Written by: 👩💻 Kimmi, Lead Designer
Are you getting thousands of website visits, but only single digit sales? It sounds like you need to engage in conversion rate optimisation to improve your website conversion rate. Just like a leaky pipe, if you have gaps in your website where customers fall through, you're diminishing your ability to increase conversion rate and convert customers into sales. Marrying your web design to the customer purchase journey and making it as easy and frictionless as possible is crucial for improving your conversion rate. We've outlined 12 practical steps for how to enhance your website conversion rate, accessible to anyone (no design background required).
Skip to
What is a conversion rate and conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?
How to Calculate Website Conversion Rate = (Total Conversions / Total Website Visitors) x 100
Your website's role is to guide users from point A (landing page) to point B, the desired action, such as making a booking or checking out. When I created my first website for an e-commerce client, I was perplexed by the meager 2-3 sales per week. I realised that while the website was visually engaging, it was riddled with leaks and issues that no pixel-perfect graphics could fix. The website did not support the user through their purchasing journey, hindering the website conversion rates. This experience underscored the importance of conversion rate optimisation, a principle that continues to drive my work 7 years later.
Note: The global average e-commerce website conversion rate sits at 2.58% (source).
Why is conversion rate optimisation important?
It's a key metric for evaluating how well your website serves as your business's digital linchpin. Linking back to the water pipe analogy, a website poor at conversion rate optimisation is like a pipe full of holes with water seeping through each second. You can pour as much water as you want into the pipe (i.e., more marketing to drive more traffic), but if there are big holes, you're wasting effort and missing out on opportunities to optimise conversions.
One common leak for any business with public prices is the pricing page. Most are not built with conversion rate optimisation in mind and fail to help the customer make a decision, and ultimately, a purchase:
The cost structure isn’t easy to understand
It isn’t easy to compare options
Visitors don’t know which option is best for them
There is no clear way to book / signup / buy
Other common leaks that negatively impact your conversion rate optimisation efforts are due to broken user flows, long forms, slow loading times, or content that doesn't convey the value of your offer, potentially increasing your bounce rate.
In contrast, high converting websites share three things in common: (1) A great user experience, (2) appealing and digestible content, and (3) the incorporation of the customer purchasing journey in their website's design. Achieving a successful website conversion optimisation is best done through a strategic design of a website's pages, flow, look, and content with the customer purchasing journey in mind.
A higher conversion rate means your website design is effectively converting visitors to leads or paying customers: fewer leaks, more value, and a testament to successful conversion rate marketing.
Other crucial ways it affects your business are:
Increasing sales & revenue
Reducing customer acquisition costs (CAC)
Increasing return on investment (ROI): the money you spend on marketing and directing traffic to your website is resulting in more sales
Boosting customer loyalty and brand presence: excellent user experiences results in happy customers who are more likely to return and make repeat purchases, or refer.
How to improve website conversion rate: 12 tips for 2024
Develop your value proposition: Do you have an offer so compelling that it makes customers feel stupid saying no to? Your value prop is the single most important factor in your conversion rate. If you’ve nailed it, your site visitors will tolerate a lot of other imperfections in the experience in order to get your product. Review your site and ask yourself, “Is it clear what my product is and why customers need it?”
Optimise your landing page: Users spend 80% of their time looking at this space, they only give 20% of their attention to anything below as they scroll (source). This space should be reserved only for your value proposition and main call-to-action (CTA), showcasing your offer that makes people feel stupid saying no to. Doing otherwise is a huge leak in your pipe.
Place your call-to-action in your navigation: Call-to-action (CTA) is the button users need to click to perform your desired action of conversion. Ie. Make a reservation, Book a session, Shop products. Placing this button persistently in your navigation makes it always accessible, and easy to spot, no matter what page a visitor finds themselves in.
Optimise each page for one conversion goal: In each page, users should know exactly where they are (navigation menus, breadcrumbs, page titles), what they need to do (call-to-action to convert) and what will happen when they do it. Instead of having multiple offers and CTAs in one page, streamline your content to focus on the main purpose of the page.
‘Undesign’ your pages: Declutter your pages and remove all unnecessary content or visual elements. Remember that attention is hard to grab, and easy to lose. In 2.5 seconds, customers will decide if they want to move forward, or leave. Any content that doesn’t communicate or reinforce your value offer and brand, is unnecessary.
Show real customers in your photos and testimonials: Replace generic stock images with high quality photos that show your customers interacting with your product. Ie. Show happy customers eating in your restaurant, make it clear that these are real photos of real customers. Not only does this social proof your business, but it builds trust and shows that you exist; it’s science.
Streamline forms & checkout: How many times have you abandoned your shopping cart because of a hidden cost or left a store because the line to buy was too long? If there’s friction during the checkout process, users will leave, so don’t give them a reason to. Allow guest checkouts, reduce the number of form fields, accept Google Pay or PayPal, and I’ll say it louder, remove surprise shipping fees.
State the purpose of your CTA in the CTA: Avoid the common mistake of making your CTAs ‘Go’ or ‘Learn more’ which creates uncertainty as users don’t know what to expect (source). Clearly state the purpose of each CTA in the CTA copy. Ie. ‘Checkout’ instead of ‘Continue’, ‘Get free brand analysis’ instead of ‘Submit’.
Add global search: It’s simple, make it easy for customers to search and browse for the products they want.
Optimise for mobile devices: With 61% of online traffic coming from mobile, the growth of mobile e-commerce (M-Commerce) is only going to rise. It’s more important than ever that your website is mobile-device friendly and optimised, meaning its interface is fit for use on small devices and optimised to drive sales.
Speed up: A one-second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions. Think about the last time you waited for a slow website to load. It’s simple- fast website = better conversion rate. Ensure your images sizes are optimised for web, remove unnecessary code and limit external scripts. Here’s a free tool to check your own page speed: https://pagespeed.web.dev/.
Use heatmaps to investigate user behaviour: Heatmap tools help visualise hot and cold areas; areas where visitors click, scroll or linger the most. This helps you decide where to place the most important information, and what content you can remove. Heatmap guide.
Bonus Tip: Experiment with A/B testing: Adopting an experimentation mindset will take your business to the next level. By testing variations of designs, you get deeper insights into exactly what designs get you more customers and sales.
When to run conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategies?
Always. Market demands and customer expectations are constantly changing, and like a business, your website should continuously adapt to user needs with effective conversion rate optimization strategies. Take the largest e-commerce store in the world, Amazon, for example. Amazon consistently experiments with various layouts, features, and functionalities to enhance the user experience and improve conversion, embodying a robust conversion rate optimization strategy. By doing so, they maintain a leading edge, always ahead of the curve in CRO.
Continuously testing and iterating your website with conversion rate optimisation techniques, including a/b testing, split testing, and multivariate testing, means you're constantly improving and learning about your target customer. It's the secret to immediate and compounding success, ensuring your conversion rate optimisation efforts pay off.
Final thoughts
Improving your website conversion rate is one of the most impactful steps you can take in growing your business. We know it can be hard work, especially when you’re already wearing so many hats. If you are looking for expert help to take your website to the next level, just like a plumber for a leaky pipe, Fable Digital offers Web design services that specialise in website conversion rate optimisation for your website’s most important actions. At Fable Digital our mission is to empower business to thrive in the digital landscape so business owners can focus on what matters to them in the real world.
Looking to improve your website's conversion rate, and grow your business?
Book a call with one of our founders, Calvin. We'll chat about your business, vision and craft a strategy best suited for your unique situation.
