We often hear from businesses we work with that they want to improve the conversion rate on their websites. That’s not exactly earth shattering news, of course. After all, what business doesn’t need more online conversions? One thing that is a bit different, however, is that in today’s environment, it’s perhaps more important than ever. 

We’ve been in business with top B2B service providers for more than a decade, and we remain dedicated to staying in lockstep with the latest trends and methods to help our partners boost their online visibility, improve their online credibility, and ultimately drive more online conversions. 

Here are some steps you can take to achieve a greater conversion rate on your website. Some of these are quite simple and can help you get on track sooner rather than later. 

Identify the pages on your site that bring in the most traffic and conversions 

With the entire buyer journey in mind, take a deep dive into your site analytics and see exactly what’s working and what isn’t. What is the form submission rate? How long are people spending on your site or a particular page? How many pages does the average site visitor look at? What is your bounce rate?

If you haven’t already, set up Google analytics so you are able to see the relationship between website sessions and revenue generated. For B2B companies, it’s important to identify the pages that drive your inbound leads or demo requests, and fix the bottom of the funnel first. 

Once you have a handle on these measurements, you can begin to adjust your strategy accordingly, and establish the right metrics for each channel and tactic. 

For example, depending on the channel, you might be trying to simply create or boost awareness of your business. Metrics for awareness will include click-through rates on social media and emails, time on the destination page that you drive visitors to through social or email, pages per visit, and bounce rate. This will help you understand if your audience is actually consuming the content. 

Conversion rate metrics, on the other hand, include CPL (cost per lead), form submission rate, and number of leads generated. Look at your data and best assess what channels are driving your desired outcomes.

A/B test everything on the main pages

We can all make educated guesses on what is going to resonate with our audience, but until you’ve tested it, do you really know for sure? This is where A/B testing can be a tremendous asset in optimization strategy, and it’s not only for just what the copy says. Of course, testing headline copy is important (maybe try the hard sell vs. a softer approach), but you should also consider other things to test, such as providing different form lengths. You’d think more people would want to fill out a form with fewer fields, but is that always the case? Does making it too easy muddy the waters with leads that aren’t the best quality? 

Don’t hesitate to test the page layout as well. There are a number of tools available that can help with heat mapping and show you where folks are looking on a page. 

And finally, what is it you want your site visitors to do? Maybe test out a couple of different CTA messages to see what’s more effective. 

Be clear with actionable CTAs

Speaking of CTAs, use language that definitively tells your prospects what it is you want them to do or what they will be getting. 

For example, instead of “Learn more,” use “Request a demo.” Rather than “Read more,” go with “Download our new eBook CRO Optimization.”

When performing a CRO audit on your website, it’s a good idea to make sure there’s at least one option for a user to convert on every page. It also helps if it’s above the fold so visitors don’t have to scroll.

Whether it’s a link to your contact page, a form or a button, make it easy and clear for the user to take the desired action you want them to.

The form-length formula

Regardless of how you’re A/B testing form length, there is likely a sweet spot for quality leads. We’ve mentioned that too little friction can produce low-quality leads. Too much, however, and you risk pushing away those who are getting much closer to buying. Test conversion rates of 3 fields versus 4, or 4 fields versus 5, but always remember to include fields that will give your sales team the information it needs to effectively follow up.

Test chat options and pop-up forms

A recent Salesforce study showed that only 14% of people would rather fill out a form than chat with a bot to get the answers they are looking for. Testing chat solutions such as Drift, or pop-ups as people exit the page are two ways to capture additional leads as they’re consuming your content. 

Of course, this could vary by whatever industry your business is in. It’s possible that potential leads for a marketing agency would be more receptive to chatbots and pop-ups than an online retailer of commercial plumbing supplies, but then again, maybe not. Can you tell we’re a fan of creating hypotheses and testing them out?

There’s no time like the present

It’s a grim reality, but for nearly every business these days, the ability to drive more conversions online will be the key catalyst to survival. As they say, time is money, which means today is the day to get started with the ideas above. 

The good news is that UpCity can help. Today, more than 1.5 million businesses have visited UpCity seeking services from over 40,000 providers in more than 600 cities in North America. We help partners grow their business and improve their recommendability, and we’d love to partner with you.