10 Things You Should Test to Boost Your Website Conversion Rate Routinely examining key data on who visits your site and their experience is key to steadily increasing sales.
By Rocco Baldassarre Edited by Jessica Thomas
Our biggest sale — Get unlimited access to Entrepreneur.com at an unbeatable price. Use code SAVE50 at checkout.*
Claim Offer*Offer only available to new subscribers
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
No matter how streamlined your marketing campaigns are, boosting conversions should be top of your daily to-do list. Once an advertising campaign works, companies tend to neglect testing different variables to improve their conversion rates. Here is a list of the 10 tests you cannot afford to miss.
1. Identify the unique selling propositions (USPs) that convert the most. All of your products or services have strong selling points but not of equal importance to your customers. Test all USPs in your ads, prominent placements of the site and social media to figure out which of these improve your conversion rate the most. Once you find the best unique selling propositions, you will be able to plan your communication strategy in a way that maximizes customer acquisition.
Related: The 3 Most Important Online Marketing Metrics to Monitor
2. Landing page design. You can test the landing page design in two separate phases. Phase one consists of testing several page designs in order to find the one that appeals most to your target customer. Try comparing image versus content based pages.
Phase two consists of applying changes to the top performing design in order to test how different versions of the same page affect the success of your website. You should focus the majority of your time on the top section of the page.
3. Landing page calls to action. The majority of marketers decide what call to action to use based on the answer to the question: what do I want customers to do on my page? However, clever marketers would rather answer another question: what is the action customers can take on my page that will maximize profits? Testing calls to action will have a significant impact on your bottom line.
4. Landing page text. Make sure to test the positioning of text: where do you place the testimonials? Where are you going to analyze your benefits and features? What headlines will you use at the top of the page to maximize visitor interest? Use metrics such as sales and average time on site to evaluate the performance of your pages.
Related: How to 'Split Test' Your Website to Engage Online Customers Better
5. Mobile vs desktop traffic return-on-investment. Mobile and desktop traffic are likely to convert at a different rate. Compare how much marketing budget you are spending on each device with what you are getting in return and then decrease the budget of the least profitable.
6. Pause traffic sources based on bounce rate and average time on site. Analyze the quality of incoming traffic from each of your marketing channels and decide which are not worth targeting due to low average time on site and high bounce rate. You can then reallocate the budget to those channels with a higher conversion rate.
7. Adding a chat button. Many of your website visitors might prefer to discuss business before jumping on a call or buying a product. Installing a chat on your site is relatively inexpensive and will give you one more way to convert visitors into leads.
8. Customize landing pages for top performing geographic areas. Where are your sales coming from? Identify the most profitable geographic areas and create dedicated pages offering local deals (e.g. free shipping in New York.)
9. Conversion rate of returning users. Invest in users that have visited your site, spent enough time on it but did not convert. They are likely to be interested in your offer but prefer to compare all available products first. Create campaigns to target past website visitors and test different offers and/or unique selling propositions to incentivize sales.
10. The checkout process. Create a smooth and fast checkout process to avoid missing out on potential customers when they are ready to convert. Test guest checkouts, short billing information forms and one-step checkout pages!
Testing is the best way to improve the conversion rate of any site. While there are numerous methods you can test, the ten elements above are a great starting point. This process is neither easy nor quick but it is worth investing the time to benefit your business long term.
Related: 12 Ways to Increase Online Sales
Related Book: Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords
