A website is an essential business tool — and every business uses its site differently. Some use it to generate instant revenue through ecommerce sales while others use it to generate leads, phone calls or physical location visits. There is one thing that every business wants to accomplish with its website: leveraging it to create more growth.
There are several ways to increase your leads, sales and revenue without investing in a complete redesign and rebuild. Here are 10 hacks that you should consider trying — while simple, they can potentially help your business grow significantly.
1. Perform a conversion audit.
Are you positive your website is designed to convert traffic? The truth is, a lot of web design companies are great at creating appealing websites, but they aren’t conversion rate experts. Having a full-blown conversion audit performed is well worth the small out-of-pocket expense.
If you can identify problems and make changes to correct them prior to launching marketing campaigns it will reduce wasted advertising spend and give you a stronger base to begin with. You will always be split testing and optimizing — starting with a solid base will help you reach those desirable conversion numbers faster.
2. Use call tracking.
If you are using multiple traffic sources to generate phone calls, it is a great idea to send each source to dedicated landing pages featuring unique phone numbers. By using call tracking you will be able to determine what sources produced the most phone calls — and since your call tracking numbers will route directly to your main phone number there won’t be a disturbance in how your phone leads are handled. Most call tracking services will record all of the calls, which is great for determining whether lead quality or your sales staff needs to be addressed.
3. Identify where visitors are scrolling to and clicking.
When you know where your website visitors are and aren’t clicking it can help you to reposition your offers from dead zones to areas that attract clicks. A heat map tool, such as crazy egg, will not only show you where the clicks are occurring but also what traffic/referral source is producing them. This tool also shows you how far down your pages your visitors are scrolling.
This allows you to test multiple call-to-action locations and know for sure which ones are being viewed and clicked on. You can’t simply throw a couple offers on your website and sit back assuming the conversions will just roll in. Insight to where your visitors are viewing and where they are clicking gives you strong data that can be used to really convert more traffic.
4. Analyze your Google Analytics data.
When you know what traffic sources aren’t producing conversions and what your traffic is doing prior to converting it allows you to make significant changes. Imagine if you were able to identify that the majority of your social media traffic didn’t convert? You could then allocate your social media budget into the channels that were producing results.
What if you were able to identify that the majority of your conversions were engaging with your blog prior to converting? You could increase your content count and utilize distribution outlets such as Outbrain and Taboola to attract even more traffic to your blog.
When you fully understand your Google Analytics data it will help you eliminate poorly performing traffic sources and scale up the marketing efforts that are driving the highest percentage of conversions.
5. Install live chat.
A lot of business owners assume that live chat is only good for websites that are attempting to generate ecommerce sales. Sure, answering pre-purchase questions can help save sales and chat operators can push consumers toward the sale — but every website can benefit from this simple tool.
Think of a restaurant that is trying to generate reservations and physical location visits. Live chat can help facilitate those reservations and can assist with little things such as clarification of directions. The majority of chat services will integrate with mobile phones so even a business such as a restaurant can have an employee monitoring the live chat. This is a low cost option that can produce noticeable results.
6. Use an exit popup offer.
Driving traffic to your website isn’t cheap. Even if you aren’t running pay-per-click traffic and paying for every visitor individually, the time and effort that SEO and social media marketing requires essentially assigns a monetary value to every single person that lands on your website.
Most visitors that leave will never return, so why not use every available option to try to convert them? Popup exit offers do a great job at increasing conversion rates. Even the slightest conversion increases should be welcomed. Over time this exit capture can really improve your overall return on investment.
7. Include testimonials and trust signals.
If your website visitors trust your business, they are going to be more likely to make purchases and submit their information. Including testimonials from customers or notable industry partners is a great way to build trust. Showcasing awards, recognition or accreditations such as the Better Business Bureau will also help to make your visitors feel comfortable doing business with you.
Whatever you do, don’t include fake testimonials. They can be spotted a mile away and will immediately make your potential customer distrust your brand.
8. Split test landing page changes.
Sometimes the smallest changes will lead to the largest conversion gains. There are several easy-to-use tools such as unbounce that will allow you to create multiple landing page versions with slight differences to determine what options convert better.
You can do this with very little coding and development knowledge or experience. Something as simple as changing the color of your action button or changing the text from “Submit” to “Instant Access” can produce shocking improvements.
9. Switch to simple flat fonts.
If you look at some of the landing pages that generate thousands of leads daily you will notice that they are all very simple when it comes to the font they use. Check out this landing page from GEICO and you will see how basic the fonts are.
The company spends a fortune on paid search ads — if that style didn’t work it wouldn’t be using it. Another reason you should use simple fonts is because they display nicely on all devices — desktop, tablet and mobile.
10. Deliver your message with an explainer video.
Sometimes you need to capture the attention of your visitor in a different manner. Consumers can become immune to certain offers so you need to introduce clever ways to really grab their attention. Using an explainer video on your website or landing page to describe your product or service can really help your conversion number shoot through the roof.
A successful explainer video will captivate, entertain and educate the viewer — if you are going to go this route make sure you have a quality video made. If it is poorly produced you are going to push your visitors away. Make sure the quality is a direct reflection of your brand.
Resources: ExpertOnline360.com
