully in the big picture. We’re more doubtful of what we read than what we can see, even if what we’re seeing is a glossy promotional image on a website.

During the conversion funnel, you should include high-quality imagery that reinforces what’s happening at every turn, extending as far as the directional cues and iconography.

When you want the user to add a product to their cart, you need the best image you have of that product to be displayed prominently. When you want to communicate securely, you might want a crisp padlock graphic.

By pulling all your visual elements together and pointing them in the same direction, you can do a lot to maintain momentum during the user journey.

Lean heavily on social proof for better website conversion rates

social proof

We might instinctively want to stand out through being special, but we definitely want to fit in when it comes to our opinions of products and services. We’re tribal creatures, after all, and if a lot of other people really like something, we’ll feel more confident in giving it a try.

At a minimum, you should bring in reviews (and possibly testimonials), mostly from happy customers but also from some with complaints— this is for two reasons. Firstly, having nothing but glowing reviews look untrustworthy. Secondly, showing negative reviews gives you opportunities to openly address them through your customer service, ultimately making you look better.

There are various differently-priced review services, but however you choose to allow for social proof, you need to make it a priority.

Create urgency (but don’t overplay it)

From ticking countdown clocks to alarming messages about remaining stock, urgency is a powerful driver of action in the ecommerce world. It forces us to suspend our relaxed decision-making process (which often ends up erring on the side of caution) and try to make a choice in that exact moment, which often results in a panic buy due to fear of missing out (FOMO).

By showing how many products are left in stock when the number falls below a certain point (say, 10) and making use of limited-time offers, you can greatly increase the urgency to decide what your users feel and resultantly yield a lot more conversions.

Just be mindful not to overplay or misuse this option, because you can only provide so many countdowns and stock warnings before people stop believing that there’s any reason to heed them. There’s no reason to worry about an offer disappearing when you know there’ll be another one just as good within days.

Meet the demands of different parts of the sales funnel

Where do you focus your attention while you’re trying to improve your sales funnel? Do you give every part equal weight? Prioritize the checkout stage because that’s where the stakes are the highest? Go for the former, because it doesn’t matter specifically when someone leaves. Think about it as making the strongest chain you can— it will only be as strong as the weakest link.

At every stage of the funnel, though, be aware of what factors will matter most to the user making their way through it. Since the effort demanded of them scales up as they get deeper into the process, you must also scale your intensity. Just like a traditional in-store salesperson, you must know when to do a soft sell and when to go for a hard sell.

By ensuring a strong level of overall quality but also tweaking the content to suit the customer’s journey, you can raise the rate at which users convert, and not only at the very last stage but also at every stage that precedes it, compounding the effect.

Automate your email chases for better website conversion

Every ecommerce website has to contend with the near misses. The users who get right to the end of the sales funnel just to back out abruptly, whether because they got distracted, suddenly changed their mind on a whim, or realized something new about the product. But the near misses aren’t all destined to be lost causes.

By configuring pre-built reminder emails to trigger a short while after users leave your store with items still in their carts, you can win sales from users who got distracted and have another opportunity to convince those who are simply on the fence. This kind of trigger-based email marketing automation has become an increasingly common option in recent years owing to the rise of software like Moosend, MailChimp and Campaign Monitor (made possible through sophisticated analytics and data segmentation options).

You don’t have to stop at abandoned cart emails, of course. You can use email automation to achieve a wide variety of things, and it’s something you should consider for your general digital marketing strategy if you don’t already use it.

Keep running split tests and studying analytics

A / B Testing

Split tests, or A/B tests, are exceptionally useful for incremental website improvement. The idea is simple: you make two versions of a page, set them to alternate for users, wait a while, and check the metrics to see which one performs better. This takes most of the guesswork and estimation out of the equation and provides you with clear justification for making particular changes. 

Because tastes, best practices, and technological standards are all subject to ongoing revision, it isn’t viable to fully optimize a sales funnel and then leave it alone entirely. There is no perfect ecommerce site, no realistic conversion rate that couldn’t be a little higher (and no ideal arrangement). Yielding the highest and most profitable website conversion rate is just something you have to commit to working on indefinitely.

There you have it: how to boost your website conversion rate, going through 8 things you should start doing if you want to raise the performance of your ecommerce website. How do you think your website could be improved? Put some time into reviewing it, and you can start moving things in the right direction.

Still need help sorting out metrics and strategies for better conversion rates check out Matrix Marketing Group for a free review.

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General FAQ’s

What is the conversion rate?

The conversion rate is the percentage of users who take the desired action. The archetypical example of conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who buy something on the site. Example: 200,000 people visit an ecommerce website during April. How many converted into sales? How many were return visitors? Know you demand waterfall funnel.

What is website conversion?

A website conversion occurs when a visitor to your website completes a desired action, such as signing up for newsletter, social media share, filling out a form, or making a purchase. The percentage of total visitors that convert is called your conversion rate.

What is the website conversion rate?

Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website that complete a desired goal (a conversion) out of the total number of visitors. Although it varies by the industry, you want a 3-5% visitor to MCL (marketing captured leads) ratio but shoot for 10 percent.

What is a good website conversion rate?

What is a reasonable conversion rate? Web conversion rates vary across industries. However, the average web page conversion rate was 3%, yet the top 25% are converting at 7% or higher. You want to target 10%.

How do I increase my website conversion?

7 Quick Ways to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate
1. Include as few fields as possible.
2. Add a guarantee.
3. Use tangible action verbs.
4. Use testimonials and reviews.
5. Clearly state the benefits of your product or service.
6. Pay careful attention to your headline.
7. Keep conversion elements above the fold.

7 Website Optimization Mistakes that Kill Lead Conversions

· ·

Are you making these mistakes with your website optimization? Are these mistakes limiting your website conversions to leads?

Website optimization and website conversion rate optimization (CRO) mistakes are more common than not. This article does not provide answers, it provides a mindset: Be a conversion scientist.

What is your web’s objective? Is it website optimization on Google? Is it website search engine optimization? Or website optimization of speed?

Test, analyze, test, analyze.

Obsess over the data. Nothing else matters. Some say there are an art and science to marketing – CRO is strictly a science.

What is a good web conversion rate?

For all industries, the average landing page conversion rate was 2%, yet the top 25% are converting at 7% or higher. Ideally, you want to break into the top 10% of these are landing pages with conversion rates of 12% or higher.

And in science, we can learn from our mistakes. To start from the beginning…

What is a good conversion rate for leads?

According to Matrix Marketing Group’s research, lead conversion rates from visitors to marketing-qualified leads (MQL) average 5 percent. The conversion rate from marketing-qualified leads (MQL) to sales-accepted lead (SAL) jumps to nearly 60 percent, and about 60 percent of those make it to the sales-qualified lead (SQL) stage.

Mistake 1: Do you know the difference between lead conversion and sales?

Lead conversions do not necessarily mean sales. Sales are the end of conversion, but what happens before the sale matters too. Conversion rate measures the effectiveness of each action in your digital marketing campaign to achieve that sale.

Remember the buyer’s journey and the types of content a prospective buyer (aka lead) consumes based on where he or she is on the journey. Let’s think of conversions in the form of a word problem (yes, we are bringing you back to grade school).

Mary loves to travel and wants to help others plan their dream vacation, so she decides to start a travel agency. Mary knows enough about building a website but needs help to get her website to rank high in search engines so she Google’s search engine optimization. She does not know what she needs, but she is aware of her problem. She is looking for more information.

Mary clicks on the first result that brings her to Matrix Marketing Group’s landing page about SEO. She fills in her information to download a report on SEO Tips. Mary is the first one to fill out this form and the tenth person to view that page since Matrix launched it. What is the conversion rate of Matrix Marketing Group’s SEO landing page?

Test and analyze each step of the Buyer’s Journey. Seeing the journey mapped out helps measure what your conversion rates are so you can improve incrementally.

Conversion Rate Optimization happens by knowing the difference between conversions and sales. Sales are conversions, but there are many more little steps that happen before a sale for you to optimize.

Website Conversion Rate

For more on Lead Capturing Tools and Lead Magnets, check out 12 Lead Magnet Ideas to Drive More Leads.

 

Mistake 2: Rely on the best practices for your CRO answers for website optimization

Do not think that what worked for one company will work for you. The truth is, their customers are different from yours. Your value proposition is unique to your business and your customers. So why should your Conversion Rate be based on another company’s success?

You can use best practices to form hypotheses, but not answers. If one company got a 50% response rate on emails because they included a gif in the email, do not expect the same results. Instead, take that information and test it. Remember, be a conversion scientist. Create a hypothesis and test it.

EXAMPLE:

Hypothesis 1: Putting a gif at the end of my email will increase the response rate, all else equal.

Control: Send an email campaign with no gif included.

Test: Send an email campaign with a gif included.

Results: Control email got a ___% response rate. Test email got a ___% response rate.

Base your actions on the outcomes of your tests, not on others?.

Mistake 3: Testing the wrong things for website optimization

Don’t let the conversion scientist mindset make you think that you should test everything. If you are testing for the sake of testing, you’re doing it wrong.

For example, if you are creating some ads for Facebook, you’ll realize that there are so many things you’d like to test: ad images, copy, target audiences, bidding methods, campaign objectives, etc.

Does the rookie mistake you? re likely to make at this point is creating an A/B test with too many changing test variables.

Let’s say you want to test 3 ad images, 3 headlines, and 3 main copies. This makes 3 x 3 x 3 = 27 different Facebook ads. This test will take weeks to conclude. A test can quickly become overwhelming. Let’s assume you want to test five images, four ad titles, and five precise interest targeting. This means you’d have to create 4 x 5 x 5 ads to test all the possible combinations a total of 100 ads! I think you get the point. Start small.

Paddy Moogan at Distilled has a good model for making sure every test you do has an objective:

conversion rate optimization

Understand that website-optimization is all about testing, but you must be smart about it. Do not busy yourself with meaningless tests.

Mistake 4: Measuring the wrong things

What is the easiest way to increase your conversion rate? Track more things more accurately. Sometimes firms? conversion tracking isn’t measuring the right metrics to paint an accurate picture of the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Kissmetrics found that the majority of firms who were tracking their conversion rates with Adwords were doing so poorly. The firm might as well have not been tracking anything at all. See the diagram below.

adwords analytics

For example. imagine a lawn care maintenance company that is tracking conversions through AdWords. This firm may be getting a fraction of the conversion rate they expected because they are only measuring clicks and form fill-outs.

In fact, most of a lawn care maintenance company’s leads come from phone calls or impressions from clients? neighbors who see their trucks and the work they do on people’s lawns. The conversion rate goes up instantly if you start measuring beyond your AdWords campaign.

This company did have a good conversion rate, they were not measuring the right metrics. Remember the big picture and how your customers act when you provide them with valuable offers.

Mistake 5: Tests but no analysis

Tests are easy, but it takes a scientist to interpret and understand the story behind the numbers. Give yourself time to analyze the data your tests return. Be curious about the problem. Sometimes, you need to be human and dive into the numbers. They may not have the results you expected. Why?

If you are not asking why, you are not a conversion scientist. If you asked why once and still come up short, ask why again! Give yourself time to get lost in the numbers. True inspiration rarely comes quickly.

Understand that Conversion Rate Optimization is about the scientific process, not the tests alone.

Mistake 6: Using a marketing agency that does CRO for you

Have you hired a marketing agency to do CRO for you? What has that experience been like? If this is the first time you are reading about taking a scientific approach to Conversion Rate Optimization, I recommend you get your agency on the phone. Why?

Because they are not including you, a very important player, in the CRO process. Conversion rates increase when your potential customers find value in your content, services, products, etc., and take action to attain that value.

You know your customers best – no one else, not even that marketing agency. If your marketing agency is going to get CRO right, they should know to include you in the process. Increasing your conversion rate means infusing conversion science into the culture of your own work.

Agencies are a great way to increase website optimization and lead conversions when you have a small marketing budget or need more brainpower; however, make sure you communicate often with them. Have conversations about what your customers value and how they are responding to things you are testing. Make sure your agency is working with you, not for you.

NOTE: Web developers are not CRO specialists.

Mistake 7: No testing before going live

So you are ready to launch a new website? Email campaign? Ad campaign? Try to re-frame the concept of going live.

Incremental change > Big launch

Testing changes incrementally will decrease your risk and increase your website optimization rates. The thought of releasing a new, consumer-facing website without testing should be appalling to you. Do not assume that something will work because it is new.

If you want to release a Facebook ad campaign, release two versions of it to A/B test. The point of A/B testing is to figure out which one does best and improve upon it.

A B Testing

According to the picture, test B brings the best results. Had you just sent out test A, you lost the opportunity to realize a 14% higher conversion rate.

Your work does not stop there. See if modifying B will produce even better results. Remember, test everything deliberately and with a purpose.

This test is an example of incremental change, not a big launch.

Final Thoughts: How to improve your website optimization?

What has been your biggest mistake? Is it a lack of web traffic? Your middle of the funnel conversion rates are too low? Or lack of sales and marketing alignment?

Sometimes it is the content or visual website optimization that needs more attention.

Have something to say and want to add to the discussion about website optimization?

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Have something to say about website optimization? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

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General FAQ’s

What is website optimization?

Website optimization includes methods such as adding relevant keywords and phrases on the website, editing meta tags, image tags, and optimizing other components of your website to ensure that it is accessible to a search engine and improve the overall chances that search engines will index the site.


How much does website optimization cost?

For a basic SEO audit, which would take an estimated 10-15 hours, a range from $1,200 to $3,000 is recommended depending on the volume of work. For a more detailed SEO audit, $5,000 to $30,000. FOR HOURLY: As for hourly, we found that most wages would fall between $150 and $350 per hour.


How to do website optimization?

SEO Best Practices: On-Page SEO Checklist
1. Title tags. Assuming you’ve already done your keyword research, this is one of the most important on-page SEO factors.
2. Meta descriptions.
3. Content with targeted keyword phrases.
4. Header tags and keyword phrases.
5. Internal page linking with anchor text.
6. Image ALT tags and filenames.
7. Make content easy to read.
8. Meta keywords.


How to check website optimization?

Here are some of the best resources for doing that.
1. Google Page Speed Online | Google.
2. MOZ
3. SEMrush
4. Websiteoptimization.com | Website Optimization.
5. Whichloadsfaster.com | Which Site Loads Faster?
6. Tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ | Pingdom Load Time Test.
7. Screamingfrog.com

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