There are many systems and methodologies I have come across in my years at Just Search to help improve conversion rates on your website, however there are some basic fundamentals which you should always cover such as:
- Hyperlinks that don’t look like hyperlinks
- Violating web-wide conventions
- Dense content and unscannable text
- Complicated or absent search box
- + Many more
The list go’s on, however there have been a number of companies who have developed software to focus on this.
Imagine if your website turns over 3,000,000 visitors per year and you convert 3% of them then that’s potential 90,000 online orders for you in that year. If you could increase your conversion rate to 6% then you have just doubled your number of orders, so it’s no wonder companies are turning to Conversion software to increase the revenue their website brings in.
Google gives some help with your Adwords Campaign by offering a free service called “Website Optimizer” the service allows for A/B split testing so over a period of time the software displays different page variation and will learn which variation converts the best.
There are extended versions of this type of software developed to work with Natural search as well as Paid, however they are not cheap and you will find that currently to be able to use this type of software your website needs to bring in a minimum revenue level.
What else can help conversion?
Look at Ebay or Amazon they particularly focus on the website display adds, like when you walk into a shop you are presented with displays to advise which items fit together and this is a way of up selling. This is replicated online with customer also bought boxes etc. However this can be done dynamically where your website actually learns the right products to display as appose to choosing an option in your admin system.
Finally Ebay uses a user review feedback system, this is the core back bone of Ebay where by purchases will buy from sellers who appear more credible as this is independent feedback it is trusted far more than testimonials which now many users will simply ignore because of the ability for them to be manipulated by the sellers.
So in short help your website to increase conversion by looking at:
- General Usability
- A/B testing (multi Varient testing)
- Independent user reviews.
- + others