How to Optimise Your Web Page for Conversions

You’re driving traffic, but you don’t have enough sales, signups or enquiries. If people are landing on your site and then leaving without taking action, and assuming they’re coming via relevant search terms, your conversion rate is letting you down. This is where conversion rate optimisation (CRO) comes in – optimising your web page to be more relevant to users and encourage them to take the right action. So how do you get started? Well, before you dive in to A/B testing, there are some key basics to get right.

Know What You Want the Visitor to Do

It might sound obvious, but many web pages try to do too much all at once. The reality is, each page should be focussed on one key action, whether that’s filling in a contact form, adding a product to the basket or downloading a guide. Everything on the page should support that one goal rather than splitting the effort between more than one action. A top tip to keep this front of mind is to start with the call-to-action before you even write or build the page, that way everything else gets created around the CTA.

Make It Blindingly Obvious What Action to Take

People don’t really read the internet any more – people quickly scan to find the information they’re looking for. This means that your CTA should be prominent (i.e. above the fold), punchy and stand out visually from the background of the page. Using clear outcome-oriented language works well, for example ‘get my quote’ rather than ‘click here’.

If your page is long, repeat the CTA further down so that consumers don’t have to scroll back and forth to find it.

Get Rid of the Clutter

Generally, your CTA should be the most prominent thing on the page. If it’s full of pop-ups, sliders, conflicting messages or even more than one CTA, users can easily become confused and frustrated, leading to higher bounce rates. Remember the KISS formula (keep it simple, stupid) and limit elements that don’t support your main goal.

This goes for style choices too – don’t add in colours and fonts without a really good reason.

Back Up Every Claim with Proof

Loads of retailers make claims, but that means consumers tend to take them with a pinch of salt. Easy ways to support your claims include verified reviews – particularly if they’re collected by a trusted third party review service – case studies and trusted logos (think “as seen on ITV”).

If you have some research backing your claim up, you can always footnote it and add a link to a longer page explaining the claim. If a user then tries to verify what you’re saying, they’ll be able to, and that in itself builds trust.

Speed Still Matters – A Lot

Page Speed has been a Thing for years, and even if we all have 5G now it’s here to stay. Every extra second your page takes to load increases the chances of someone abandoning their journey. If you’re lucky, they might come back later on, but why take that chance? Do your due diligence and compress images, avoid heavy plugins and invest in decent hosting, and – even better – check your page with tools like PageSpeed Insights every so often to get a granular report on what’s loading when.

Make Forms Short and Sweet

If your business relies on lead gen, there’s a balancing act between capturing enough information to provide your service, but not so much that the customer is put off. Especially in the post-GDPR world where if you’re capturing data, you’d better have a good reason for it. Every extra field is a little more effort, so try to make your form layout as simple and easy-to-use as possible. This means things like using a single column layout, clearly marking required fields, using autofill where possible and – if a field is filled in incorrectly – having helpful error messages that assist the user in rectifying the issue. If you absolutely have to use a multi-step form, show a progress bar.

Make It Mobile-First, Not Just Mobile-Friendly

Just like with page speed, the mobile-friendly web has been here for a good while now, but it’s amazing how many sites still take a desktop-first approach. This is just bad business sense, as the majority of web traffic is now on mobile. Your site absolutely has to be designed for these smaller screen sizes first. Think about how someone scrolls – you need large tap targets, thumb-friendly CTA placements, and sticky headers / footers with key actions that are obvious. Emulators don’t always give a true picture of the experience either, which means your testing should be done on real devices.

Use Heatmaps and Session Recordings

Microsoft Clarity is free, so there’s no excuse not to install it and get an idea of how real people are interacting with your pages. Tools like this, or Hotjar, will give you an idea of where people drop off, what they completely ignore on your page and even where they rage click (keep clicking in expectation of something happening). This can give you a solid steer towards which part of your page you should focus on improving.

A/B Test Everything — But Only One Thing at a Time

If you’ve got all of these basics right, then you can move on to actual A/B testing, but don’t fall into the trap of trying to do too much, too quickly. Test one thing at a time, and again keep it simple – focus on headlines, CTA copy, imagery etc before moving on to the big stuff. And try to control every other variable so that you get a fair test – if you’re running a sale during one version but not the other, it can absolutely skew the results. We’ve seen tests interrupted by things like the weather (a heatwave = no one is sat inside doing online shopping!) so don’t get hung up on test dates or duration at the expense of every other factor.

Final Thoughts

A high-converting web page isn’t necessarily the prettiest or most feature-packed; it’s the one that makes it as easy as possible for your ideal customer to take action. That means strip out non-essentials, tighten your messaging and guide the user through the funnel. Once you’ve nailed that, you can start testing and tweaking.

If you want help reviewing your landing pages or designing a better conversion journey, lets chat.