Increase Website Conversions With These 15 Proven Hacks

Whether you run a large e-commerce store or a small blog, if you work hard to bring traffic to your website, you deserve the best returns from that traffic. After all, you spent the time and money to set up your website precisely so you could make more sales.

The best indicators of a successful online presence, therefore, are website conversions—whether that’s a purchase or a form sign-up.

In this article, we share everything we know about increasing website conversions, including:

What a website conversion rate is and why it matters
What a good conversion rate is
Tactics to improve your conversion rate
eCommerce specific tactics to improve your eCommerce store conversion rate
And how to measure your conversion optimization efforts

Let’s dive in!

What Does Conversion Rate Mean?

A conversion rate is a business metric that describes the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action.

That action may be to download an ebook, fill a contact form, make a purchase, or something else.

You can calculate your conversion rate by dividing the total number of conversions by the total number of visits. For example, if I get 20,000 monthly visitors, and 1,000 of those download my ebook, then my conversion rate is 5% (1,000 divided by 20,000).

Depending on where you’re starting, you can triple your website conversions — and by extension, revenue — from the same amount of traffic just by optimizing your conversion rates.

But even the smallest gain in conversions can move the revenue needle too. For example, a site generating 400 leads at a 20% conversation rate per month will generate an extra 60 leads per month if that number reaches 23%. Assuming each lead is worth $20, revenue goes from $8,000 to $9,200 per month for the same amount of traffic!

What’s a Good Conversion Rate?

The average conversion rate for websites hovers around 2-3%, but the number depends heavily on the industry. Use these numbers to benchmark your own conversion rate.

By industry for Facebook ads

The average website conversion rate for Facebook ads (the ads that show up in people’s facebook feeds) is 9.21%.

But actual industry rates are a wide range with the fitness industry coming in first at 14.29%, and industrial services barely scratching 0.7%.

Other top performers include education (13.58%), employment & job training (11.73%), healthcare (11.00%), real estate (10.68%), and B2B (10.63%).

Technology, travel & hospitality, and retail join industrial services at the bottom with conversion rates of 2.31%, 2.82%, and 3.26%, respectively.

By industry for Google ads

On average, Google ads that appear on the search engine ranking pages (SERPs) convert at 4.40%. By comparison, ads that appear on websites or apps using Google’s display network (an advertising program for publishers) convert at 0.57%.

By industry, vehicles lead with a 7.98% conversion rate on Search, while hobbies and leisure lead in the display network with a 1.12% conversion rate.

Apparel performs the worst in search (2.77% conversion rate), while business and industrial come last in the display network (0.29%).

By page type for SEO

The conversion rate for visits generated through search engine optimization (SEO) is 2.4%. But the rate differs by page type.

If people find your whitepaper through SEO, you can expect a 4.6% conversion rate. On the lower end, you convert less than 1% of people who view a resource hub page on your website.

15 Tactics to Increase Conversions Starting Today

Now that you know the average numbers and where you fall, let’s look at some tactical things you can do to increase your website conversions.

1. Add pop-ups

For all the flak it gets, pop-ups (windows that appear on a webpage without user intention) are effective. In fact, they convert ten times more than embedded forms on average because they’re hard to ignore — like this colorful one from Optinmonster.

Luciano Viterale, a Solopreneur, saw his conversion rates go from 1.4% to 5.8% when he switched from inline forms to pop-ups.

You can use most pop-up plugins to trigger any of these four types of pop-ups:

Timed Popups – triggered after the user spends a specified amount of time on a webpage.
Exit Popups – triggered by exit intent i.e. when users try to click away from your page.
Click Popups – triggered by clicks.
Scroll Popups – triggered when users scroll a specified depth on your page.

Tastefully use pop-ups to:

Offer discounts to new customers
Offer free shipping promos
Run contests, or offer downloads or other content to build your list

The second most common reason for cart abandonment is requesting that users create an account. People also cite long or complicated checkout processes as an issue.

Similarly, research shows that conversion rates drastically drop off when there are more than five fields on a signup form.

All of these extra steps create friction in the checkout or signup process.

The results, however, aren’t linear (like the graph below shows). Venture Habour also shared five case studies showing that the ideal form length depends on your industry.

Use a form plugin to create beautiful, concise forms for your website. But know that what’s concise depends on your industry. For the fitness trainer, it may be an email address, a name, and a phone number (3 fields), while the blogger converts better when they only ask for an email address (1 field).

3. Test different CTA copy, design, and placements

A call-to-action (CTA) — whether that’s a button, image, or text — tells your reader what to do on your landing page. If the words, design, or placement don’t resonate with readers, you lose opportunities to convert them.

How can you tell what resonates with them? Through research and testing.

Nebojsa Savicic, Co-founder of Plainly boosted close rates by 27% using the CTA “Book a 15-min demo” instead of “Book a demo”.

Nebojsa says, “what helped us boost our close rates by 27% was understanding the value of our customers’ time and just how much more attractive it is to commit to a demo of 15 minutes than half an hour.”

Other things that help make CTAs successful include:

Using authoritative words — like “Book” in Nebojsa’s example — to write compelling call-to-action copy.
Testing different designs and placements.

4. Improve the copy on sales and product pages

Want better conversion rates? Nail your messaging, use that to write better sales copy, and pay attention to flow.

The team at WordStream went through 1,000 landing pages that converted in the top 10% to find common traits. They found that those pages presented a great and relevant offer, and did so in a flow that didn’t obstruct the reader.

Quinn Zeda, Conversion Optimization expert from ConversionCrimes.com calls this nailing your messaging. “If people can’t understand what you do, they’re gone. Overcoming objections, being crystal clear about what you do and the value you add – that’s what convinces people to buy,” says Quinn.

To do this, Quinn advises:

Look at support tickets to see pre-sales questions and use that to guide improvements on the site as a first step.
Get feedback from people to understand how people think of your website and what it’s not answering. You can use feedback forms from a tool like Hotjar for this.
Interview customers to understand what they benefit most from your site and evaluate if that is communicated on your site. You can also use tools like Wynter or Conversion Crimes to get feedback.

Another way to improve copy is to add faces that humanize your brand.

Dmytro Sokhach, Founder of Admix Global shares that “After analyzing 197 websites of other digital agencies, we added real-life images of our team, video testimonials and genuine vacancies on our page. Then we ran an A/B test to see how this page performs against the previous one that did not have these blocks. When we calculated the new registrations on our services as conversions, the conversion rate grew from 6.99% to 12.08% – that is a +73% growth.”

5. Add a chatbot to your site

More than 50% of website users prefer chatbot assistance for buying-related activities.

If you haven’t already, add a chatbot to your site and use them to:

Upsell customers who just bought from you.
Offer discounts to customers.
Generate leads.
Recommend products.

Social proof like testimonials and review scores can instantly double or even quadruple your conversion rates.

Research found that displaying reviews increased the conversion rate for lower-priced products by 190%, and by 380% for higher-priced products.

Quinn explains why. “Trust is everything. In today’s world, it’s harder than ever to get people to pull out their wallets. They don’t just take your word for it, they want proof.”

Use tools like Senja to collect customer reviews or recommendations from experts or celebrities. Then display them on your website and other places where you sell.

7. Optimize page layouts

How you arrange elements on your pages can impact conversion.

In a study performed by Baymard, they found that users spent a long time looking at the membership section, instead of filling card details “despite the membership being completely irrelevant to the test users’ purchase.”

Considering that a lengthy or complicated checkout process makes 17% of people abandon their cart, anything that lengthens checkout time is an obstacle.

Use a predictable layout tailored to the Z pattern most people follow.

8. Improve your site speed

If you take your site speed from six seconds to two seconds, you can almost double your conversions immediately.

If you use a WordPress.com site, there’s typically no need for extra optimizations since they’re fast out of the box.

Otherwise, check your site speed with a tool like GTmetrix and start optimizing if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Here are some things you can do to speed up your website:

Switch to a web host with faster servers.
Choose a Lightweight Theme
Use a Caching Plugin
Get Rid of excess Plugins

9. Streamline your UX

Because a few key pages (sales pages for example) drive the most conversions for your website, making them easy to find can lead to improved conversions.

“it’s important to identify the core function that a person must use in order to buy or get value out of your business. For e-commerce, it might be navigation and product filtering – the faster people can find the right product for them, the more likely they are to purchase.” says Quinn.

This is where user testing comes in. Use a tool like UserTesting to observe how users navigate your website structure. Or you could “ask a buddy to do a task on your website and watch them, or bribe strangers with coffee in exchange for feedback,” says Quinn.

Patrick Garde, Co-Founder of Exa Web took this approach for a client’s online flower shop. They learned that people were looking for bestsellers. When they put the bestsellers front and center of the website, conversions jumped 53%.

Keep things where people would expect. Contact information, for example, should always be in the footer, and a search box sits in the top right corner.

10. Ensure your site works well on all devices

More people surf online via mobile devices today, 1.5x the number of desktop surfers to be precise. If you’re still only optimizing for desktop, you’re likely missing out on conversion opportunities.

To create a mobile responsive website, do this:

Host your website on a platform that supports responsive design (like WordPress.com).
Test customizations like CSS edits on different device sizes.
Compress your files so users with lower-bandwidth mobile phones can view images and other media without issues.
Simplify navigation using hamburger menus for mobile.
Use short sentences, and break paragraphs into smaller chunks so mobile users don’t see a big wall of text.

11. Create landing pages tailored to specific types of customers

How would you feel if you wanted to take a class to become a professional chef, but the landing page said: “cook good-looking, great-tasting meals for your family”? Even though it’s the same course, there’s a high chance you’ll be clicking the back button because the landing page didn’t speak to your need.

The same goes for your audience. You may sell the same product to all of them, but they’ll have different use cases for your product.

Create landing pages that each speak to a specific segment of your audience.

Here’s an example from our own website. The image on the left is targeted toward people looking to build a website, and the image on the left is for bloggers.

12. Experiment with color psychology on your site

When people first interact with other people, or products, they form an impression within 90 seconds. And they base 62% – 90% of the assessment on colors alone.

That’s why it’s important to carefully consider the colors you use on your site.

But people have different associations for colors depending on culture and other factors. For example, research shows that some people associate Red with love, while others associate it with anger.

Here’s what the range of color emotions look like.

Consider looking into what those colors mean for your audience and use them accordingly. For instance, finance site users in the US would associate red with financial loss and green with gain. It wouldn’t make sense to use red for a call to action on a landing page for a finance site then.

13. Run A/B tests

A/B testing is a powerful technique for improving website conversions by comparing two versions of a website and determining which one performs better.

The idea behind A/B testing is to make small changes to your website and then measure the impact on conversion rates. This process helps you identify what works and doesn’t, allowing you to optimize your website and increase conversions over time.

A popular example of the importance of A/B testing is the Obama presidential campaign story.

The team wanted to determine which version of a donation page would result in more contributions. So they tested different iterations and found that the video they all thought would outperform, did in fact produce the worst conversion rates.

You can use VWO’s free plan to test, following a/b testing best practices like developing a hypothesis and testing early and often.

But conversion optimization expert, Quinn says small businesses should approach A/B testing with caution.

“It can be time-consuming and resource-intensive and requires a significant amount of traffic to be effective. Additionally, interpreting the results can be difficult and it doesn’t provide insight into the underlying causes of poor conversions – it only compares two versions,” Quinn advises.

14. Try testing remarketing campaigns

A single remarketing campaign can boost conversion rates up to 161%.

That’s because the people who see your ads have already visited your site and are familiar with your brand.

To get started with remarketing campaigns, you’ll need to tag visitors using Google Analytics, or Google Ads tracking. That way, you can create your remarketing lists based on specific user segments, for example, anyone who watched a video on a specific page.

Once you have your list, you can create your ad assets and use them to run your remarketing campaigns.

15. Include links to product and service pages on your 404 page

Web URLs are fragile. A single misplaced character means you don’t get to your intended destination anymore, and this happens frequently with users.

It happens when you move a product and forget to redirect the old link, or someone mistypes a direct link. Either way, users who follow that link land in the middle of nowhere in your website.

404 errors aren’t completely avoidable but that doesn’t mean you can’t optimize your 404 page to capture a portion of missed conversions. Add a product menu to your 404 page so people can navigate to what they’re looking for.

Additional Tactics for eCommerce Companies

Offer expiring discounts on pages and exit intent popups so people feel the need to buy now.
Include promotions directly in product page title tags where it’s most visible.
Offer free shipping to remove sales objections.
Include add to cart and buy now buttons to give customers fast checkout options
Upsell and cross-sell your products

How to Measure Your Conversions in Google Analytics

The only way to know if you’re on the right path with your optimization efforts is through tracking.

If you already have a GA account, Sign in, then, go to Reports > Engagement > Conversions to view standard conversion reports.

Otherwise, go to the Google Analytics (GA) website and click Start measuring to first set up your account.

Fill in your account name and click Next. This account will house all your apps and websites (called properties).

Enter your site name in the space that says Property name, choose your time zone, your preferred currency, and click Next.

Finally, fill out the information about your business and how you intend to use GA, then click Create.

Next, set up a data stream to allow your Google Analytics to collect data from your website. Click on Data Streams in the vertical navigation pane, and choose the Web option.

A web page will come up, where you can enter your site’s URL and title. Do that and click Create stream.

On the next page, copy the Measurement ID. You’ll need to add this to your website to enable tracking.

If you’re on a WordPress.com plugin-enabled plan, go to your WordPress dashboard and click Tools > Marketing:

You’ll see a Marketing and Integrations page. The Traffic tab will allow you add your GA tracking ID to WordPress.com:

Scroll down till you find Google Analytics, click Connect your site… paste the measurement ID into the field that appears and that’s it! Don’t forget to click Save settings to save your settings.

If you’re hosted elsewhere, use a GA Analytics plugin like GA Google Analytics. You’ll need to add the tracking ID to the plugin to start tracking.

Google Analytics automatically tracks these five events as conversions:

purchase (web and app)
first_open (app only)
in_app_purchase (app only)
app_store_subscription_convert (app only)
app_store_subscription_renew (app only)

But if you want custom conversions, you can mark existing or new events as a conversion.

Under the Property menu, click Events and toggle the button to mark any existing event as a conversion.

To mark new events as conversions, go to Conversions (instead of Events) then click New conversion event. Enter the name of the new event and save.

Start Optimizing for Better Conversions Today

Your conversions directly impact revenue. Optimize your website so you’re converting more users, and ultimately, making more money.

Start by understanding what your audience wants, building a fast and responsive site, and infusing social proof into your website. Then experiment with A/B tests as you implement any feedback you get. Instincts can go wrong, but the data will always be right.

Want more tips? Get new post notifications emailed to you.

Increase Website Conversions With These 15 Proven Hacks

What Does Conversion Rate Mean?