How to convert visitors into customers

Process | Optimisation

Driving traffic to your website is only half the battle. The real magic happens when those visitors turn into loyal customers. And this is normally the hardest part, but there are tested strategies to make this more successful. So, grab your cup of coffee, sit back and get ready for some tips on how to optimise your website and boost your conversion rate. The points are not in order of priority but in order of the customer journey. Understanding how users interact with your website at each stage of their journey - from landing to consideration to conversion - provides valuable insights into areas that need improvement. 

1. Build a relationship: don't be the awkward person at a party who only talks about themselves. Start building a relationship with potential customers even before they visit your website. Engage with your audience on social media, share valuable content, and encourage them to share it. Use forms on your website to gather visitor data and use it to build a strong email marketing program. After all, relationships are built on trust and communication, not on awkward silence.

2. Need for speed - nobody likes to wait, especially online - so, make sure your website loads quickly. When a webpage takes longer to load, its bounce rate tends to increase significantly. Some scary stats even claim that 1 in 4 visitors would leave if the page takes longer than 4 seconds to load. A high bounce rate signals to search engines that users do not find the content valuable, resulting in lower rankings. Moreover, e-commerce sites are likely to lose customers if their checkout page lags even slightly compared to their competitors. Website speed and core web vitals performance can be significantly improved by optimising your images, compressing your files, and reducing unused JavaScript to ensure a faster loading speed. 

3. Mind your keywords: effective keywords and search terms are essential for your website's taxonomy but remember, don't go keyword-crazy. Keep it human, natural and strategic.

4. Create a visually pleasing experience: nobody likes a cluttered sluggish website. So, streamline your website's design and make it visually pleasing for your visitors. Use vivid visuals such as images and videos to showcase your products, but make sure they don't slow down the experience. 

5. Call to action (CTA): your website should have a clear and compelling call to action (CTA) that prompts visitors to take action. The golden rule is to keep one primary action on the page and make the rest secondary. Don't overload the user's attention and avoid placing several buttons on the same page which are not your primary call to action.   

6. Social Proof: people are more likely to trust a brand that others vouch for so, include reviews and testimonials from previous customers on your website. Positive reviews can have a strong impact on encouraging visitors to convert into customers. Make a point of creating a strategy and collecting reviews deliberately and strategically, especially when the users have a great experience. If you leave your reviews to grow on their own you run the risk of having low ratings. People rarely leave reviews just because they are happy with the service/product, most of the time they take the time to write a complaint.

7. Customer service is king: take pride in offering excellent customer service. Be responsive and helpful through various channels such as email, chat, or phone. Promptly address customer inquiries and concerns to build trust and loyalty. Happy customers are more likely to convert into repeat customers and refer your brand to others so, make them feel like royalty and watch your conversion rate soar.

8. Checkout with ease. You worked so hard to get the traffic to your site and invested in showcasing your product with gorgeous images and brilliant copy. The visitor loved it and is ready to pay. At this stage don't let a poor checkout ruin a great experience or even cost you a potential customer or sale. Make the checkout process as smooth and optimised as possible by reducing the number of steps required to complete a purchase, offering multiple fast payment options, and providing clear information about shipping, taxes, and returns. A seamless checkout process can prevent cart abandonment and increase conversions, after all, who wants to go through a complicated checkout process that's more confusing than a Rubik's cube?

Converting visitors into customers is a complex task and it involves systematically testing, refining and optimising different elements of your website, such as call-to-action buttons, forms, and landing pages, to optimize their performance and drive more conversions. We use strategies and techniques, such as customer journey analysis, A/B testing experimentation, heat mapping, optimizing mobile responsiveness, and enhancing website navigation and user feedback analysis, to identify and address barriers to conversion, and ultimately improve your conversion rates. These strategies are crucial in today’s digital landscape where users demand fast, seamless, and user-friendly experiences across all devices.