I recently met with a company that spends a lot of money on Pay Per Click every year. They have a team that does all sorts of experiments on their websites to see what gets the best conversion rates. They shared with me a few things that could be of use to any internet marketer that sells products online.
Below are 5 ways to increase website’s conversion rates:
1. Use a text link instead of a large graphic for the main action you want the visitor to take. People will click on a text link more often than the graphic. Making the graphic bigger won’t help either.
2. Make your text links blue. People will click on a blue text link more often than they will click on a text link of any other color. This is because blue text links are the most common color of text links. We like what we know.
3. Place links directly underneath photos. Links that are placed under a photo get clicked on frequently. I think that this is because our eyes gravitate toward photos, especially if they are of people. From there the eye must gravitate to the link below it.
4. Never take a visitor from the home page directly to the check-out process. Always have an intermediary page that they must go to before they can purchase an item. This is especially true for high ticket items. I think I remember reading something similar on the Marketing Experiments web site a while back.
5. Once the visitor has decided to check-out, remove all the links on the page. This prevents the visitor from wandering aimlessly around the site and forces them to follow through with the purchase. The only way the visitor can get out of this process is to click the back button or close the browser window.
This is especially important if you are trying to get people to make a phone call instead of buying from a shopping cart. If you do want them to pick up the phone and call, leaving the main links on the page will result in the visitor often times wandering around the site looking for a shopping cart or another way to purchase. They will end up on the PHONE NOW page multiple times but never call.
Continually testing, refining and optimizing a website is critical to achieving the highest possible conversion rates. Money spent in this area of your business is going to be well spent.