In the world of digital marketing, perhaps the most important strategy is what turns a casual browser into a customer for a business. Businesses find customers online in a number of ways including SEO, pay per click advertising, social media and email marketing. These online marketing strategies meet a customer where they are active online and then seek to turn them into a buyer of your product and service. However, without the right strategies in place to get them to convert, you could be left spending money on ad campaigns or a content strategy without results.
Below are four tips to help improve conversion rates for your website. While these are just suggestions, they are generally accepted best practices in digital marketing.
Run a Promotion
If your business operates in an industry that is heavily crowded and saturated with other businesses, you have to think about how you can stand out. For this reason, it’s recommended for all businesses to run some type of promotion to grab the interest of the user. Common promotions include percentage discounts, offering a free service with the purchase of another (buy one, get one free), a free gift with purchase and free shipping for e-commerce companies. Look at your current offering and decide if it makes sense to offer some type of promotion.
Example: After implementing a buy one service, get a service free for its laundry customers, Dirty Boy Laundry saw a 20% increase in sign-ups for its pickup and delivery laundry service.
Publish a Newsletter
If a user is not ready to convert right away, why not offer them something as a thank you for their visit to your website? This is most commonly found in newsletters or industry-specific reports. You can offer these materials to people which will, in turn, keep your business top of mind for them. You can use this as a way to gather email addresses too, and then mail to them anytime you have a new product, service or special coming up.
Example: A financial firm offered its latest tips on 2021 interest rates in exchange for an email. The campaign garnered renewed interest in the firm and landed a few long-term clients.
Offer a Free Trial
Any business selling software-as-a-service should consider a free trial for its users. Give your users a demonstration of your software with certain limitations in place so they can see how it works, but not a full version of it. Not only does this give your users a sneak peek of your product, but they will also be much more likely to buy into it. While this is noted for SaaS companies, this type of strategy could also work for a variety of business types. For instance, let’s say you operate a window-washing business and you decide to offer a free trial for customers by washing one of their windows. What do you think the likelihood is that they will hire your business for the rest of their home?
Example: A SaaS company that manages lease accounting for compliance began offering a limited-basis free trial for new users. Of the people who signed up, the company has noted a 42% change in subscriptions.
Provide Free Shipping
Specific to e-commerce businesses that sell products online, you should always consider giving free shipping to customers. Anyone who is hesitant to buy a product and convert on your website will be more likely to pull the trigger if they know free shipping is involved. And if you are considered with free shipping cutting into your margins, you can put in place certain limitations like free shipping on orders over $25.
Example: A website selling sunglasses online started offering free shipping on any orders of $59 or more. Not only did this offer make it easier for customers to convert, it also meant customers had to add more to their cart to get the offer. This, in turn, grew the business’s sunglasses sales by nearly 50%.
Review Data Frequently
It’s important to test new strategies to try to improve your website’s conversion rates. Test, review the data as frequently as possible and make adjustments to continue growing the conversion rate over time. Once you find the right strategy for your business, you’ll be well on your way to being the top business in your industry.
