Eustondigital blog

9 Tips to boost your Website Conversion Rate

Digital Advertising Agencies are good at sending their clients website traffic. But what happens if that traffic doesn’t turn into sales? You tend to get this:

“Don’t blame me, your website doesn’t work”

At Euston Digital, we drive bucket loads of high quality traffic to our client’s websites. For us the story doesn’t end there. Once that traffic is on their website, we work with the client to get as much of that traffic to the confirmation page.

Here’s 9 tips to help turn website visitors into website customers.

1. Product Images

*Selling an expensive product? Then provide detailed photos and images. The higher the price, the more info and images you’ll need
*Put your image gold above the fold. Don’t make people scroll..
*Use interactive (such as javascript image zoom) and video technology to showcase the product

2. Buy Now Buttons

These are one of the most important elements to boost website conversion. Here’s the rules:
*Make them eye catching by using a contrasting colour to the rest of your page.
*Make the button big and easy to read
*Make your ‘buy’ button rectangular and horizontal.
*Icons on the button can add further emphasis
*Place your buy button just to the right of the product image.
*Make sure there is at least 1 ‘buy now’ button above the fold.

3. Checkout form

*Don’t make people register on your website.
*Only ask for essential info
*Keep the form easy with big but few fields
*Reduce the number of steps in the checkout. Each time you ask visitors to progress to the next stage is an opportunity for them to exit.
*Use clear language not industry jargon
*Use an ‘expand’ jquery to reveal addition BUT OPTIONAL information that a user can leave.
*Errors: Highlight errors inline rather than with pop ups.
*Don’t reset the form if it is submitted incorrectly. Preserve all the correct bits, and highlight where the errors are.

4. Use a Progress indicator

Use a numbered line across the top of each page in the checkout to show users what stage they’re at in the registration process. It reassures them of where they are, and how far they’ve got to go before its all finished.

5. Reassure the customer with the right information

Within the checkout process the customer should have access to the answers of the following questions:

1.    Can I return the product?
2.    Can I review my order before confirming?
3.    How do I contact customer support?
4.    Are you going to charge me now?
5.    Can I revise my order later?
6.    What’s the total price including delivery?
7.    How long before it is delivered
8.    Is your website a safe place to leave my credit card details?
9.    How else can I pay?
10.     What are you going to do with my contact details? Are you going to sell them?

Remember to keep the form simple – answers to these questions should be shown on a +show or -hide basis using technology like javascript ‘accordian’

6. Gather email data so you can reach them again

It’s important that you don’t block any purchases by asking for unnecesary information. But grabbing your website visitors’ permission agreed email address allows you to build a valuable database of future propsects. These emails will form the basis of your customer community.

My three bits of advice are:

1.    Don’t force your customers to opt in their email address unless you its unavoidable.
2.    If you haven’t got opt-in permission by the time they hit the confirmation page, ask for it then.
3.    Ask for their opt in permission when you send them a confirmation email
4.    Give them the option to sign up to a newsletter without buying anything. Its the chance to get some value from visitors who don’t buy from you.

7. Where did you hear about us?

Don’t bother asking where they heard about you. Many people can’t tell the difference between a search engine and a browser. Others will have multiple sources. Most won’t remember. Many just click the top option. The information you get will be skewed enough to be almost worthless.

8. Use official stamps to build trust

Wherever possible, use the logos of independent trade bodies to add authority and reassurance to your website. Make sure to add them above the fold to minimise bounce rates.

These might be:

*Qualifications
*Industry bodies
*Affiliations
*Secure payment gateway badges
*Places you’ve been seen (like TV)
*Brand names you sell

9. Test and Test. And then test it again

Of all the advice on this blog, this is the most important. Whatever change you make, test whether it improves your website conversion rate.

At Euston Digital we use Google Website Optimiser to test website changes until we get robust, statistical proof that the changes we have made actually work.

Website Optimiser diverts a percentage of your traffic to the ‘new’ layout to find out whether website visitors have a better response to it than the original.

That’s it.

Getting visitors to your website is only half the story. Converting them to customers is what distinguishes average websites from great ones.

Follow these simple rules to improve the conversion rate of your website.

If you’d like to know more about how Euston Digital can improve your website conversion rate, then get in touch.

Tags: conversion rate, web design

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Conversion Optimisation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.