When a visitor clicks through to your website, there are two major elements we must be aware of as site owners: expectations and decisions. At least one of these elements must be stimulated or else visitors will navigate away. If we observe some of the most popular websites, we’ll notice patterns in design and content that stimulate our expectations and influence our decisions. These range from simply having a professional theme to having a variety of content options.
Ultimately, by meeting visitor expectations or influencing decisions, we can drive business goals. If you have analytics programs set up and are noticing high bounce rates or simply want to increase your conversion rates, consider the following five site tweaks to help remedy your situation.
If you have clients, use their logos on your website. (They don’t have to be famous—you just need to make sure you have their consent!) This helps your company stand out from any competitors that do not feature their customers. In most cases, potential clients are information-seeking: After seeing your products or services, they want reassurance that others have trusted you.
For bonus points, add some of the most recognizable logos to appropriate pages on your site. For example, on a product or service page, it’s commonplace to have a stream of logos that feature partner programs and software such as PayPal, Google, VeriSign Trusted, BBB and more.
And don’t forget about flaunting your good stuff! Have you won any awards? Maybe a major publication featured your company in a flattering light? Here’s an example from the Company Awards section on Maxwell Systems:
Potential customers see Maxwell Systems has an entire site category dedicated to its awards. This adds even more reassurance that they have come to the right website, and it provides even more incentive to become customers.
The basic plain text testimonial with a plain text name is a stale practice. Instead, get creative and involve your customers. This can range from video testimonials to collaborative case studies that provide added value to readers and potential customers. One of the most creative testimonials I’ve come across is on Neil Patel’s blog, Quick Sprout:
Both testimonials double as a case study, in addition to being designed creatively. They’re interactive and interesting.
Essentially, they’re a business CTA. After clicking through and learning about how great an experience they had, we’re more inclined to become a customer.
The less your landing page does, the easier it is to align visitors with your value proposition.
Our first impression is also known as the make-or-break moment. If we’re greeted with a wall of text and an outdated, non-responsive design, chances are we’re going to try a different site.
By keeping things simple, it’s mutually beneficial to visitors and our analysis process. If we have just two CTAs (as opposed to having six CTAs), it’s easy for us to run split-tests with different verbs, colors and positioning.
This also helps us understand what our site is really trying to accomplish. Do we just want to increase subscription rates? Pageviews? Lower bounce rates? By determining just one or two site goals, we can create a very simple, yet powerful landing page.
We've all seen videos with poor voiceovers. They're enough to make you cringe! You can usually tell if the person doing the voiceover is experienced or not right away based on his or her cadence and confidence levels. Nothing turns off a potential client faster than a poorly done voiceover. It just screams unprofessional, seeing as you didn't invest the money to get it done right.
While you do not have to shell out the cash for Morgan Freeman, finding someone with a professional voice can give you instant credibility. However, many businesses do not have the time and resources to invest in content quality. To alleviate this situation, determine which asset is most important, such as a video tutorial, a blog or a resource section, and solely focus on improving the quality of that asset.
One of the most frustrating things we experience on the web is waiting for sites to load. If it takes more than 3 seconds for a page to fully render, most people navigate away.
It may seem daunting from a technical perspective to increase the page speed of your website, especially if you have no experience in this realm. Fortunately, there are many steps we can take:
Collectively, these five site tweaks can provide notable boost to your conversion rates and visitor happiness.
Do you have any tweaks of your own to add? Let us know in the comment section!
Jesse Aaron is a professional blogger with a passion for homebrewing. He writes on a variety of topics on his blog Mashbout. Follow Jesse on Google Plus.
photo credit: Lori Greig
