Are your website conversion rates failing to set the world on fire? With average website conversion rate oscillating between 2 – 4%, you are among thousands of business owners facing this dilemma day in and day out.
A visitor will come to your website with a purpose. You may have the best-looking website, the coolest images, and an interactive user-interface, but if you're not persuading customers to complete your goals, all your effort is down the drain. Your website is as good as invisible.
Why should you worry about conversation rates? With tech-savvy customers, the quality of your website experience makes a huge difference to visitors' buying behaviour.
If you want to attract and convert visitors into buyers, you need to look at all aspects of your website, not just the design.
In 2017, the BBC reported that websites lost an additional 10% of customers for every extra second it took for their website to load. With site speed a common problem for many sites, a lower conversion rate will come as no surprise for most brands.
While achieving a 100% conversion rate is impossible, you can improve conversions to get more customers from the existing traffic.
Let's look at the top four reasons people leave a website and how you can ensure you capture their attention.
1. Your customers are fed up with your website
A famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once said, "What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things."
And websites are no different. You may have designed an attractive looking site, but you must let the customers do the talking because you are not your user.
According to Forrester, the visit-to-lead conversion is 400% higher for websites with superior user experience. This means a seamless user experience is key. A beautiful design alone will not suffice. If a lead struggles to find the information they require about your product or how your services outclass your competitors or face mobile responsiveness issues – you are unlikely to achieve the conversions you want.
Such stumbling blocks are challenging to narrow down because you know your brand and website inside out. But, your customers don’t.
Here's where usability testing comes in handy. It helps you understand the customer's journey when using your website. Mapping their journey helps you identify potential roadblocks in your website's interface like missing call-to-action buttons, problematic navigation, missing product pages, irrelevant content, and other website related issues. All these factors contribute to low website conversion rates, which eventually results in an unhappy business.
Apart from identifying the potential website bottlenecks, usability testing benchmarks your website's performance against your competitors. If you're looking to increase your website conversion rate without breaking the bank, use these usability testing examples and tools.
Additional tip: User testing gives you insights and direct input on how your real users feel while using the site.
2. You don't give your website visitors the answers they are looking for
Every interaction with your website visitors opens the door for dialogue. Forcing visitors to fill out a standard form and making them wait for days for a response leads to a domino effect. Visitors will start to overlook your brand and you will see a decline in conversions. What you need is targeted messaging to engage the visitors while they're on the website.
This is where conversational marketing comes in. It's a key building block for a comprehensive marketing strategy and can bring a paradigm shift in your sales figure.
It uses intelligent chatbots to interact with site visitors 24/7. The faster you respond to a customer query, the better your chances of doing business with a customer are.
Chatbots provide a more personalised and customised experience, which eventually translates to more conversions and higher sales. According to research, 67% of millennials are likely to purchase services or products from brands using chatbots.
With so much on the table, the new, robot-fuelled world is here to stay.
Now, imagine conversational marketing in a physical space. If your website was a large grocery store, wouldn't it be great if a customer had someone to guide them around the store and provide a seamless checkout and buying experience?
Chatbots are sales executives that show visitors around your site and help you convert web visitors to customers.
With the dynamic buying patterns and penetration of technology, the question is not whether you require integration with conversational marketing but how effectively are you using this sales evolution to push the customers to the next stage of the marketing funnel.
Additional tip: Conversation happens only when a customer wants it. Don't miss the opportunity and focus on using conversational marketing on your website.
3. Customers feel your website is insecure
What do the highest converting websites do differently? They build trust by securing their sites.
Imagine giving the job of designing your house to an architect without a degree. Can you trust the credibility of the design?
Obviously not!
You evoke the same trust issues for web visitors who come knocking on your unsecured website. Your website visitors must trust your site with their personal information. Even the most spendthrift shopper wants to ensure their personal data, like credit cards or bank details are kept private. You cannot afford to overlook website security.
Furthermore, you have close to 50 milliseconds to build credibility because, after this time, the customer is likely to search for your competitors.
From using an SSL certificate to wearing a trust badge, leave no stone unturned when it comes to making your website a secure place to shop. You can even add a website privacy policy to communicate to customers how their data is used and what steps you take to keep their information safe. It instils customer confidence.
Failing to establish trust is one of the main barriers to website conversions. If you can master this, there's no looking back and you should witness an increase in conversion rates.
While design, security, and testimonials play a significant role in building credibility, other factors can invoke customer trust. Do everything you can to reinforce trust and convey to your customers that you care about their privacy and security.
Additional tip: Make your website secure and credible to put your visitors at ease.
4. You're trying to connect with the wrong people
Making steady sales requires a deep understanding of your target audience.
Targeting visitors outside your demographics is another reason your website will not yield the desired results.
Copyright 2020. Article was made possible by site supporter Jake Stainer, Outreach Humans