How to spot a poorly converting website and how to fix it
Understanding if your website is converting well or not is a complicated business.
Throwing your marketing budget at the home page can make it look pretty. Pouring over your content can gain great SEO rankings. And delivering preppy promotion can see your traffic increasing.
But that doesn’t automatically mean your website conversion rate will be good. If you’ve invested lots in the above, and your conversion rate remains low, it can leave you feeling a little baffled and bewildered.
But don’t worry, you’re not alone. Other than checking how many sales or leads are coming in each month, not many businesses have the tools or the ‘know how’ to check if a website is converting well.
To help you spot a poorly converting website and how you can fix it, we’re here to demystify conversion rates, why it’s so important to monitor them and what tools can help you.
Conversion rates and why you should monitor them
A conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the total number of visitors you’ve had to your website.
There is no ‘one size fits all’ answer when it comes to what defines a poorly converting website.
Each sector and business will be different according to the industry average for conversion rates and your previous analytics history.
However, common issues which can cause a poorly converting website includes: basing content on vanity rather than data, long winded and complicated copy, business blind spots and, not understanding your audience.
Regularly monitoring your website conversion rate will not only improve your audiences’ experience but in turn it will positively impact on your business profit growth.
How to improve your website conversion rates
Analytics, if used regularly (yes, we see those of you out there who set them up and then forget all about them) will help you to answer every question you have about your audience and what they get up to on your website.
Free analytics tools of course include Google Analytics. This tool gives a real-time insight to how your website is performing as well as enabling you to track audience behaviour, helping you to segment your traffic and drill down who your most valuable groups.
For example, if 70% of your website sales or leads come from mobile users, you need to ensure your website is optimised for mobile use.
Hot Jar is another little gem which can help identify the key areas of your website your customers are hitting, as well as potential drop off points that need further work.
So, if most traffic is coming via a PPC advert and people are then dropping off via the landing page, that would become your focus for improvements.
It is surprising how small changes can make a big difference to how well your website is converting.
One of the biggest win areas to test using analytics tools is your website copy.
Making changes to the copy, such as editing it to be as simple as possible or aligning it with the language your customers use, can really help to get people moving through the pages.
Why ongoing monitoring is useful
Once you’ve improved your website conversion rate, don’t sit back on your laurels because that performance then becomes your new norm.
To ensure, you maintain and grow your conversion rate, monitoring and evaluating the changes you’ve made, will help you to measure the return on investment.
For example, checking on the improvements you’ve made to the basket page to checkout journey, can help identify if it is your checkout process which is causing customers to drop off.
If you make changes, but don’t monitor their impact, you may not be able to spot where in the funnel things are still going wrong. Leading us back to the baffled and bewildered feelings we mentioned earlier.
To help measure your return on investment further, the strategic heroes at DP Marketing and Communications have developed a handy Conversion Rate Optimiser calculator (download it here for free).
This free tool will help you see the links between key aspects for improving your website conversion rate, including how reducing website bounces will help increase your sales or lead conversions, and ultimately your profit margin.
How using a professional with the right tech can help
Now anyone can set up the analytic tools which will help you to improve a poorly converting website. But not everyone knows how to use them to their full potential.
Unless you are a conversion Count or Countess yourself, you may not understand the industry or what questions to ask when it comes to website improvements.
There is so much information available when you know what you are doing, and an optimisation professional will know where to look, what tools to use and how to translate the insights into actions.
Using a professional also gives a ‘fresh look’ at your website, meaning you can side step any blind spots you might have developed from working in your business environment every day.
But fear not, it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg.
How DP Marketing Communications can help
Here a DP Marketing Communications, we offer a big agency experience, without the huge price tag.
Our strategists and optimisation champions can help to maximise your website conversions and sky rocket your profits. They do this by identifying problematic hot spots, developing action plans and testing changes.
To help improve a poorly converting website, we would recommend investing in a minimum of 5 hours of optimisation work a month, in order to see the desired results.
In the meantime, grab your ROI calculator below and check if your website is making you money!
