4 Ways To Increasing Your Homepage Conversion Rates
Chances are, most of your traffic will come to your homepage first. Not surprisingly,
with low conversion rates, homepage will also be the exit page that users visit the
last . Marketers and E-Commerce folks who want to improve conversion and
retention rates are wise to optimize their homepage, as homepages are often
considered the gateway to their websites.
In this blog, we will compare good websites with bad websites and teach you a
thing or two about how to increase conversion rates for your homepage.
1. Simplicity is the best policy
If your homepage hasn’t generated interest in 59 seconds for visitors then more
likely than not, your visitors will drop off quickly. The reason for this is because the
message you are conveying on your homepage may not be clear nor brief. People
and their brains like simple things.
Take the below website as an example, the home page is overloaded with
information and is confusing. A user may have difficulty understanding what exactly
their service offering is and which paragraph to begin reading. The side bars and
menus on the left are also distracting.
Simplicity as the key to successful homepage design may explain why the most
visited and popular website looks as simple as it can be. Google is a great
example:
Simplicity and makes people happy as it frustrates them less. Simplicity makes
people focus and garner appeal for your website instead of spending their brain
power on hard to read fonts. Most importantly, simplicity can make people open
their wallets as Yale and University of Michigan researchers show that people are
more likely to spend money in response to simple descriptions, as opposed to
complicated ones.
2. Easy-to-find, relevant CTA on your homepage
It is important to not underestimate the effectiveness of Call To Action buttons on
your homepage. Having a strong but relevant Call To Action (CTA) buttons will help
grab attention of your most relevant traffic while at the same time, increase user
interaction to improve conversion rates.
Take https://www.messagebird.com/ as an example; their CTA is an email bar with
a “Get started” button. Their CTA is intended to generate relevant leads for their
API services in multi-channel messaging and it works.
MessageBird’s CTA is clear, to the point and is placed under their brief description,
which is the most logical place where most users would take actions. Not only is it
easy to find, but if users want a more customized solution, they can simply click on
“Contact Sales” below.
A bad CTA is a one that is not color coded properly, not easy to find, and unclear
what will happen next if the CTA is clicked on. www.longscycle.com website is a
case in point:
Did you find where the CTA button is? The “Today’s Blow-Out Deal” green button
on the middle right hand side is actually a CTA button. As you can see, users might
take a while to find the CTA button, let alone actually seeing any CTA during their
session on the website.
There are some general rules when it comes to designing CTA buttons: a) Use
contracting colors to make your CTA obvious b) CTA should be big and obvious c)
avoid using grey or muted colors d) convey value and create a sense of urgency.
3. Testimonials with smiling faces
A Swedish study reveals that your smile can influence the people around you.
Adding a smiling face to your positive testimonials can help drive traffic and retain
good quality leads.
https://www.leadpages.net/ has good testimonials on their homepage: their fonts
are big enough to see on a mobile device, words are color coded to emphasize
figures and there is a credible, smiling person giving the testimonial, with her full
name and job title and her website link..
Conversely, here is a bad testimonial from a website:
“Prior to getting started with the Elite Team, I was a cable guy working horrible hours, now that I am a part of the Elite Team I made 19,000 my FIRST 2 weeks. This program is awesome!” Talk about making some real money!
-Jared McCart, Valparaiso, IN
As you can see, the testimonial sounded fake, stretch and over the top. If you are faking
testimonials, people are not going to believe it, and that in turn, would hurt your
conversion rates.
The best testimonials are those that are specific, with a positive face, and those
that focus on how customer can be better off, happier, and more empowered by
using your product or services.
4. One Goal for One Page
What is the number one goal that a page should achieve and put that goal as a
CTA on the page. Similar to keeping your website simple, there should only be one
goal for one page, as visitors to your website may get frustrated or confused by
your page. Too much clutter is a bad thing.
Even big companies and large corporations fall into the trap of putting everything
into one page. Just look at https://www.walmart.com/ as an example:
There are way too much CTA on one single page. Visitors may have a difficult time
picking just what they need. As a matter of fact, there are 20 different CTA on a
single page.
Several studies have proved that one goal for one page yields the best result.
Airbnb’s homepage does a great job of having just one CTA, which is a search bar
for homes around the world. In this case, Airbnb’s CTA is very successful as most
visitors on this page would likely be typing something on their search bar:
Conclusions
Optimizing conversion rates are increasingly difficult for marketers and small and
medium business owners. However, one takeaway key point from this blog is to
make your homepage as simple and as specific as possible. Hopefully, you or your
marketers will be on your way to improve your existing homepage or starting from
scratch.