Are sales dropping in recent quarters? It sounds like it’s time to take a look at the health of your conversion rates.

Your online conversions serve as a foundation for your sales. Without converting leads, you’ll struggle to increase your customer base and, thus, ROI consistently.

The average company spends around 11% of its total budget on marketing. When you’re spending that much to get new leads, but not converting, it’s a tremendous loss.

Stable conversion rates indicate a healthy marketing strategy and serve as the basis for new sales. When conversions are slacking, it’s time to get serious and rework your digital marketing tactics. Slowly but surely, you’ll start to see your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) improve, and profit margin increases.

For those of you who are new to terms like KPI and conversion rate, this could get a little confusing.

Before diving into the eight tactics you should be implementing for improved conversion, familiarize yourself with the background information below.

What is a Conversion Rate?

Your company’s conversion rate (CR) is a percentage of the visitors who come to your website and satisfy a desired requirement or task. Since the task is entirely up to you and your goals, there can be several different CRs within one marketing strategy. Each one will measure the conversion of one particular activity.

To determine the rate, calculate the ratio of online visitors who took action against total visitors.

When you create an optimised, conversion first website or landing page, you’ll see how powerfully it influences your conversion rates. If you’re looking to take the current temperature of your online performance, these are some smart KPIs to track to understand your conversion rate better:

• Registration for a webinar or online event
• Sales of product or service
• New email subscribers
• Visitors who followed through on Calls-to-Action
• Digital product downloads

These are just a few ways to track conversion. Make sure the measurements you’re taking reflects the primary goals of your business.

In looking at the results of your initial conversion measurements, you’ll be able to get a better understanding of which pages are performing well and which ones are not.

In doing so, you’ll be in a better position to start elevating poorer-performing rates.

Conversion Rates: Why Do They Matter?

When you have a well-optimized conversion strategy, you’re making the most out of the existing traffic you have without paying extra on expensive advertising.

It’s the easiest and most cost-effective way to get the most out of visitors.

On top of that, an optimized conversion strategy offers other varying benefits:

Focus on Critical Website Components –

When your website isn’t performing the way you’d like it to, it’s easy to get down on your entire site and feel the need to rework everything. You assume that since online sales are low, your entire website must be lackluster.

Except, that’s usually not the case.

When sales are low, your conversions are likely low too. By focusing your attention on only the parts or processes of your site that transform your visitors into customers or leads, you can leave other sections of your website perfectly intact.

That means less work for you with a higher payoff. Who doesn’t love that?

Lower Your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) –

Your customer acquisition cost is the amount you spend on each new customer acquired.

Rather than boosting marketing spending to rope in new visitors and hope that they will be more likely to convert, you can save money and work with the audience you already have.

When you optimize the landing pages they’re naturally going to, you can make the existing visitor’s experience that much better. In turn, this will make them more likely to convert and buy. When you start converting more of the people that are already there, you don’t have to focus as much on accumulating new leads.

Thus, you spend less to capture new customers. Lower acquisition rates mean higher profit margins and more money in your company’s pockets at the end of the day.

The power that the conversion rate has on overall business health is evident. Without quality conversions, you’ll struggle to increase revenue.

So, are you ready to optimize your online conversion rates? Get started with these eight proven tactics to boost conversion:

1. Utilize Split Testing –

Want three tips to improve and optimize your conversions?

1. Testing
2. Testing
3. Testing

Seriously – without experimentation, you take a considerable risk assuming that your strategy is as good as it can get.

One of the best ways to test and optimize conversion is through split testing, also known as A/B testing.

A/B testing means you create two versions of the same webpage. There should only be one variable change in each one, so the results remain controlled. For example, you could A/B test with a different headline or a distinct call-to-action. After testing both options, you can compare the results between the two. Whichever version captured the most conversions has a stronger element.

Not sure which aspect to test? These elements tend to have higher effects on visitors:

• Headline
• Page navigation and layout
• Offer – layout and description
• Media – video vs. photo

Even if you have a winning page, keep in mind that testing is never really over when it comes to marketing. Once you’ve optimized one page, try to further build upon that for even better results.

2. Strengthen and Communicate The UVP –

Your conversion rate only has as much potential as your unique value proposition offers. A unique value proposition is the main reason your visitor should buy your product or service. It’s the answer to the question, “Why you?” With such competitive markets, it’s crucial to make your offering stand out amongst the noise.

While it’s true that sometimes making small changes in fonts or images can have a significant impact on conversion, they shouldn’t be your first step in the optimization process. Before any of that happens, the value proposition should be as strong as it can be.

So, what does a great unique value proposition have?

First, it must be different than what your competitors are offering.

Second, you must exceed competitors in at least ONE aspect.

To create a proposition that stands out and reflects your business well, you should take time to reflect on what unique aspects you bring to the table. Once that’s determined, write everything into one active sentence.

Want to see if your UVP is as strong as you think it is? Refer to step 1 and try split testing it.

3. Optimize Your Sales Funnel –

Are you asking for action too fast? This could be what’s killing your conversion.

Luckily, a properly structured sales funnel can help lead your visitors down the right path to conversion.

Keep in mind the more complicated a product is, or the more it costs, the more time your audience will need before they commit. Most marketing specialists agree that a prospective buyer must go through seven steps or touch points before they’re ready to buy. However, if you’ve found a different system that works for you, stick with it.

In general, you want your sales funnel to guide your visitors from being aware of your company and offering to spark an interest in the offering, and finally to purchase the offering. See the following steps of a sales funnel as an example:

1. Offer something valuable at no cost – videos, blog, report, ebook, etc
2. Gain their trust
3. Offer compelling reasons to subscribe to your emails – offer them juicy information or another freebie
4. Send that freebie or valuable information in their welcome email
5. Continue nurturing them through email sales copy
6. Ask for the sale, and they will complete the sale

4. Write for People –

Many marketers make the mistake of thinking elevated speech is what will position them as an industry expert or authority. In reality, it does the opposite. It alienates your audience and confuses them – two things you never want to do.

Remind your team you’re writing for real people. These people are not always scientists or marketing experts; they might not understand your high-level jargon.

Keep your communication clear and compelling without over-complicating things. Pretend you’re speaking to a close friend, and write the way you’d talk.

5. Overcome Objections –

Regardless of what you’re selling, your visitors will always come up with reasons not to buy. These are called objections.

It’s easy to tackle these kinds of worries and fears during in-person sales, but it’s a lot harder to execute online. You can work around these objections by addressing them ahead of time so that you eliminate reasonable excuses not to buy.

In strategizing how to overcome your company’s most common objections, here’s what to consider:

• List any possible hesitation one might have. The goal is to create the most extended list you can. Don’t feel like you covered all the bases? Reach out for input. Ask team members, run focus groups, or gather data from customers to build out the list.
• Match each hesitation or objection with information that will alleviate the concerns. Be as specific as you can be.
• Ensure you naturally add in sales copy that addresses every objection.

6. Grow Trust –

Regardless of whether you’re offering an incredible deal, if your potential customers do not trust you, they will not buy from you.

Just as it’s easier to overcome objections in person, building trust also comes more naturally face-to-face than it does online.

Luckily, the experts over at the Stanford Web Credibility Research Project have been studying how to build credibility online for years. They offer these suggestions to build trust with your audience:

• Provide accessible citations for the information you reference.
• Prove your authenticity with a physical address listing, office photos, and about page.
• Highlight certifications, awards, and other achievements that provide credibility.
• Show or tell about employees to make them relatable.
• Make contacting easy.
• Create a professional-looking site.
• Make your navigation easy and website information helpful.
• Reduce promotional content.
• Avoid small errors (spelling, grammar, wrong links, non-responsive pages, etc.).

7. Make It Easy –

If you’re placing obstacles in the way of your visitors making a purchase, you aren’t doing yourself any favors. There should be no question in their minds about how they can buy your product or service. You want it to be as intuitive as possible.

To ensure your site is making it as easy as possible for your visitors to purchase, ask yourself this question: “Could my grandma figure this out?”

If you tell them what to do next and keep their options limited moving forward, there should be no confusion as to how to proceed.

8. Show Proof –

Showing proof goes hand in hand with credibility. When you make a claim, your site visitors will want to see evidence that backs it up. Without that, they will remain skeptical of your business and offerings.

If you’re struggling to figure out how to offer proof, consider these suggestions:

• Hearing first-hand from the folks who love your products or services is a great way to convince prospective customers to hop on board.
• Case studies. Before-and-after studies are a great way to show how your product or service improves the state of something.
• Research data. Are there any studies out there that are relevant to what you’re offering? Provide data and links to the research so site visitors can confirm the factual basis of your claims.
• Reviews or News Mentions. Has your product been mentioned in magazines? Perhaps a trade magazine did an in-depth analysis of your company? These third-party citations can be excellent proof.
• Social evidence. Social media has made it easier than ever to prove to a prospective customer how much previous buyers have loved their purchase. Show off your following!

The Takeaway –

When you don’t see the sales results you forecasted, it’s easy to think you should start from scratch on your marketing strategy.

Instead of heading back to square one, shift your focus to optimizing your conversion rates. It will allow you to keep your marketing costs low and make the most out of your existing audience.

With the eight tactics listed above, you’re sure to improve your conversion and boost your profits quickly.

An entrepreneur who chased success till it chased him. Founder at Quarterly Global. Father to Mayra Hansaj and Husband to Anjali Hansaj. Author of “The Criminal Wolf” and “Rise of the wolf”. 114 Days in a slumber haunts me yet.

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