Learning how to increase your conversion rate is one of the best ways to grow your business. Whether you’re selling physical products, digital downloads, or services, the success of your company depends on two things: how many people you reach and how many you convert.
While many marketers and business leaders focus on the first half of the equation, investing in email marketing, social media, and content creation, it’s crucial not to overlook the second step.
Even if you achieve the “average conversion rate” among most companies (2.5% -3 %), there’s always room for improvement. Simple strategies like gathering the right data, optimizing user experiences, and even using the right CTAs can make all the difference.
Here’s your practical guide to conversion rate optimization in 2024.
What Is a Conversion Rate and Why Does It Matter?
Before we begin looking at ways to increase conversion rate, it’s worth briefly defining what a conversion rate actually is. It’s not just the number of customers who buy your products. Your conversion rate refers to the number of people who do whatever you ask them to do on your site.
That could mean signing up for a newsletter, subscribing to a webinar about your new product launch, or just filling out a contact form. Your conversion rate looks at the number of people who visit your site compared to the number of people who act.
This means if you get 100,000 visitors to your webinar landing page and only 800 people sign up, your conversion rate would be 8%.
Investing in conversion rate optimization means taking specific measures designed to encourage more positive actions from your audience. Done successfully, it doesn’t just improve your revenue; it also ensures you have the tools you need in place to earn consistent sales.
How to Increase Conversion Rate in 2024
There are various methods companies can use to increase conversion rates, but some are definitely more effective than others. For instance, in the past, you might have filled your site with pop-ups and banners designed to convince people to buy something. Now, you’re more likely to get results if you focus on optimizing the user experience.
Here are the tactics you can use for conversion rate optimization in 2024.
1. Go In-Depth With Your Data
Optimizing any business strategy and achieving sustainable growth starts with data. Guessing what your customers want and which product pages and conversion tools will work won’t get you the best results. Instead, you need to commit to constantly collecting useful insights.
Start with the quantitative data you can get from solutions like Google Analytics. This could include data on traffic and traffic sources, details of user behavior on landing pages, and click-through rates for adverts and marketing campaigns.
Remember, your quantitative data isn’t the only valuable resource you have. Qualitative data can help to give depth and context to the information you’re collecting.
For instance, using on-site surveys or asking questions about how they found the purchasing experience on a post-purchase landing page can be extremely useful. You can even use social monitoring and listening tools to find out what customers are saying about your brand.
Comparing these insights to the results your competitors have can help you find new ways to differentiate your company, or earn additional conversions.
2. Examine Your Conversion Funnel
A great way to increase your conversion rate is to improve your conversion funnel.
Examining your conversion funnel basically means analyzing the journey customers take to purchase your products or services. There are valuable tools, like Google Analytics 4, that can give you a behind-the-scenes look at what customers are actually doing on your ecommerce website.
You can use these tools to determine which pages your customers visit most often, how long they spend on each page, and which pages force them to hit the “back button” or leave your site. There are even heatmap tools available that offer insight into the most viewed sections of your pages.
The on-site analytics you collect will help you to define where you’re losing conversions most frequently. For instance, around 69.23% of shoppers abandon their carts before making a purchase. If you’re suffering from high levels of cart abandonment, you could implement one-click checkout tools, more payment methods, or cart abandonment email strategies.
Remember, your conversion funnel can exist off your website, too. It might include the social media platforms you use to advertise products to customers and your email marketing campaigns. Collecting insights from these platforms will give you a clearer view of the full customer journey and how each stage influences your audience.
3. Optimize Your Website Copy
It might sound obvious, but the copy on every page of your website should help to drive customers through the purchasing funnel. From the moment they arrive on your home page, your visitors should see a clear headline, drawing attention to the unique value proposition you have to offer.
Your unique value proposition shouldn’t just appear on your home page either. It should be consistently highlighted across all of your website pages, from your product pages to the “About” page and even your blog. When optimizing your website copy, remember to:
- Consider SEO: Using keywords customers are actively searching for in your website copy makes it easier for visitors to find you. The more visitors you get to your website, the more chances you have of converting them.
- Keep it simple: Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too much information on the core pages of your website. Get straight to the point, and make it easy for your customers to understand what they need to do next on your website to access your solutions. One tip to make your copy simple and concise is to use a text summarizer to shorten up your paragraphs, or bullet multiple pointers in a wordy text.
- Be Benefit-oriented: While it’s tempting to list your features on your product pages or even your home page, the best copy answers one question: “What’s in it for me?” Focus on the benefits your products or services will have for your customers.
4. Invest in a Better Website User Experience
UX and UI aren’t just popular terms in the web development landscape; they’re crucial concepts that every business owner should be aware of. Some studies show that for every $1 you spend on UX, you can expect a return of up to $100.
While the steps you take to improve user experience on your site may vary depending on your business, there are a few things every company can do:
- Improve navigation: Make it easy for customers to find the information they’re looking for. Create a clear menu for your website, and stick it to the top of the page so it’s easy to access when users are scrolling. You can even add a search bar to your site if you want to help your customers search for specific things.
- Optimize for mobile: By 2026, mobile commerce will account for 8.7% of all retail sales. The easiest way to lose a sale is to make it difficult for consumers to access your pages on a mobile device. Ensure your website theme or design works well on any platform and that buttons and forms are easily accessible.
- Speed up your site: Website conversion rates drop by around 4.42% with every additional second a page takes to load. If your site is loading slowly, you can speed it up with things like browser caching and image compression. You might also consider using a Content Delivery Network, if possible.
Most importantly, pay attention to any reviews or feedback your customers leave about website design issues. You can learn a lot about what to focus on in your conversion rate optimization strategies by listening to feedback.
5. Optimize Landing Pages and CTAs
Landing page optimization can increase conversion rates significantly by removing the distractions that can cause customers to click away or abandon a purchase. If you’re trying to convince your leads to do something like signing up for a webinar or subscribing to an email newsletter, a landing page is a great idea. Additionally, campaign-specific landing pages can sometimes rank higher in the search results.
Every time you launch a new product, service, or promotion, consider using a landing page, complete with a lead magnet or specific offer. For instance, you might encourage people to convert by offering them a discount if they sign up quickly.
When you create your landing pages, make sure you follow the guidelines above for improving your website copy. Highlight the benefits of your solution “above the fold” (before customers need to scroll), and include a clear CTA. Your landing page CTAs and CTAs anywhere else on your website should always feature the following:
- Compelling action verbs like “activate” or “explore”
- Urgency, with words such as “Now” or “Today”
- Contrast – to ensure buttons stand out from the page
6. Simplify Online Forms and Checkouts
Every type of conversion requires a customer to do something. Usually, that means filling out a form either to contact your team, submit their contact details, or make a purchase. The longer and more complex the form is, the more likely it is your customer will give up. For healthcare organizations, offering digital patient intake forms streamlines the pre-visit process, making patient data collection faster while adhering to HIPAA compliance.
Market analysts like Gartner say the best way to increase your conversion rates on forms, whether it’s a contact form or checkout page, is to keep it short and simple. With that in mind, you should always be looking for ways to make the path to conversion as streamlined as possible.
For instance, our contact form only includes a handful of fields, ensuring users can create an account in just a few seconds.
When you’re building your own checkout pages and forms:
- Reduce form fields: Don’t ask for any information you don’t really need. For instance, you don’t necessarily need a person’s date of birth included on a contact form.
- Automate where possible: There are various tools that allow customers to submit data to a form without typing anything. For instance, you can implement Amazon Pay options into your site so customers don’t have to enter their payment details manually.
- Explain form errors: Write clear error messages when something on your form isn’t filled out correctly, so customers don’t have to guess how to fix the problem.
7. Create a Referral Program
While the average conversion rate for customers who visit your site at random is around 3-5%, the conversion rate for “referred” customers can be up to 30%. People are more likely to purchase products if they’ve been recommended to them by someone they trust, such as a friend or colleague.
Plus, if you create a referral program that benefits both new customers and the people who direct them to your business, you can improve your retention rates too. This means you end up with more loyal customers with a higher lifetime value.
For instance, you might offer customers access to free discounts or rewards whenever they successfully refer a friend to your business, like Dropbox does:
The good news is that creating a referral program is often much easier than it seems. There are various apps and platforms that work with website builders, like WordPress and Shopify, that allow you to create referral programs instantly.
Once you build your referral program, make sure you tell people about it as often as you can. Showcase it on your website, email links to your customers, and highlight the benefits in your social media posts.
8. Upgrade Your Social Proof
Whether people like to admit it or not, our decisions are often influenced by others. That’s one of the reasons influencer marketing works so well. The online world is packed full of countless different companies, all trying to capture the audience’s attention.
However, not all companies are reliable or credible.
Social proof, in the form of testimonials, reviews, and badges, is excellent for conversion rate optimization because it shows customers they can trust your business. Experiment with as many different types of social proof as you can, such as:
- Media or influencer mentions: Showcase whenever your company is mentioned by a public figure, publication, or a major industry influencer. You can use your blog to share news about your accomplishments, or you can highlight mentions with a social feed on your site.
- Awards and certifications: If your company has any specific certifications relevant to your consumers or you’ve achieved awards and recognition, make sure to highlight this. Showcase awards and certification badges on your About and Home pages.
- Reviews and testimonials: Almost 100% of online customers read reviews when shopping online. You can save them the trouble of looking for insights elsewhere by displaying reviews, ratings, and testimonials on your website and product pages.
9. Integrate Live Chat into Your Website
One of the best ways to increase conversion rates rapidly is to give customers a way to reach out to you if they have any questions about your product or service. Not every customer will be immediately convinced to buy something based on your sales copy alone, which is why talking with customers can be beneficial.
Some will want to find out more about your delivery process first or what your returns and refund policy might be. There are plenty of ways you can give customers this information, by creating a contact form, an FAQ page, or implementing a chatbot into your site, but live chat is the best.
Around 46% of customers say they prefer communicating with customers through live chat over email or social media. With a live chat service, you can basically provide any person on your website with a live sales assistant to connect with on-demand.
While live chat can be harder to manage than simply building your own chatbot, it’s an excellent way to deliver more personalized, human experiences to your audience. If you can’t afford to run your own customer service team consistently, you can always consider a combination of live chat and automated chatbots.
If you do use a chatbot, it’s worth experimenting with the latest generative AI solutions, as they can deliver more human and creative responses to queries.
10. Make Buying Products Simpler
Although purchasing a product isn’t the only way a customer can “convert” on your website, it is one of the most valuable forms of conversion. The good news for ecommerce companies and businesses selling services online is consumers are becoming more comfortable with the idea of online shopping. In today’s digital world, online shopping is quick, easy, and convenient.
At least it should be. Unfortunately, not every company commits to making the purchasing process as simple as it could be. One of the biggest reasons your customers will hit the back button instead of buying a product from you is that it takes too long to finish a purchase.
According to Capterra’s online shopping survey, two-thirds of customers want to finish the checkout journey in less than 4 minutes. With that in mind, look for ways to make things simpler and faster for your customers. Options include:
- Offering guest checkout options: Not every customer wants to sign up for an account on your website just because they’re making a purchase. Offering a guest checkout option, or an option to sign in with other website credentials (such as Amazon or Google passwords) can significantly increase conversion rates.
- Providing multiple payment options: Ensure you’re able to take payments in a range of different ways to appeal to different customer preferences. You might offer credit and debit card options, access to mobile wallets like PayPal, and even buy-now-pay-later options like Klarna for budget-conscious consumers.
- Save the cart: If customers do leave your website before making a purchase, make it easy for them to come back and complete the transaction later. Saving cart information means your customer doesn’t have to start searching for products again from scratch. Plus, it ensures you can send dynamic and personalized abandoned cart emails to consumers.
11. A/B Test Everything
Finally, this suggestion isn’t exactly a new tactic for conversion rate optimization in 2024, but it’s something every business should be actively investing in. Ultimately, the factors that cause your customers to convert are likely to change over time.
As consumer buyer habits change, you might implement new strategies into your roadmap, from offering consumers various ways to checkout to designing your website pages in different ways. The only way to figure out what’s working and what isn’t is to A/B test everything.
A/B testing or split testing involves testing two variants of a specific element on your site. This could be the copy on your product pages, the design of your checkout, or a CTA button. While testing the impact of every major part of your site takes time, it is worthwhile.
It ensures you can figure out exactly what words, colors, and strategies actually convince your customers to make a purchase. The more you test, the more you’ll learn about your target audience and their preferences. This makes it easy to optimize your sales funnel.
Mastering Conversion Rate Optimization in 2024
Finding ways to increase conversion rates is a priority for virtually every business. Whether you’re just building your online business or you’ve been running your store for years, investing in conversion rate optimization pays serious dividends.
The more time and effort you invest into enhancing the customer experience, analyzing data, and optimizing your website, the more revenue you’ll earn. Plus, many of the tactics above will also help you to improve your relationship with your target audience. This means you’re more likely to benefit from higher levels of brand loyalty and customer retention.
If you’re struggling with your conversation rate optimization strategy in 2024, one of the best ways to get a head start is to access the support of a specialist. A CRO professional from Toptal can analyze your website and provide tailored guidance to help you reach your goals.
Contact Toptal today to start the process of finding the expert destined to help you increase conversion rates.
