You can read about improving conversions all day every day and your pages won’t sell any better. You need to take action.
Here are 21 great ideas for increasing conversions that you can complete in 30 minutes or (a lot) less.
All you have to do is sit down and take 30 minutes or less to tackle one of the following hacks.
The more of them you complete, the more money in the bank! Literally.
1. Start A/B Testing (30 min)
This is the first tip because it’s also the most important.
Just because something worked for Buffer app, doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you – so start measuring what will.
It’s fairly easy — if you’re using a landing page service (like Unbounce or LeadPages), A/B testing is probably already included in the software so it’s even easier to set up.
If you self-host, I suggest you take a look at Google Experiments – here’s how you set it up.
- time-split testing is not good enough; test two or more versions simultaneously
- you generally learn more by making bigger changes
2. Try Different Microcopy (8 min)
While this is an example of a smaller change, it can have a large impact. Change text on buttons from action- into a more value-oriented copy like ‘make your life better’ or ‘get this product now’.
3. Make Your Buttons Stand Out (10 min)
Every now and then I find an article suggesting that a certain colour of call to action buttons works the best and that everyone should use it right now. I mean ‘studies’ like this one.
Of course, the evaluation of that experiment is false — what really works with buttons is not red color, but contrast. If your page is mainly orange, use blue or violet for buttons. If it’s text-based, make your buttons big and shiny.
Other small hacks to make your button stand out more:
- add an arrow pointing to it
- add a photo of someone looking at it
- make it look ‘button-y’ & add a nice hover effect
- make all buttons with the same function look similar
- repeat the button more than once, but keep one instance above the fold
4. Add a Text Link to Your Buttons (5 min)
Can you name the banners on the last site you visited? Do you even remember seeing them?
Probably not.
We’ve become almost immune to all the graphical impulses on the web – and the same might be happening to your buttons. Add a small text link below them to ‘catch’ all those visitors who had become ‘banner-blind’.
5. Add Live Chat (15 min)
People come to your page with questions. Your task is to answer these questions or else they will leave. Providing an easy way to contact can help you find out what those questions are so you can fix your page.
Neat, huh? If you want my recommendation, use Zopim.
6. Add an Animated Countdown (8 min)
To leverage the power of urgency in marketing, sales copy for infomercials often includes a ‘call in the next 10 minutes to [get exclusive value]’. You can do that too if you don’t mind being a little bit dishonest – just embed a countdown gif into your site. Who needs that stupid Javascript anyway.
7. Make Your Copy About Benefits(~15 min)
Your app is awesome because it’s built with Ruby. But do customers care?
As it turns out, they don’t — unless they’re nerds (hey, I can say that). So make it about them and rewrite your copy so it’s about benefits instead of features. I know, it may hurt a little, but just test it out, kthxbai.
8. Improve Your Forms (25 min)
Nothing makes me close a tab quite like a long form I have to fill out. Except maybe this entire site.
Anyway, make sure to:
- ask for as little information as possible (you can ask for more later — like after they’ve completed the purchase)
- show order progress indicators like this one:
- save information and pre-populate form fields
- use smart defaults (If the majority of purchases come from two countries, put those on the top of selection drop down.)
- don’t make customers sign up in order to purchase
- again, DON’T MAKE CUSTOMERS SIGN UP
9. Create Traffic-Source-Specific Versions of the Page (>20 min)
You need a couple of versions for testing, and then you need a few for different traffic sources. That means you should custom-tailor the landing page to guest blog posts, individual PPC ads, or even visits from search engines.
Make sure that they all fulfil the promise made at the traffic source — if there’s a discount mentioned in an AdWords ad, put that into your page’s copy. If you’re guest posting on another blog, redirect visitors to a custom page that is matching that blog’s design.
10. Make Your Banners Match the Landing Page (10min)
The page will seem more familiar to the visitors after they’ve clicked a banner with the same colours and headline. Familiarity breeds trust and trust sells.
Especially if you’re using display advertising, definitely try this out — it’s also pretty easy to do since you’re using existing design.
11. Hijack Trust From Other Brands (15 min)
Another effective strategy to make your brand more trustworthy is by connecting with other, already established brands that people already trust.
But what if you’re not friends with Mark Zuckerberg?
Well, then you can ‘steal’ that trust. It’s not as complicated or dirty as it sounds; there are many brands you’re already associated with, like payment processors, or shipping services.
Or you can just associate yourself with them. Nathan Barry is the master of this trick, as we can see in this screenshot:
Let’s read this again: Basecamp, Facebook, MailChimp, and Facebook all have different interface design needs than a traditional marketing website.
Yeah. That was super-necessary. And genius. We see what you did there, Nathan!
More examples of how you can leverage other brands:
- include any partner logos (manufacturing, fulfilment, …)
- display ‘Featured in’: blogs and other media that mentioned your brand
- show certificates (like SSL) and web security services
- stick on badges like ‘hand made’ or ‘made in Europe’
- quote authorities (Did Steve Jobs at some point say something related to your product? Tell us about it. No, really.)
12. Display Social Proof (15 min)
OMG if you don’t do this already.
If you must, ask friends or give a few items away to get the initial testimonials, and then put it on your page. If you have a huge following, display that too, or let people know how many units have already been sold.
13. Throw Out External Links (7 min)
You either paid well or worked your ass off to get a visitor to your page. Do you want them to now go check out your twitter account?
Of course not.
So in the bin with all links that lead out of your page – including links under testimonials, partner links, and social media (even social sharing!).
14. Throw Out Internal Links (>10 min)
Having a landing page that is a part of the site is a big no-no. Don’t let visitors wander off to your blog — hide all navigation, footers, sidebars, and other distracting stuff and let them focus on the offer at hand.
15. Perform Basic Usability Testing (25 min)
To get a clearer idea of how usable your page actually is, have somebody browse through it while you watch. Let them ask questions about the product and then include those in the FAQ.
Now this person can be either your friend or somebody from the street (you could even get someone from Fiverr) — just make sure they are a part of your target audience.
16. Offer Less Options (15 min)
When you give the buyer more options, you’re actually making them (and your conversions) a misfavor. Try distilling it down to one or two choices and see what happens.
17. Experiment With Pricing (10 min)
On a related note, another reason to offer two options instead of just one is to leverage price anchoring. You can also try different experiments like round or odd numbers or even removing the dollar sign from the price. Humans are silly like that.
18. Replace Those Stupid Stock Photos (30 min)
Stock photos don’t give any real value to your visitors. As far as conversions are concerned, they may as well not be there — and are therefore just taking up valuable real estate of your landing page.
Even if you can’t afford to hire a photographer right now, take a couple of photos of your team with your phone or show screenshots of your interface.
19. Hide the Coupon Code Box (2 min)
Coupon code field may motivate your visitors to go browse the web for that code that you may or may not have.
It’s like you don’t want them to buy anything.
There is more than one way of solving this; you could:
- Hide the box when there aren’t any promotions running
- Hide the box with JavaScript – an idea by Craig Sullivan explained in this post:
- Create different checkout pages depending on the traffic source (with code box showing up only for visitors from sites like RetailMeNot)
- Store coupon code with GET method (within the URL) and apply discount automatically
20. Add a Tag to One of Your Packages (10 min)
People don’t like making decisions.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Every decision your visitors have to make is … www.designforfounders.com/improve-conversions/” quote=”Every decision your visitors have to make is a reason for them to leave the page.”]
Why not make it easier? Recommend one of the options by adding a tag to it – like ‘most popular’, ‘best value’, or simply ‘recommended’.
21. Put Your Best Copy Forward (10 min)
On the web, nobody reads. Break your copy into bullet points and/or use bold for emphasis (see this post?).
Other most read parts of any page are the headline, post scriptums at the end, and image captions so make sure to put your most important benefits and bonuses there.
Ok, now go improve conversions!
Of course, you don’t have to do all of these; pick a few that seem the most applicable to you. Then schedule 30 minutes every day to implement each one. You could drastically improve your conversions within a single week!
And now, what would you add to this list? Post your suggestions below and of course feel free to share this article.
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