Why Does your Conversion Rate Stink? Part 2

seo-marketing-design-backlinks-illustrationIn Why Does Your Conversion Rate Stink?: Part 1, you learned some of the first steps as to why your site might get high traffic, but somehow you still have a stinky conversion rate.  It’s really impossible to cover all the reasons your conversion rate stinks, but cover some of the major reasons, and you should notice a solid improvement in your conversion rate.  Here are some additional reason why your site may not be getting the conversion rate you want:

Slow load times.

People want it, and they want whatever is they want right now!  Everyone knows this is the case in modern society, yet many websites load slowly.  How do you know if yours loads too slowly?  A simple eyeball test is to click on a link, and if there’s more than a heartbeat between the time you click and the time the information your customer is looking for, then that’s too long.  If you want a more technical way of checking your site’s load time, then use the Google PageSpeed tool.  A score of 90 or better means your site is loading quickly enough, and a quick load time also helps with your rankings in Google.

Uninspiring content.

All the big companies have customer persona documents, which are incredibly detailed documents regarding the various customer types they market towards.  The reason they do this is because they can get higher conversion rates by marketing towards a researched persona, as opposed to smaller businesses who haven’t done the research.  You probably don’t have the budget or time to do the research, but you can examine bounce rates in your analytics tool.  Bounce rates, which are when people view one page on your site and then leave, should be somewhere between 40% to 60% in order to be considered “good.”  If your bounce rate is greater than 60%, your content doesn’t mean much to your audience.  Develop more content along the lines of that which sits in the 40% to 60% bounce rate range.

Lack of “trust signals.”

“Trust signals” are things such as testimonials, showing a physical address, displaying a phone number and answering it, and clear, simple, and prominently placed shipping and return policies.  Remember, everything about your site should communicate ease and professionalism.  If anything is difficult or less-than-obvious to do, it’s going to cause at least some visitors to question your credibility and leave for another site that does offer credibility.  The more real you can make your company seem, the better off you are.  If you blog, be sure to talk a little about your employees – people like to know who your company is.

Don’t ask for too much information.

after googling myself i feel happy again

If a conversion for you means having someone sign up for a newsletter or register a new username, then make the process as easy as possible.  “Easy” literally can mean asking only for people’s first name and e-mail address for signing up.  For each field of information after that which follows, your conversion rates will dip.  The same goes for signing up for user names and passwords.  Make sure your password policy is easy to follow.  Yes, security is important, but users can create perfectly secure passwords with a mix of letters and numbers – there’s no more need to make it any more difficult than that.

An outside eye helps!

Let’s admit it – it’s always helpful to have people available to you who can see the mistakes you are making that you are unable to see.  Do search through your site for all of these problems yourself, but when you’re done, have a friend or professional help you.  It may be hard to admit your mistakes, but when you uncover and fix them, your business’s profitability will thank you!

Last Updated on December 8, 2013 by Dan Stelter

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