Ways to Optimise Your Website’s Conversion Rates – Part 3

In the third and final part of our series on ways to optimise your websites’ conversion rates, we again investigate simple techniques to get the results that you are striving for.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT COLOURS TO INCREASE CONVERSION RATES

Colours have a close association with emotion and provoke reactions. The colours you choose to promote your brand is vitally important in conveying the message you want and can have a hugely persuasive effect on how people respond.

People generally make purchasing decisions based on emotion so this needs to be fully appreciated when you are looking to optimise your conversion rates. Apply colours that strike a chord with the audience and trigger an emotional response.

Perhaps most importantly, they should be carefully considered for your CTAs, which need should adopt contrasting colours that really stand out. Some colours are frequently used for particular states to trigger certain responses, for example, a the bold red for an error messages so be aware that you don’t use a colour that sparks a level of confusion.

WRITE CONTENT THAT CONVERTS

Of course, thoughtful layouts and bright colourful images make your website look fantastic. However, there is no substitute for copywriting so avoid becoming lazy. The way you say things and what you say plays a massive role on how your brand is perceived. Filling your otherwise-fantastic website up with bad or misleading text can destroy all your other good work.

First and foremost, you need to write content that your audience understands and can engage with by using language and tone. The content and words that are used for a bar or restaurant website will be vastly different from those used for an accountant or a lawyers site.

OPTIMISE YOUR HEADLINES

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

–David Ogilvy

It stands to reason that possibly your website’s one and only chance to communicate your message is through your website’s headlines. You need to immediately grab people’s attention and hold it! Great techniques include:

• Let the reader know immediately what they will learn from your page – lead with the benefit
• Being concise and to the point whilst also being provocative
• Be clever, people like things that are amusing or use wordplay
• Avoid clichés unless you use them in your wordplay. They are not appreciated and can have an immediate negative impact

Avoid following the crowd – if your competitors are using something or you think they might, don’t use it. Think outside the box and be a leader not a follower!