When you’re optimizing in the real world, you encounter all manner of sites – the new, the old, the elegant, and the ugly. Everything. One of the things that I noticed that can make the fastest difference for a site was to take better advantage of the traffic already going to the site. Good CRO coupled with a well planned on page strategy sets the foundation for further optimization.
1. Revisit the site form
Whether you’re lead gen or ecommerce, there is form action going on on your site and it represents the final hurdle before a visitor converts on a site. Even looking at the basics can help you bump conversions on your site/ your client site up.
Some things to look at :
- Are there unnecessary form fields?
- Is what to do and where to click instantly obvious on the page?
- Are there trust symbols near your your form to build user trust?
- Follow the conversion process and test if there are any problems.
2. Mind the Top Landing Pages
Look at the top landing pages beyond the homepages and the keywords driving traffic from organic search: Many website owners tend to give disproportional focus to the homepage, often forgetting about powerful landing pages that are back pages on the site.
Some things to look at:
- Identify the strongest subpages on your site and take a look at the the keywords drive them traffic in organic search, how well do they align?
- How does the landing page look like overall, is it easy for a visitor to go deeper into the site?
- Is there a clear call to action on the page?
- Are there blockers or distractions to the calls to action on the page?
3. Revisit your site navigation
Having a straightforward and simple navigation is an important factor for users being able to easily move through your site.
Some things to look at:
- Is your site navigation logically organized?
- Are all contents of category sections are easily from navigation (where possible)?
The larger theme I’d like to touch on before wrapping up this post is that conversion is an important foundation for doing SEO work. Doing a quick audit can help you build in more conversions from existing traffic and for future traffic you’re building to the the site.
4 Responses
Agreed.
When it comes to CRO, one of the things that I never understand is why people place the secure credit card logo in the footer. Why?
Surely one of the ways to help build confidence is to tell people their credit card is secure either above or below the basket area of your website. You know the place, up in the top right hand corner to show how many items there are in your basket.
It’s the same with other confidence builders on your page. Free delivery, free returns, money saving offers etc. The more you can make the customer think that they are making a virtually risk free purchase the higher your conversions will be. All these should be placed above the fold. Perhaps uunder the top navigation.
I did this with one of our clients websites and it had a 16% improvement on the previous layout. Thats 16% month on month so were talking real returns here.
I know ^_^ it is the little things that make a big difference. I think that a lot of people underestimate the power of featuring unique selling propositions and trust symbols on pages….
Another suggestion or practice that can help improve trust is by having a client testimonial quote or a client logo slider below or near your contact form. Also test, and test again.
Agreed Sal, testing is such an important piece of the puzzle.
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