Increasing the website’s conversion rate is the marketing department’s top priority in many organizations. However, it’s often unclear where to start. This blog post will help you get off to the right start with conversion rate optimization. One of the first important steps to take is to understand who you are optimizing the website for. Who do you want to win over and what motivates this target group? Read on if you want to know how to convert your visitors.
The influence of motivation on conversion
The factor which has the greatest impact on conversion is visitors’ motivation. The more you can increase visitors’ motivation through conversion rate optimization, the greater the chance that your website’s conversion rate will increase. The following five questions will help you to influence your visitors’ motivation:
- Who do you want to influence with conversion rate optimization?
- Which purchasing phase is the visitor in?
- Where do your visitors come from?
- Which questions play a role in the visitor’s decision-making process?
- What is the visitor’s level of urgency?
The five W questions of conversion rate optimization
1) What is your target audience: who do you want to influence with conversion rate optimization?
It’s important to be as relevant as possible to your target audience. What do they value and how do they consume information? Consider the differences between a website designed for millennials and one for retired elderly people. A price-conscious consumer also makes different decisions from one who attaches less importance to price. And what about the differences between the type of information and presentation that are right for a new entrepreneur and a CEO? In short, visitors have different needs, so you need to adapt your conversion plan to the visitor.
2) Which purchasing phase is the visitor in?
New visitors who are interacting with your brand for the first time will need to be convinced in order to convert. Convincing loyal customers who have already bought something from you in the past is a lot easier. It’s therefore important to understand what phase your visitor is in, because for every phase of the customer journey, the information that’s needed is different. You need to offer the right thing at the right time! A well-known model that can help you here is Google’s See-Think-Do-Care model.
3) Where do your visitors come from?
There are many ways in which a visitor may end up on your landing page. That could include an advertising campaign or social media, for instance. Research has shown that visitors from organic search engine searches have the highest conversion rates. This is because they are actively looking for something specific and probably have an intention to purchase.
As mentioned earlier, it’s important to figure out which purchase phase your visitor is in. Knowing where your visitor comes from is also indispensable, as it helps you to display relevant information for each purchase phase, and hence to meet the visitor’s needs.
One way to respond to this information is by personalizing your web content. For instance, if your visitor arrives via Google with a specific search query, you can display a prominent promotional offer with the call to action ‘Buy now’. By contrast, a visitor who clicks through from one of your ads is in more of a fact-finding phase, so you might want to show him or her more product information, for example. In this way you can increase conversion rates by displaying the right content at the right time.
4) Which questions play a role in the visitor’s decision-making process?
Every product, service and conversion promotion has a marketing funnel. Whether you have devised this funnel in detail or not, there are a number of steps that the visitor goes through before deciding to buy something from you. In other words, before converting! Come up with answers to questions such as: can this company help me? Does it provide the service I’m looking for? Is this actually the best company to use? These are important questions that will lead a visitor to choose you or your competitor. You therefore need to make it as easy as possible for the visitor by answering your target audience’s questions.
5) What is the visitor’s level of urgency?
‘10 items left in stock’, ‘Order within 24 hours for free shipping’, ‘Discount code still valid for two weeks’. How much urgency is there behind your visitors’ motivation? Try to identify where your visitor may perceive a purchase as urgent. If you know how to get through to the visitor in the right way, you can boost conversion rates considerably.
Start increasing your conversion rate today
Now that you’ve answered the five W questions, you know what motivates your target audience and you’re ready to achieve results with conversion rate optimization. Using your answers to the questions you can set up various conversion tests. Collect all your ideas into a clear list, also called a test backlog, and start optimizing. There are numerous ways to test your plans such as personalization, A/B testing and marketing automation.
Create your own CRO plan
Although you want a higher conversion rate, are you unsure how to go about achieving it systematically? Or have you already done an A/B test, but are you still without a conversion rate optimization (CRO) plan? Don’t worry, you’re not alone! Contact us and one of our experts will be happy to help you.
