It’s the dream of every business owner to reach their customers quicker and boost conversions.

Your website gives you multiple opportunities to reach your customers quicker. It’s why focusing on site performance and design is so important, especially for online businesses.

A few simple steps give you the power to bring more customers to your site and increase sales, newsletter sign-ups or any other type of conversion. Let your website work for you and increase profits and efficiency.

Optimise Your Site For Search

Many of your customers are likely searching for a keyword related to your business or even your business name. If your site’s not optimised, it might not show up in search results. WordPress already has some built-in optimisation, but you can make it even better. A few things to consider are:

• Using a responsive design to meet Google’s mobile requirements and the 1.5 billion mobile Internet users
• Using natural sounding keywords throughout content
• Developing a site with clean code
• Using alt tags for images
• Creating a clear site structure
• Using SEO plugins

These are just a few ways to optimise your site. When Google and other search engines are bringing visitors to you, you’re able to reach customers faster without as much marketing.

A/B Test Elements For Better Conversions

You’ve placed a sign-up form on the left side of your site, but what if it worked better on the right? The placement, font size and even colour of elements on your page affect how visitors engage with them. This is where A/B testing comes into play. You’re able to test the results of different strategies to see which works best for your audience. This approach works well for all aspects of marketing, such as email open rates, social media campaigns, content types and element placement on your site.

Showcase Feedback

Obviously, this works best if the majority of the feedback is positive. The idea is once visitors are on your site, you want to encourage them to complete an action, such as making a purchase. Just like you, customers like to know what previous customers think. Displaying real reviews from customers alongside a product helps customers make a decision faster without leaving your site to do research (and possibly find a competitor).

For instance, WikiJob tested conversions using real versus overly enthusiastic testimonials. The site saw a 34% increase in conversions with this one simple change.

Take Advantage Of Plugins

WordPress is highly customisable with thousands of free and paid plugins. Developers even create custom plugins to better meet a site’s needs. These plugins are designed to boost site performance, help you master SEO techniques, provide more control over a page’s layout post-design, integrate with social media and much more. Don’t be afraid to use them.

Utilise Analytics

Do you know where your visitors are coming from? What if you’re spending all your time marketing on Facebook, but your target audience is on Twitter? Analytics help you figure out who your target audience is, where they’re at online and what they like best. For instance, if you’re running social media and email campaigns, analytics software shows you which one is most effective.

The more you learn about your customers, the easier it is to tweak your approach to reach them faster and easier. Of course, the more customers you reach, the higher your conversions will be. Luckily, there are quite a few analytics plugins to help you out.

Engage With Your Customers

Your customers want to interact with you. This means being active on social media, providing a feedback/contact form on your site and providing useful content. Talking to your customers helps build a strong brand reputation, which increases social recommendations. Adding useful content to your site on regular basis gives your customers something to talk about and it also brings new customers to your site through organic searches. The more you interact, easier it is to reach your customers and boost conversions.

Conclusion

Realising your dream of bringing in customers quicker is possible. All it takes is a few tweaks to your site and how you interact with your potential and existing customers. Make these improvements and you could finally see your conversion rate increase.

Need help changing your site for better performance? Let StuartMedia help you through the changes to give your business the boost it needs. 

Image: Marc Levin