February 2024
10 strategies for high-converting websites you need to know
You can start here with 7 quick wins and 3 more expansive strategies for high-converting websites.
If your traffic rates are high, you might be feeling really good about your SEO efforts.
But what good are those efforts really if your conversion rate is sub-zero?
It’s easy enough to blame your website visitors if they aren’t converting:
- Maybe they’re not serious.
- I’m just attracting a bunch of tire-kickers.
- No one is ready to buy.
And you’d kind of be right.
The fact is that 96% of website visitors aren’t ready to buy.
That’s why you need to optimize your website so you can convert the scant 4% who are ready.
But just knowing something isn’t working can be really overwhelming.
Where do you even start to make changes that are worth your time, effort, and money in some cases?
You can start here with 7 quick wins and 3 more expansive strategies for high-converting websites.
Put these to good use on your own site and see what happens.
The fact is that 96% of website visitors aren’t ready to buy. That’s why you need to optimize your website so you can convert the scant 4% who are ready.
7 quick wins to increase your website conversion rate
1. Make your value clear.
You have less than 3 seconds to catch your readers’ attention (and only 50 milliseconds to impress them with your design prowess), which is where most websites immediately go wrong:
The headline – or hero area – is unclear.
The first words on your website should convey your brand’s value proposition.
What do you do?
And for whom?
Pro tip: Include the target keyword you want to rank for in your H1.
2. Give direction.
Once you’ve captured attention, you want to tell readers what to do next.
Make sure you’ve included a clear call to action on each page of your website.
Bonus points if your call to action makes someone excited to click on it because it promises something of value to them if they do.
For example: Qualify more leads vs. Sign up now
The first CTA would work well for something like an ebook that teaches strategies to find more qualified leads for your business.
3. Show that you’re a human.
An incredibly easy conversion booster?
Showing your face.
People will ignore stock photos and low-quality images on your website, but including a professional photo of you or your team can help increase conversions.
Why? Because people buy from people and having faces on your website makes you easier to trust for “humanistic decision makers” who value that connection.
4. Use social proof.
Think about the last time you bought something big without asking someone for advice.
It’s rare, right?
The thing is that we’re more likely to buy something if someone else approves it. Especially if that someone is similar to us in some way.
That’s why you can easily increase conversions just by including client testimonials under each of your service or product offerings.
It’s an instant seal of approval from other people in your target audience.
5. Keep it mobile-friendly.
As of November 2023, people using mobile devices contribute to 56.2% of all website traffic.
Which means you need to be accessible to mobile users. It’s really non-negotiable.
Review your website navigation on your phone and make sure it’s easy to read and click on so you don’t potentially lose out on more than half your leads.
6. Check it often.
Imagine suddenly realizing your contact form isn’t working. And hasn’t been for months.
It happened to a colleague of mine, and it could just as easily happen to you – unless you check your forms and links often.
Go through each page of your site and make sure anything you can click on…works.
Pro Tip: Set a calendar reminder to send yourself a completed contact form at least once a month.
7. Be accessible.
There is nothing worse than feeling like you can’t talk to someone.
You don’t have to install a fancy AI chatbot on your website, but you do want to make sure potential clients and customers can easily reach you.
Pro Tip: Put your email address in the footer of your website and make it easy to get in touch with you.
Investing in high-quality images of yourself, products, services, or team will make your audience – and you – take your business even more seriously.
3 more (expansive) strategies to consider
Once you’ve gone through all the quick wins, your website will be as optimized as possible with what you already have to work with.
And sometimes, you only need to make small changes to improve your conversion rates.
But sometimes, you need to go a bit deeper.
If it’s time to invest in a truly high-converting website, check out the next 3 strategies:
1. Look good.
Nothing screams “we take this seriously” like a professional photoshoot.
Investing in high-quality images of yourself, products, services, or team will make your audience – and you – take your business even more seriously.
Like we mentioned before, stock photos aren’t good for much more than filler.
And having professional photos that make you feel like a million bucks will likely result in a lot more promotional marketing than you’ve done before.
Professional photography = instant brand elevation.
2. Sound good.
A lot of people struggle with making their own brand sound good.
It’s really hard to convey value without feeling like you’re full of yourself unless you get someone else to do it for you.
Investing in copywriting specific to your business and target audience is a sure way to increase conversions.
Bonus if it includes SEO strategies that make you even harder to miss.
3. Be good.
You can – and should – be able to base everything else about your brand on a solid foundation.
And the best way you can make that foundation truly unshakeable? Branding.
Investing in branding will not only elevate your brand appearance, but it will also elevate your inner workings, giving you guiding values and making you totally, uniquely identifiable.
Investing in branding will not only elevate your brand appearance, but it will also elevate your inner workings, giving you guiding values and making you totally, uniquely identifiable.
What’s a good conversion rate?
The average conversion rate for most landing pages is 9.7%
Your website is more than a landing page (it’s a collection of web pages optimized for multiple audiences and services/products), but you can use benchmarks like this to judge your performance.
That said, not all industries can expect the same results.
Conversion rates can vary greatly between from, say real estate to restaurants, so you want to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples.
The Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report can give you some great insights.
Create a high-converting website that works
I’d love to leave you with some great examples of high-converting websites in the wild, but the truth is that most of the ones we can verify come from examples that won’t matter to you.
They’re from well-known, multi-million dollar companies like Discord, Mint, and MailChimp.
Those brands employ a lot of the strategies listed here, but they get to rely a whole lot less on things like professional photography and human elements because they’re already so well-known.
Instead of studying them, I suggest you do this:
Pay attention to what attracts you.
When you follow links from an ad, a social post, an email, or anything else, consider why you followed the link.
What compelled you to click?
Learning your own buying patterns and behavioral quirks can go a long way in understanding what makes your audience tick, too.
One last Pro Tip for you: make sure you have GA4 installed on your website so you can track your bounce and conversion rates, monitor changes, and make adjustments as needed.
And if you’re ready to get help creating your high-converting website, book your consultation call here.