It can be tempting to think that bells, whistles, bright colours and fireworks will all attract a visitor’s attention and help to steer them down a buying journey. This is a big mistake.
Firstly, complicated colour schemes and graphics can prove to be visually confusing, making it difficult for visitors to steer their way through your website towards a conversion.
Secondly, this kind of tactic piles pressure on visitors and has the same effect as a pushy salesman in real life – sending interested customers running for the hills. Keep it clean, clear and simple and you’ll convert better. Think about Google’s homepage.
5. Perfect your pitch
Tailor each page’s copy and tone to suit the target buyer the rcs database page is aimed at. For example, your homepage is the gateway to your website and it will attract the widest range of visitors so keep the copy broad and general to keep the biggest possible audience engaged. On deeper, more specialised category or landing pages, think hard about the visitors likely to be clicking through and write the copy with their needs, interests and objections in mind. Creating insightful buyer personas is key to successful CRO (conversion rate optimisation).
6. Think fast
Site speed can have a big impact on your conversion rate. If a website fails to load within 8 seconds, its bounce rate will be sky high as frustrated visitors immediately exit. Heavy use of high quality images and lots of clunky code behind the scenes will result in slow load times. Make sure your developers address this, pronto!
7. Take it from the top
Make sure that your key messages all appear in the top 300px of your website. On average monitors and screen resolutions this will be the very first part of the page your visitors see, any further information and content will be below the ‘fold’ (the bottom of the screen). Research shows that fewer than 50% of visitors will scroll down to read further information if they can’t find what they need in the top segment. That’s why it’s important to make sure your key messages, CTAs and crucial ‘buying journey links’ are a top priority.