You have a WordPress website, and people are coming to it. The problem is that people aren’t buying or completing the form – converting.
This problem is common. It’s one of the biggest struggles for marketers.
It’s not impossible to solve, though. Optimizing your website for conversions is the natural next step on the road to online success.
So, let’s do it.
Google Analytics
By now, you probably have Google Analytics set up for your site. If you don’t, click here. (You can also use Google Tag Manager. We’ll cover that more in another tutorial.)
Google Analytics can show you where people go when they come to your site. It shows you which pages they visit, and when they decide to leave your site.
Pay extra attention to where they leave your site. That last page speaks volumes about why they didn’t convert.
- If they leave an article, it was likely because they didn’t think the article met their needs.
- If they left while on a product page, it was because they didn’t like the price or they felt that it wasn’t the right product.
- If they left after hitting a landing page, it didn’t pertain to them or excite them enough to make them follow through.
As you can see, the last page tells you a lot.
Heat Maps
Heat maps are signal you can use to understand what your users are looking at while on your site. For instance, someone may mouse over the main navigation but then leave your site. This means the person didn’t find what he/she needed.
The person may enter information into a form but then leave. What this means is that the person found the form to be too intrusive or long.
You can also tell if someone gets to the end of an article means that it must have been interesting enough to reach the end. You can gather from that the reader found what was needed, but there was something that didn’t lead him to convert. This can depend on several factors – the right target audience for the article or maybe the right call to action at the end.
If you’re selling weight loss supplements, an article on how to lose weight in 3 days may not be the best. People will read the article for the tips, but since they were not looking for supplements, to begin with, they will likely not convert. Sure, you’ll have some who will be interested when they hear that the supplements can help, but the majority of people are just looking for how to lose weight in 3 days. For better conversions, it’s better to have an article about how to use supplements to lose weight. That way you get people who want to lose weight with the help of supplements.
A/B Testing
A/B testing is when you setup multiple variations of the same page to test how changes in that page, change the users behavior.
For example, if you have a form very high up on a page you are likely to find that it will convert better than if it is at the very bottom of the page. On that form, you may find that simple things like having labels make your conversion rates go up. (or even down, depending on your implementation)
There are many plugins that you can use to setup A/B testing. Nelio A/B testing is the easiest we’ve found so far.
Take an In-depth Look at All Pages
Now you have a basic idea of how optimizing your website for conversions works. You need to track what your users do on your site, and then come up with the reasons they do what they do. Once you know, you can make changes that can improve your conversion rate.
If you need more help, contact us. We can uncover the reasons for your low conversion rates and then help you boost them with minor changes to your site.
