Spreading awareness about your brand is good, driving traffic to your website is better, but at the end of the day, the most effective marketing ends in a conversion.
Whether you’re looking to get sign-ups, applications, or simply sell a product or service, getting your audience to take that final step is crucial. Regardless of which forms of digital marketing you’re utilizing, there are a number of optimizations that can be tested in order to find a formula that drives results.
If you’ve been having trouble getting users to follow through and convert, consider trying these tips today:
Retarget and Personalize the Message
If you’re like most people, there have been countless times when you’ve added products to an online cart only to abandon it before following through with a purchase. If you’re on the selling end of this problem, capturing this audience should be a high priority.
Retargeting allows you to deliver ads to users who you know visited certain pages on your website. For example, you might create an advertisement which uses copy that is specific to a certain product that was abandoned in the online cart. This type of personalized messaging has been proven to be effective in getting users to take the final step of the purchase journey.
Whether you’re looking to use Facebook, Google, or another ad platform, placing a tracking pixel on your cart page allows you target with unparalleled accuracy. If you’ve felt like a victim of “cart abandonment” in the past, this is a great first step to take.
Simplify Design on Purchase Pages
Between images and descriptions of a product, the pricing information, reviews, and much more, the final stages of the checkout process can get rather busy. If you have too much going on visually further down the funnel, it can negatively impact your overall goal of obtaining a conversion.
If a user is showing significant interest in something you’re offering, you need to continue conveying a sense of importance about the product. Making it front and center and minimizing distractions is a good way to remind your audience that this is all they should be thinking about at the moment.
One awesome service that can help with this exact concept of simplifying is Heatmaps by Crazy Egg, a website optimization company. It works by showing you exactly where on the page your audience is clicking. The philosophy behind Heatmaps is that if your audience isn’t clicking on something, it’s probably better to just remove it.
At the end of the day, you want your potential customers to be all-in focusing on what you’re selling. Make this as easy as possible by eliminating all other unnecessary visual components of your conversion pages.
Consider Psychology
As humans, we’re all subject to our inherent impulses that make up our nature. As digital marketers, it’s important to take these into account when considering how to turn potential customers into conversions.
There’s a good chance that you’ve encountered a checkout page that had a countdown timer on it. In some cases these are used on ticket-sales sites, or other situations where only a limited amount of something is available. Make no mistake about it, they aren’t only there to make sure people don’t lose their place in line, they also encourage you to act.
It’s been shown that a countdown inspires a sense of urgency. This slight nudge is sometimes all it takes to get people to follow through with a purchase. Not to mention, nobody likes when the timer goes off and they have to start the purchase process all over again because they couldn’t pull the trigger quick enough.
If you’re interested in what the data says about this concept, check out this interesting study by a company who did the research.
The bottom line is that adding a countdown timer has very little downside and a huge amount of potential. If you’re looking for a quick way to boost conversions, experiment with one and see if it gets results.
Refine Your CTA
One component of driving online conversions that can sometimes be overlooked is the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of your CTA (call-to-action).
An effective CTA is critical in getting potential customers to click on your ads and get more information on your product or service. Here are some tips to keep in mind when putting together a CTA button:
- Use personal language like “my” to convey your message. For example, if you’re selling shirts, a good CTA might be “Find my new favorite shirt” or something similar.
- Make sure your CTA button is in a contrasting color to the rest of the ad. When looking at the ad as a whole, your eyes should be drawn quickly to the CTA.
- Similar to the philosophy regarding the countdown timer, it’s important to generate some sense of urgency. Using language like “Limited time deal,” or something similar, can motivate your audience to take action sooner rather than later.
Above all, when trying to find the best CTA for your particular ad, it’s important to experiment with different options. Even those who have years of experience know that it’s impossible to predict how an audience will react to a certain call-to-action if compared to another. If you’re setting up a new campaign, dedicate the first few weeks to testing out different CTAs and see if you can determine a clear winner.
Conclusion
Finding the perfect combination of ad design, CTA, and purchase process is what all digital marketers strive for when building campaigns. Each step of the process requires tremendous attention to detail – not to mention plenty of testing along the way.
If your business needs help putting together a digital marketing campaign that gets real results, get in touch with us today to schedule a consultation.
