This is a guest contribution from Efrat Ravid.
How well is your website converting? Do you even keep track? Do you know what’s working on your site and what really isn’t?
Perhaps you have experienced a decrease in conversions, or maybe your conversion rate is not as high as you would like it to be. But why? You have done everything right, so far as you know, You’ve followed the formulas, you’ve created opt-ins, you’ve created your sales funne.. So, what could be the problem?
In an effort to resolve this issue, surely you and your designer have removed some pages, added others, implemented changes, and added new variables into the mix, and tested the lot. You have ended up spending loads of resources researching and optimizing colors, sizes, calls to action, content, and anything else to make that sale.
How much time have you wasted?
How to Ruin Your Conversion Rate
I can help you stop wasting time right now – the following three mistakes are foolproof ways to ruin your conversion rates and should be avoided:
Mistake #1: Forgetting About Mobile
The number of users accessing websites and doing in-app retail browsing from smart devices is constantly growing.
Before purchasing, 90% of mobile users research and compare prices. With such an overwhelming statistic, it is shocking to see such a small number of businesses that have answered the mobile call. There are still many e-commerce sites these days that do not offer responsive sites for mobile users (even with Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update from earlier last year), hampering the customer experience and effectively killing conversions dead in their tracks.
Since the majority of online users today surf the web and shop via mobile devices, it is crucial to cater to this gold mine of lead prospects.
Takeaway: Either give your current site a responsive facelift, or start over from scratch and create a responsive site for your business.
You could even create a separate app that works on various devices, from Android and iOS mobile phones, to iPads and other tablets. Ensure that mobile users have a seamless and comfortable experience, even more than they would from the desktop version.
You can do this by keeping in mind mobile UX design best practices, such as having an easily navigable menu, clear visual hierarchy, and an uncluttered interface with easy-to-read text.
Mistake #2: Thinking Personal, Not Personalized
A major trend followed by today’s marketers is personalized messaging, and rightly so. Personalized content drives six times greater transaction rates than generic campaigns. Yet, despite these encouraging numbers, a laughable small number of businesses are using this first-class ticket to successful marketing:
Only 39% of retailers will personalize product recommendations via email.
An overwhelming 70% of brands are not using personalized marketing whatsoever.
This is a major oversight on the part of upper management, and it is one that will cost businesses and blogs dearly in terms of conversion, loyalty, and ultimately, ROI. By using personalized content, such as shopping cart reminders,or special discounts on items that have been placed in the shopping cart, marketers help move the customer forward in the conversion funnel.
Many times marketers personalize content based on their preferences rather than the customer’s.
Remember, marketing campaigns and website content are all about appealing to the customer. Design elements based on their behavior, motivations, and preferences.
Takeaway: Make sure to personalise your customer’s experience.
What looks good to a designer may not speak to the customer, and, as the saying goes ‘the customer is always right.’
It is also important to personalize your content according to different user behavioral patterns that can be categorized into six online shopping personas. The “Brand-Oriented” visitor, for example, will be attracted to the latest trends, so avant-garde cues should be used to speak to this type of shopper. To address the needs and concerns of the “Maximizer”, on the other hand, you’ll need to supply plenty of information in a useful and comprehensive manner.
Online store Zappos provides a prime example of personalized messaging to fit the customer’s behavior. When a customer searches for an item or spends any significant amount of time browsing a certain selection on the site, Zappos will make relevant product suggestions for other items that customers who enjoyed the desired product could benefit from as well. In fact, 75% of consumers prefer receiving personalized messages and recommendations.
Mistake #3: Testing, Testing, is This Thing Even On?
Businesses are well aware of the tremendous value of conversion rate optimization.
CEOs, CMOs, and business owners alike have embraced the reality that optimizing customer interactions and experiences is the key to unlocking better conversion rates, and, in turn, better revenue – you too can have these kinds of experiences with your blog. Even with 68% of B2B companies using landing pages to increase lead generation and conversions, it is still very unclear which elements will succeed in bringing more conversions and which will fail. This is where testing can be an invaluable tool, and forgetting about it can be detrimental.
Testing is the number-one method for categorically determining the value of a specific element on a website. By performing A/B testing and tracking the efficacy of that element vis-a-vis how customers are interacting with it (determined by using heatmaps, for example), marketers glean insights to understand, respond, and improve conversions.
Takeaway: Always perform proper testing when making changes on a site or landing page. Track how actual visitors interact with the optimizations, because this is the only way to know with certainty if those changes are effective. Track, test and analyze everything, no matter how much the changes seem like an improvement without doing so, and how much it seems like extra work. It will save you time and headaches in the long run.
Before hastily optimizing landing pages or websites, remember these three fundamentals – forgetting about them is a sure-fire way to ruin conversion rates.
The post 3 Foolproof Ways to Ruin Your Conversion Rate appeared first on ProBlogger.
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