Generating visitor traffic to one’s website is challenging enough. By the time you actually funnel someone to your site, you sure don’t want him or her to bounce back out.
But if you aren’t steadily moving your visitors to action, your conversion rate is likely suffering.
Three Ways to Persuade Visitors to Action
It’s pretty difficult to nail a benchmark conversion rate across ecommerce, or even a specific industry or niche. So many variables are in play that most of us couldn’t possibly compare our website’s conversion rate against that of competing sites.
However, if you study your analytics and notice that your bounce rate is climbing and your conversion rate declining, you can be sure that something’s not right. Every business needs a concrete strategy for how it’s going to move visitors to action, and that includes yours.
To put it as simply as one can, you need to do three basic things.
- Tell Them What to Do
The first step is the simplest, but it’s the most frequently overlooked: Tell your visitors what to do. You can’t leave them to their own devices and hope they’ll make the right decisions.
On the other hand, you mustn’t plead with them or throw out soft requests. Be strong and firm, and let them know exactly which action they ought to take. The Gruber Law Offices website is a great example.
The firm’s website header declares: “Injured? One Call … That’s All.” That statement is immediately followed by a command: “Click Here To Get Help Now!”
Given all of the options that flow past the eyes of Internet users, there’s something refreshing about being told what to do and receiving simple but active steps for following through. Find a way to do this on your own site and you’re likely to see positive results.
- Offer Something for Free
Another technique is to offer the reader something for free in return for his or her action. People love free stuff, and many will respond when they perceive a free offer could be useful to them.
A popular tactic is to offer a free eBook in return for an email address or another valuable piece of information. You can see this in action on this page from Creative Market.
Other free offers might consist of white papers, webinars, product samples, quotes, or complimentary services. Find something that could be sufficiently enticing to inspire visitors to action, but not so costly or time-consuming that it will set you back.
- Eliminate Friction
Finally, if you want to move your visitors to action, you have to eliminate as much friction as you can. There are three primary ways to do this:
- Simple design. The first is to do away with all of the busy-ness of traditional web design and aim for something minimal and clean. You have to strip away superfluous details and graphics, insert plenty of negative space, and focus on elements that will directly encourage action.
- No commitment required. Visitors won’t want to commit to a lot right away. If you’re going to make an offer, don’t attach any strings. You can emphasize this literally by saying something like, “No credit card information required!”
- Simple opt-in form. If you’re going to use opt-in forms, make them as short and concise as possible. One or two fields that request a name and email address should be sufficient.
If you do these three things, you’ll make your website a much smoother and more efficient experience for your visitors. And that will make it easier and more natural for them to feel moved to action.
Never Stop Optimizing
You shouldn’t ever stop optimizing your site for more conversions. As soon as you think you have everything figured out, something will change.
You can learn a lot from A/B testing and continual monitoring of your website analytics. Look for trends and shifts and try to keep your website copy, design, and CTAs perpetually fresh.
This is the only way to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving marketplace.