8 Ways To Improve Your Website’s Conversion Rates

“Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.” — W. Clement Stone

While some people remain acutely intrigued with how they can drive more traffic to their website or blog, others are focused on boosting their conversion rates. The truth? Traffic is great, but it’s worthless if you don’t have the proper sales funnel that tracks the acquisition of your clients.

The goal? Transform visitors into buyers. But it’s a process. It takes time and it takes work. You need to drip-deliver value over time while also working to develop a personal relationship with that individual. Unless you have a well-known brand, most people simply won’t purchase from you on the first interaction.

Question. Why do you think you always see free offers on websites wherever you go? You’ll find one here about 23 bulletproof online marketing strategies to grow your business, but I’m obviously not the only one to do this. This is what’s called a lead magnet.

Lead magnets are used to collect email addresses of subscribers. You need to give them something in exchange for their email addresses. It’s not something they readily give up because of the prevalence of spam. So why should they give it to you? And what does all of this have to do with improving your site’s conversion rates?

Well… everything.

But before I dive in, let me ask you another question. In the digital world, we use lead magnets. We send ebooks, reports and even free trial software to collect a consumer’s gold-nugget information. However, this isn’t something new. In the real world, companies have been doing this for ages now.

Why do you think big businesses have loyalty programs? Why do you think grocery stores give discounts to “members” who they can easily track when they purchase just about anything? From Walmart to Target and every other big-named retail brand all rely on consumer tracking. In fact, they’ve built algorithms to better understand their behavior.

There’s a method to the madness here. Businesses know just how valuable this information is. It’s used to track and analyze all of your behavior. But the best part? You don’t need a costly loyalty program to track consumers’ behavior on the internet. The beauty of the World Wide Web is that everything is trackable.

Sounds weird right? Kind of creepy that someone is tracking your every move? But that’s the reason why bloggers and businesses want to deliver an enormous amount of value to you. They know that you likely won’t give up that information quite that easily.

After doing this for a very long time, I’ve certainly come to some realizations about both driving traffic and about converting the traffic that does come to you. It’s not always about quantity; it’s also about the quality of the interaction. You could drive thousands of visitors per day to your site, but if you get nothing in return, how eventful or fruitful was all that work you put in?

But let’s just say for a moment that you already do have the traffic. Let’s just say you are getting thousands of visitors per day. Then what? What you’ve likely come to find, if you’re in the internet marketing space, is that not only is traffic expensive to buy, it’s also a complete waste if you’re not using the right tactics to convert those visitors into buyers.

 

Understanding Sales Funnels

While on the topic of website conversions, it’s important to backtrack for a moment and cover some of the fundamental aspects that make online marketers like myself salivate. If you’ve never actually heard of a sales funnel, let me give you a brief background of this all-important concept before we move forward.

Sales funnels, very much like a real funnel that might be used to filter oil into an engine compartment, works almost the same way. Except, a sales funnel operates in the digital world. Take a funnel, any funnel, and look at it for a moment. The widest part is at the top, which is where the liquid pours in.

Sales FunnelWhen liquid pours into a funnel, it diffuses down the funnel compartments, moving swiftly into a more confined space and eventually exiting out the other side. When we’re talking about sales funnels, you’ll get a large amount of visitors that might come to your website and then leave for whatever reason. Without dropping them into a funnel, you’ll never be able to track those individuals, moving them ever-closer to an eventual sale, nor will you understand how many of your visitors are converting or how long it’s taking to convert them.

When they drop into your sales funnel, the goal is that they’re automatically added to an email sequence that can drip-message them through a pre-defined algorithm of contact dates and messages that have been strategically designed to sell them whatever it is that you’re offering.

What most people don’t understand about online marketing is that a sale is rarely ever made on the first interaction. People want to get to know you first. Are you adding real value to the world or are you just trying to extract their hard-earned dollars? While most people worry about giving away the proverbial farm, that’s precisely what you have to do.

Another important thing to understand is that the concept of free is very powerful. Several studies have proven that people gravitate towards the word free. Staggering numbers of people will choose something that’s free even over something that’s just a penny or two. Seriously. This is a very powerful concept in business.

Another thing to understand is that people feel obligated to you when you give them something for free. This is a subconscious obligation (okay maybe a bit conscious as well). This is also called the principle of reciprocity. Why do you think that supermarkets give away free samples of food in the store? Do you think it’s some altruistic desire to give things away?

Absolutely not. They do that to move a certain product for whatever reason. They know that if they give you something for free and you love it, that you’re going to buy it from them. Now, digital marketing doesn’t work exactly like this, but if you give something away of value, and you build a strong bond or connection with that person over time, the likeliness of them buying from you will skyrocket.

 

Conversion Strategy #1 — Build A Sales Funnel

Okay, so I kind of already covered this strategy. But this should precede everything else that you do. Your sales funnel is the ticket to your success. If you build it the right way, structuring the drip campaigns properly, you can easily build a cash machine. I’ve employed highly-complex sales funnels across dozens of internet properties that I use to generate passive income. I can tell you firsthand that this is hands down the best way to increase your conversions.

However, setting up a sales funnel isn’t that simple. There are so many factors that go into an effective sales funnel, that if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could end up feeling overwhelmed. For those that don’t know where to turn when it comes to building a funnel, I would highly suggest checking out Click Funnels. Now, even though I’m an affiliate, I must say that this is by far one of the best systems that I’ve ever encountered for building out funnels like this.

The truth is that building out a funnel not only requires a higher-level understanding of an advanced online marketer, it also requires some programming skills. If you’re not a web developer, and you don’t know the first thing about setting up a multi-faceted sales funnel that’s automatically sells anything, definitely check out Click Funnels. No programming skills are required, and you’ll discover dozens of high-quality funnel templates that have been pre-built and designed for you.

 

#2 — Install Conversion-Pixel Tracking

While it’s extremely important to create a sales funnel, it’s also important to use conversion-pixel tracking if you’re serious about determining just how many people who visit your site actually end up purchasing from you. And the beauty of this is that you don’t need to spend a dime right away on ads to track people. It’s completely free to install conversion pixels from sites like Facebook and Google’s Adwords.

Conversion pixels will track Google and Facebook users, for example, allowing you to build out a custom audience of individuals who’ve already visited your website. This is great for targeting the right people quickly and efficiently, without having to spend a ton of money on ads. If you know that someone has visited your site, it provides you with a highly-relevant pre-defined audience to advertise to.

Conversion-pixel tracking is also fairly simple to setup. For example, to set this up in Facebook, all it takes is the installation of a small snippet of code, which is installed within the < head > tags of the website. The best part? You can get highly-targeted with this information and actually track specific actions if you chose to. According to Facebook, here’s precisely what actions you can track:

Website action Standard event code
View content fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);
Search fbq(‘track’, ‘Search’);
Add to cart fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToCart’);
Add to wishlist fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToWishlist’);
Initiate checkout fbq(‘track’, ‘InitiateCheckout’);
Add payment info fbq(‘track’, ‘AddPaymentInfo’);
Make purchase fbq(‘track’, ‘Purchase’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘USD’});
Lead fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’);
Complete registration fbq(‘track’, ‘CompleteRegistration’);

Why is this so useful? Not only is this great for tracking a completed conversion, but you can also discover which one of your users did things like abandon their shopping carts or leave your website before actually finalizing a purchase. Or, if someone added a product to their wishlist on your site, or did any kind of search and so on, you can target those individuals with a specific ad using custom audiences.

 

#3 — Re-Targeting Ads

Google Adwords offers a one great way to increase your conversions by using re-targeting ads through online search and even through services like Gmail. Similar to leveraging pixels on Facebook, you can use Google’s extensive ad network to essentially “follow” someone around the internet. No matter where they visit, you can display your ad, enticing them to return and complete their purchase. Re-targeting can be extremely advanced and complex, or basic and straightforward, depending on how you look at it.

First and foremost is your bid. You can have a high bid for the first day after they’ve left your site, then gradually decrease that bid as the days go by. The reasoning behind this is that the fresher you are in someone’s memory, as in the more recently they visited your site, the more likely they’re going to be to return and purchase from you.

In essence, re-targeting exists in three spheres, or mediums if you will.

  • Online Search: Behavioral re-targeting that targets users with display ads based on searches that they’ve conducted, which doesn’t necessarily rely on a prior visit to an advertiser’s website.
  • Email: Companies can re-target users if they’ve abandoned their shopping carts. Obviously, this works for users that have already registered their email address with the company. For example, Amazon often utilizes re-targeting ads, both by sending you an email and also using Google’s display ads network across the internet.
  • Contextual Ads: Some websites that share customers often combine forces to share their cookies and track visitors. If a visitor leaves one site and later visits a partner site, advertisements for the partner might be displayed on the current website.

 

#4 — Increase Website’s Trust Factor

The entire credibility of the internet is founded on the concept of trust. In fact, I often teach about this core fundamental tenet to online marketing in my courses, books and audiobooks about SEO. It’s Google’s self-endowed duty to ensure that a website they’re recommended is a trusted resource. Google has a number of ways in doing that. Why is that important? Because, what’s important to Google is important to the rest of the web.

Google has, for all intents and purposes, miniaturized the rules of the real world into the web. In the real world, trust is an inherent factor in successful businesses. Those that have been around for longer and have a solid track record of reviews and delivering huge value, excel in the long term. Google knows that. So do consumers. So the reasoning goes, if you’re serious about boosting a consumer’s trust, follow the rules that Google has in place.

For example, installing a secure site certificate on an HTTPS layer will boost your trust in a consumer’s eyes and in Google’s eyes as well. Focus on increasing your authentic positive reviews, clearly displaying your contact information, boosting the speed and reliability of your website through things like a CDN and caching, while also relying on consumer protection sites like the Better Business Bureau and others.

 

#5 — Increase Prices

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. How does increasing your prices actually help to boost your website’s conversions? There’s a concept called perceived value that better helps to illuminate this concept. Think about this for a moment. Lexus and Toyota essentially make the same car. Obviously, not exactly the same. There are clear variations. But not enough to warrant the significant difference in price.

However, while a Toyota is considered to be a mass-market vehicle, a Lexus is a luxury product. The brand is significantly positioned well within the luxury segment and the cars sell for considerably more than Toyotas. Is the Lexus a substantially better car than a Toyota? I would argue that it’s not. But there is perceived value in the higher price. When you increase your prices, you’re effectively increasing the perceived value in whatever you’re offering.

People are more likely to trust the higher price, as long as it doesn’t seem fishy or strange. For example, in one of my previous businesses, we ran consulting services at a certain rate that most considered very reasonable. And we did very well. One day, after researching perceived values, I decided to increase the price five-fold. At first, I thought business would plummet. But I was surprised to see the opposite  happen.

We added some extra bells and whistles to our services, but not enough to warrant a five-fold increase in prices, but business went through the roof. To this day, I’m still surprised at this rationale. In fact, it’s what enabled me to charge upwards of $50,000 for consultations with a single client, effectively commanding thousands of dollars per hour of my time.

 

#6 — Leverage Influencers

Influencers offer a great way to boost your conversions without having to do too much additional work. Clearly, you’ll need some cash in order to leverage an influencer. They don’t come cheap. However, if you locate an influencer in your industry or niche and they have a big audience, you can effectively target millions of consumers through one source. Use them enough times to spread your message and you could see sales and conversion rates explode.

Many companies rely on influencers to get the word out. If you have the budget, I would suggest leveraging influencers on popular platforms like Instagram and YouTube to spread your message. You might have sticker shock at the outset, but I can guarantee you that it will be well worth your time. However, this also boils down to finding the right influencers and not throwing money away with the wrong ones.

If you’re selling diet or weight loss pills, find a fitness influencer. If you’re selling luxury homes, find a real estate influencer. And so on and so forth. Be sure to spend your money on the right influencer and it will significantly boost your conversions over time.

 

#7 — Eliminate Risk

If you don’t have a clear risk-free guarantee, then you’ll likely see low conversion rates. You need to eliminate the risks associated with purchasing whatever product, service or information you’re selling. Make it clear and make it visible throughout all your pages. This isn’t just about having an HTTPS secure-site certificate; this is about making the consumer feel comfortable in their purchase with you.

The more inherent risk there is, or the more perceived risk a consumer feels, the less likely he or she is going to be to purchase from you. Go out of your way to address the risks. Not only should you use an HTTPS certificate and risk-free guarantees, but you should also use case studies and clearly portray reviews all throughout the purchase process across your entire website.

This is important to do if you’re not a well-known brand. It takes brands years and years of effectively losing money at the cost of building up a solid name for themselves in order for that risk to be eliminated. But when trust becomes commonplace with a brand, many of the risk averseness disappears. This takes time so don’t expect it to happen overnight, but go out of your way to do what you can now to eliminate as much potential for risk as possible.

 

#8 — Address Objections

The last (but certainly not least) way you can work to increase the conversions on your website or even your blog is to address objections. Advanced online marketers that run webinars, for example, know a thing or two about addressing objections. They address those objections upfront. Keep in mind that a digital interaction is not the same as a real-world interaction, which is why many people feel frustrated with online sales.

For example, in the real world, you can speak to your clients directly, one-on-one, and address them each in a unique way. They all have unique concerns or objections. One might be concerned about prices while another might be concerned about specifics in a product or a service that you might be offering. Considering that you don’t have the chance to speak to each person individually on the internet, since they just come and go at will, you’re left with a large chasm in your interaction.

That’s why you have to go out of your way to address those objections. Go all out. Think about every possible concern or objection and address it at the forefront. This is easy to do in a webinar because you have the person’s (almost) undivided attention. But it’s harder to do on the pages of your site. Put some real thought and care into doing this and watch your conversions soar through the roof.