Most website owners are only concerned about one thing when marketing their website, Traffic. However, traffic is not the only piece of the puzzle. Having a website optimized for conversions can make an immense difference when finding that sweet spot for your return on investment. There are several factors that determine high sales conversion ratios on your website including design, lead forms, email capturing, page flow, load times, mobile compatibility and trust factors and more.
- Utilize User Flow and Heat Maps to Improve Conversions
Having a design that is aesthetically pleasing is great. However, a design should focus on getting sales which is the primary goal of most businesses. Sales can be optimized by creating a simple page flow that gets the visitor submitting a lead, quote, email address or calling you as easily as possible. The primary pages of the website should have contact information featured in an easy to locate position. Most companies with sales optimized websites will have a lead form placed on the right, left or center of the home page along with contact information. Based on Google’s heat map, the best location for a lead form is left hand corner or upper center of the page. Product videos and images should also be prominently displayed in high traffic areas. The goal of a website is just like any other marketing strategy, to sell a product or service by showing the benefits and features as quickly and easily as possible.
Google Heat Map *the darker areas are where visitors naturally look first.
- Improve Your Site Speed and Compatibility
A fast website is a selling website. Every second it takes for a website to load is another second a potential customer has to click the “back button”. Avoid clunky designs that take massive resources and opt-in for a high speed server. The website should be compatible with all of the popular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari. For the best results you will want to have a website that is also compatible with smart phones and tablet computers. Website themes should be responsive or adaptive to screen sizes, or a separate mobile website should be created.
- Trust Factors
Trust factors are a big deal when it comes to making sales. According to statistics by Search Engine Journal, 70% of consumers trust anonymous reviews. To benefit from this, website site owners should display their top reviews on their home page or sales pages. They also should show due diligence with having high quality reviews submitted on top websites such as Yelp, CitySearch, Google Places, Bing & Yahoo Local and more.
Featured images:
- License: Royalty Free or iStock source:www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-heatmap/google-heat-map-3page.gif
Trevor McCann is the Director of Search and CEO for Rainbowseo.com. We provide consulting, search engine optimization services and paid advertising management.