As we enter into the final half of the year, headlines are going to popping up about how online giants like Amazon.com and others expect to increase online sales by billions of dollars and our business coaching program clients are all asking- how do we get conversion rates like the big guys? Here are five powerful tips we share with our business coaching program clients to increase website conversion that they consistently use that allow them to maximize their sales conversion rates. Follow these best practices and see your sales quickly increase.
1. Put your call to action above the fold.
Make sure that your call to action (e.g. your offer, your action button, etc.) shows up to your visitor without them having to scroll down.
Considering that 22.3 percent of all ecommerce comes from mobile devices, make sure you’ve reviewed your key landing pages on smaller screens. Are your pages responsive? Does your call to action still show “above the fold” (i.e. without your mobile viewer having to scroll down many lengths of their screen to find it)?
2. Simplify your checkout process.
This is an area where Amazon.com excels with their streamlined checkout process. What about your site?
Look fresh as your check out process. How many steps and pages do you make your buyers dance through? What is your “abandoned cart” rate? How can you streamline the steps to increase your sales? How can you “breadcrumb” the process with visual cues so that your buyers feel closer and closer to completion with more at stake to lose if they leave now? How can you get rid of any jarring steps or user frustrations?
All of these things will increase your overall conversion rate and as a result, increase your sales off the same lead flow.
3. A/B test your key sales landing pages.
You never know what will make a difference. We found, for example, on our website that when offering a free business coaching session to qualified companies, using an action button that said, “Does Your Business Qualify?” versus, “Schedule now” gave us a 20+ percent bump to conversion.
What can you test? Test your key design elements (e.g. color, layout, etc.); your key sales copy (e.g. call to action, headlines, product descriptions and length, etc.); your key offer elements (e.g. pricing, terms, guarantee, etc.)
4. Send your targeted traffic to targeted landing pages.
If you are spending time and money to generate targeted traffic, why would you send them to a generic page like your home page?
Don’t make your prospects have to work hard, instead send them to a targeted page that addresses the key pain points, needs, or interests of this segmented audience, without the busy distractions of most home pages.
This also allows you to track your marketing easier, connecting lead generation sources to results better. Plus, it allows you to craft and sculpt the sales messaging and experience to your micro-audience, versus a generic, scattered approach.
5. Use “abandon messaging” to save the sale.
Ever clicked out of a webpage only to get a popup sales message to help you finish the transaction? How about an email apologizing for any trouble you had with checking out of a website, and offering a 15 percent discount for the next 72 hours for your trouble? These are examples of abandon messaging.
Here is one more example that my company, Maui Mastermind, has used for some time now to expand our business coaching program. Imagine you were a business owner who wanted to grow your business, but to do it in a way that increased your time freedom. If you were on our website you’d see a prominent offer to download a free copy of my last bestseller, Build a Business Not a Job. If you took the 60 seconds to ask us to send you that book, but then didn’t click on the download link we immediately sent you to get to the download page and pick kindle, ibook, or pdf copy of the book, we next send you a series of 4 emails over the next two weeks to get you to “finish” the transaction you started with us – to get that 180 page book on growing your company and reducing its reliance on you. This is a form of “abandon messaging.”
Where do you lose people partway through the process of buying from your site? On your sales page? In the checkout process itself? Targeting abandon messaging is one way to get a fast 10 to 20 percent lift on overall conversion.
There you have five simple strategies to increase your sales conversion rates and grow your business. Good luck!
Want to find out more about our business coaching program?
Keywords: executive coaching, business coaching program, business coaching, business coach, business coaching program, build a business not a job