21 Best Tips & Practices To Improve Website Conversion Rate

Picture this: You’ve spent countless hours and resources driving traffic to your website, only to watch visitors leave without taking any action. It’s a common struggle, but one that can be tackled by focusing on your SEO conversion funnel. By optimizing your site’s conversion rate, you’ll not only enhance user experience but also boost your bottom line. This article contains the best tips and practices to help you transform those fleeting visits into meaningful engagements.

One tool that can make this process more effective is BlogCTAs’s programmatic CRO tool, designed to streamline your efforts and maximize results.

What is Website Conversion Rate?

google search console - Improve Website Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is your website’s ultimate performance metric, showing you how effectively it gets visitors to take specific actions. It’s a simple calculation: the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action out of the total number of visitors.

Picture this: if you have 1 conversion for every 10 visits, your conversion rate is 10%. These actions can vary widely, from purchasing to signing up for a newsletter to downloading an e-book. Essentially, any action that aligns with your business goals and the metrics you’re tracking fits the bill.

Micro vs. Macro: Understanding the Types of Conversions

Not all conversions are created equal. There are two main types to consider:

Micro Conversion: Micro-conversions are the smaller steps that lead up to your ultimate goal. Think of actions like subscribing to a newsletter or downloading a whitepaper. These are preliminary events that happen before the big win.
Macro conversions: Macro-conversions represent the end goal. This could be a sale, a new paid subscriber, or a completed contact form. The distinction is crucial for understanding the full picture of user interaction with your site.

Why Conversion Rate is the Heartbeat of Your Website

Your website’s conversion rate is more than just a number. It directly reflects how well your site aligns with user needs and meets their expectations. A high conversion rate indicates that your site is resonating with its audience and encouraging visitors to take desired actions.

It’s a tangible measure of your site’s health and its ability to fulfill business objectives. Conversely, a low conversion rate could indicate friction points or misalignment with user expectations, signaling a need for optimization.

The Benchmark: Average Website Conversion Rates

Benchmarking your site’s performance against industry standards can offer valuable insights into how well you’re doing. However, it’s crucial to remember that average conversion rates can vary widely depending on the industry and the specific type of conversion. For instance, an e-commerce website may have different benchmarks than a B2B service site.

‍According to the latest data, the global average website conversion rate across all industries is 3.3%. Keep in mind that this is just a starting point. Your goal should be continuously optimizing your site for better performance rather than settling for average.

21 Best Tips & Practices To Improve Website Conversion Rate

woman with a laptop - Improve Website Conversion Rate

If you want to improve your marketing campaign’s conversion rates, you’ve come to the right place. Check out these five website conversion rate tips to help you optimize your site for:

Sales
Leads
Phone calls

1. Create Dedicated Landing Pages for Your Paid Advertising Campaigns

One of the best conversion marketing strategies is to create dedicated landing pages for your paid ad campaigns. Every ad should have a landing page focusing on the advertised product or service. If your audience clicks on an ad for a specific product or service, they want to see information about it on the landing page.

You don’t want your landing page to be your homepage or a page filled with information about other products. Creating focused landing pages drives better results for your business. It helps your audience continue to focus on the product or service they searched for in the first place.

For example, let’s say you own an HVAC company and create an advertisement for your heating installation services. You run a pay-per-click (PPC) ad, and leads looking for heating services click on it. Imagine that your landing page is your homepage.

The Importance of Dedicated Landing Pages for Targeted Ad Campaigns

Your audience would see this page and get frustrated immediately. They expected to click on your ad and find information about your heating services, not a generic page about your business. Instead, a landing page specific to your heating services would work better for your audience. They would click on the ad to find a landing page detailing your heating services and the repairs you do for your customers.

This landing page would engage your audience more and make them more likely to contact your business. Creating a dedicated landing page helps you keep your audience focused on the right product or service and provides them with the exact information they need.

2. Test Your Website and Landing pages

The first version of your landing page isn’t the best one. You must consistently test your pages to ensure you’re creating the best version. You can conduct A/B testing to test different elements on your site.

When you perform a test, focus on making one change at a time. If you change too many things simultaneously, you won’t have definitive results on which ones positively impacted your site.

A/B Test for Improved Website Engagement and Conversions

So, what elements should you test?

You can test any number of elements on your page, from the call to action (CTA) to the size of your header font. The smallest changes can sometimes have a significant impact on your audience! By testing your pages, you’ll put out the best version of your page for your audience. It will help you increase engagement and improve your website’s conversion rate.

3. Use CTAs on Your Website

When someone visits your landing page and likes what they see, they want to know how to proceed next. You risk losing that lead if you don’t provide them with directions. Adding CTAs to your page guides those leads to the right place. CTA buttons are a great way to help your audience move to the next step.

These buttons stand out on the page and catch your audience’s eye. When they’re ready to proceed, they know where to click to take the next step.

When you’re testing, you can try different:

Buttons
Colors
Phrases

Crafting Clear and Actionable CTAs to Boost Engagement and Conversions

Generally, you’ll want to create specific CTA buttons. Don’t just say, “Click here.” Get detailed with requests like, “Download your free guide,” or “Call us today for a free quote.” Your audience should know what will happen when they click on the button. A good CTA will increase engagement on your page and improve your website conversion rate.

4. Keep Your Forms Short

When you capture leads through forms, you’re eager to obtain as much information as possible. While this may seem like an excellent opportunity to learn more about your leads, it can stop them from filling out your forms. Many people don’t want to spend a long time filling out forms on your site.

If you’re asking for information that isn’t necessary, your audience is more likely to abandon it. You want to keep your forms as short as possible. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask for information, but you’ll want to be selective about the information you request.

Streamlining Forms for Better User Experience and Higher Conversions

For example, if you’re offering a free guide on how to build your credit score, asking a person’s gender or how many credit cards they own isn’t necessary. It adds a step that makes the form longer to fill out. You can keep it simple by asking for a name and email address. This information provides the basics to follow up and grab additional details later.

5. Use Video to Engage Your Audience

One of the most effective conversion rate marketing strategies is video marketing. Videos are compelling for boosting engagement and providing your audience with valuable information. Video improves conversions by 80% when integrated into a landing page. It’s a simple but effective technique for helping you improve your website conversion rate. When you use videos, you help your audience obtain valuable information with less work. It’s much easier to watch a 30-second video than to read paragraphs of text.

It combines visual elements and vital information to create a positive experience for your audience. If you want to drive more success with your pages and boost your conversion rate, add videos. It’s a proven conversion rate optimization tactic to get your audience to engage with your website and CTA.

6. Go In-Depth With Your Data

Optimizing any business strategy and achieving sustainable growth starts with data. Guessing what your customers want and which product pages and conversion tools will work won’t get you the best results. Instead, you need to commit to constantly collecting useful insights.

Start with the quantitative data you can get from solutions like Google Analytics. This could include data on traffic and traffic sources, details of user behavior on landing pages, and click-through rates for adverts and marketing campaigns.

Remember, your quantitative data isn’t the only valuable resource you have. Qualitative data can help to give depth and context to the information you’re collecting.

For instance, on-site surveys or asking questions about how they found the purchasing experience on a post-purchase landing page can be extremely useful. You can even use social monitoring and listening tools to discover what customers say about your brand.

Comparing these insights to your competitors' results can help you find new ways to differentiate your company or earn additional conversions.

7. Examine Your Conversion Funnel

A great way to increase your conversion rate is to improve your conversion funnel. Examining your conversion funnel means analyzing customers' journey to purchase your products or services. Valuable tools, like Google Analytics 4, can give you a behind-the-scenes look at what customers are doing on your ecommerce website.

You can use these tools to determine:

Which pages your customers visit most often
How long they spend on each page
Which pages force them to hit the “back button” or leave your site

There are even heatmap tools available that offer insight into the most viewed sections of your pages.

Using Analytics to Address Cart Abandonment and Optimize the Conversion Funnel

The on-site analytics you collect will help you define where you’re frequently losing conversions. For instance, around 69.23% of shoppers abandon their carts before purchasing. If you’re suffering from high levels of cart abandonment, you could implement:

One-click checkout tools
More payment methods
Cart abandonment email strategies

Remember, your conversion funnel can exist off your website, too. It might include your social media platforms to advertise products to customers and your email marketing campaigns. Collecting insights from these platforms will give you a clearer view of the full customer journey and how each stage influences your audience.

8. Optimize Your Website Copy

It might sound obvious, but the copy on every page of your website should help drive customers through the purchasing funnel. From the moment they arrive on your home page, your visitors should see a clear headline, drawing attention to your unique value proposition.

Your unique value proposition shouldn’t just appear on your home page either. It should be consistently highlighted across all of your website pages, from your product pages to the “About” page and even your blog.

Crafting SEO-Friendly, Concise, and Benefit-Driven Website Copy

When optimizing your website copy, remember to:

Consider SEO: Using keywords customers are actively searching for in your website copy makes it easier for visitors to find you. The more visitors you get to your website, the more chances you have of converting them.
Keep it simple: Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too much information on the core pages of your website. Get straight to the point, and make it easy for your customers to understand what they need to do next on your website to access your solutions. One tip to make your copy simple and concise is to use a text summarizer to shorten up your paragraphs, or bullet multiple pointers in a wordy text.
Be Benefit-oriented: While listing your features on your product pages or even your home page is tempting, the best copy answers one question: “What’s in it for me?” Focus on the benefits your products or services will have for your customers.

9. Invest in a Better Website User Experience

UX and UI aren’t just popular terms in the web development landscape; they’re crucial concepts every business owner should know. Some studies show that for every $1 you spend on UX, you can expect a return of up to $100.

While the steps you take to improve user experience on your site may vary depending on your business, there are a few things every company can do:

Improve navigation: Make it easy for customers to find the information they want. Create a clear menu for your website, and stick it to the top of the page so it’s easy to access when users scroll. You can even add a search bar to your site to help your customers search for specific things.
Optimize for mobile: By 2026, mobile commerce will account for 8.7% of all retail sales. The easiest way to lose a sale is to make it difficult for consumers to access your pages on a mobile device. Ensure your website theme or design works well on any platform and that buttons and forms are easily accessible.
Speed up your site: Website conversion rates drop by around 4.42% with every additional second a page takes to load. If your site is loading slowly, you can speed it up with browser caching and image compression. If possible, you might also consider using a Content Delivery Network.

Leveraging Customer Feedback to Optimize Website Design for Better Conversions

Most importantly, pay attention to any reviews or feedback your customers leave about website design issues. By listening to feedback, you can learn a lot about what to focus on in your conversion rate optimization strategies.

10. Make Your Website Easy To Navigate.

Always imagine that your website visitors are walk-in customers. You wouldn’t want a customer to get lost or confused in your store, so apply the same principle to your website.

Organize your products and pages logically so customers can find what they need quickly. By “logical manner,” I mean having transparent and representative:

Page titles/headers
Sidebar navigation
Footer links

Enhancing Website Navigation with Search Bars and Breadcrumbs for Better User Experience

Other features that can make your website easy to navigate include a search bar and breadcrumbs. In digital marketing, breadcrumbs are navigational elements displayed on websites that show users their:

Current location within the site’s structure
Helping them easily navigate back
Move to higher-level categories

11. Get Rid of Any Distracting Elements

Website visitors are less likely to purchase from a page that is difficult to navigate or too crowded with irrelevant content. There’s little time to make an impression, and visitors will only linger if your site is easy to use.

Visual Hierarchy and Focused Layouts

When designing your website, it’s crucial to eliminate any elements that can discourage visitors from taking the desired action. Remove any distractions like extra links, pop-ups, or menus that a user might not need. Instead, use a visual hierarchy to persuade site visitors to follow your call to action.

By keeping the page focused and straightforward, you make it easier for customers to learn about your services or products, which can encourage them to make a purchase.

12. Create High-Quality Content

According to a Semrush study, 97% of the businesses surveyed said they have generated very positive results from content marketing. This stat shows that content marketing is one of the most effective tactics for increasing website conversion rates.

Content can be anything from long-form blog posts and videos to infographics and podcasts. Creating high-quality content that educates, entertains or informs your audience will help build trust with them. This way, customers are more likely to make a purchase.

13. Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices

Mobile phones are the most popular devices used for online shopping. So, it makes sense to ensure your website is optimized for mobile devices. Some ways to do this include using a mobile-friendly theme, ensuring the website loads quickly and hiding intrusive pop-ups on mobile.

Consider adding click-to-call options and optimizing content for voice search.

14. Use Social Proof

Social proof, or customer testimonials, is one of the most powerful persuasion techniques in digital marketing. It helps build trust and credibility with customers. Highlighting customer reviews and ratings can give potential customers a better idea of your product quality.

You can also include information about how many users have already purchased the item or subscribed to your newsletter. This type of social proof has been proven to increase conversions significantly.

Harnessing User-Generated Content for Authentic Social Proof and Brand Trust

User-generated content (UGC) creators are also a strong resource for gathering social proof for your brand, as they produce authentic content using your products without the advertising or influencing cringe.

15. Provide Clear Contact Information

Website visitors may have inquiries about your product or service during their visit. It helps to provide a direct means of communication on your website, such as:

A contact page
Social media links
Phone numbers

You can also add live chat support so customers can ask questions in real time while browsing products or services. This will help customers find what they're looking for quickly and reduce the rate of abandoned carts, as they'll be able to sort out any issues as they arise.

16. Offer a Seamless Checkout Process

Nothing can be more frustrating for customers than a long and complicated checkout process. Make sure your checkout process is seamless and only requires minimal steps like filling out forms or providing shipping information.

Consider adding features like autofill, guest checkout and payment gateways to make the process easier for customers. An easy checkout process can help increase website conversions by reducing customer frustration with buying.

Key Strategies to Improve Website Conversion Rates and Enhance Customer Experience

Increasing your website's conversion rate is essential for building a successful online business. By implementing the seven tips discussed in this article, you can increase website conversions and improve the overall customer experience.

17. Understand Psychological Principles

How to get better conversion rate optimization. Understand a little bit about human mental models and how we think and act. For example, when we leave a cluttered website or hesitate to buy without seeing proof, we don’t know the underlying psychology at work. But we end up doing that anyway.

Understanding why we behave a certain way and which psychological principles govern it is key. When you learn how to optimize conversion rate based on this understanding, you can arrange elements on your website to align with your visitors' expectations. It’s a big win for your business!

18. Include Multimedia Wherever Suitable

In today’s vast ocean of online information, a picture (or video) is worth a thousand words, creating a memorable and persuasive online journey for your visitors! Multimedia aids in storytelling, captures attention, and breaks the monotony of text, making your content more appealing.

For instance, on your eCommerce website, a video on a product page can showcase the fit and style of the product demonstrated by a model. Or let’s say for a travel website, you can consider adding destination videos or pictures shared by your customers, giving visitors an idea of what experience they can look forward to on their tour.

19. Use Surveys to Your Advantage

When visitors land on your website, they think about how easy or hard it is to take action. Maybe they find product suggestions easily but struggle to see the top brands on your website. Or perhaps they spot the form but can’t easily find the pricing page on a SaaS website.

At this point, visitors can share their experiences and inform you about what’s functioning well, and where adjustments might be needed on your website. Their feedback offers unique and genuine perspectives. That’s why we’re big fans of incorporating on-page surveys.

20. Experiment With Your Offers

Determining whether your content offerings are relevant, innovative, captivating, and appealing to your target audience is beneficial. By experimenting with offers, you can gain valuable insight into what content resonates most with their customers and tailor it to their needs.

For instance, offering a free trial or consultation is quite general. Instead, you could give away something more valuable, such as a free tool or downloadable booklet. This way, potential customers can see the value of doing business with you, increasing their likelihood of becoming loyal customers.

21. Incorporate live chat

When web visitors don’t convert, they might have questions or concerns about your product or service. To avoid losing potential customers, consider adding live chat to your site.

With live chat, your customer service or sales employees can alleviate the concerns of prospects who are still deciding. It provides a way to connect with visitors in real time and address their issues directly, improving customer satisfaction and potentially increasing conversions.

What is A Good Website Conversion Rate?

google analytics - Improve Website Conversion Rate

A website conversion rate between 2% and 5% is often considered solid. Even a slight uptick of 0.5% can translate into meaningful outcomes for your business. Top performers do better, so comparing against industry benchmarks can reveal improvement opportunities.

Conversion Rates by Industry: See Where You Stand

Conversion rates differ across industries. Knowing how your site measures up can spotlight areas needing work.

Here's how different sectors stack up:

Conversion by Industry - Improve Website Conversion Rate

Ecommerce sites often see lower conversion rates compared to industries like finance, which boast much higher top-tier rates. For instance, B2B sites might convert better than e-commerce sites because they target a more specific audience.

A 4% rate is average in the legal world, while 6.46% is top-tier. An e-commerce site with a 3.71% rate could still out-earn a legal site with a higher rate, given its higher traffic volume.

Traffic Sources: Where Your Visitors Come From Matters

Traffic sources greatly impact conversion rates. Research from Episerver reveals a wide range of conversion rates depending on how users find your site.

Here's a snapshot:
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Traffic Sources - Improve Website Conversion Rate

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Paid traffic typically converts better than other channels, which explains why many businesses invest in paid ads. Visitors from paid ads are often more targeted and ready to engage.

Device Matters: Desktop, Mobile, or Tablet?

Conversion rates also vary by device, with desktop users generally converting at a higher rate compared to mobile users.

Here’s a breakdown of conversion rates by device:

Device Conversion Rate - Improve Website Conversion Rate

Despite the rise in mobile browsing, mobile users tend to convert at a lower rate than desktop users. This might be due to smaller screens, less optimal navigation, and more mobile browsing distractions.

Programmatic CRO Tool: Boost Blog Conversions

Blog CTAs are a programmatic CRO tool for your blog. We noticed it was too difficult to set up blog-wide CTAs on most content management systems like:

Framer
Webflow
Ghost
Strapi
Wordpress
Sanity
Tina
Dozens of other CMSs

Our engineering teams needed to jump through multiple hoops and divert their attention from pressing issues to set aside 3-7 days to set up a blog-wide CTA for our websites manually.

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Why is Your Conversion Rate Important?

woman thinking - Improve Website Conversion Rate

Conversion rates are your window into how effective your marketing is. You need to know more than just raw numbers. Imagine celebrating 50 signups only to learn you had 50,000 visitors. That’s a 1% conversion rate and tells you to rethink your strategy.

Gauge the Effectiveness of Your Segmentation Efforts

Conversion rates reveal how well your audience segmentation is working. If your rates are low, your targeting needs work. By focusing on who your audience is, you can create more targeted campaigns that appeal to specific groups.

Build Better Marketing Campaigns

Knowing your conversion rate allows you to tailor your marketing campaigns for different channels, such as social media and email. By understanding which segments are responding, you can refine your message and approach for each channel.

Create More Engaging Content

If your conversion rate is low, your content might need to be more engaging. Test different types of content and see what resonates with your audience. Whether it’s blog posts, videos, or interactive elements, find what works and use it to improve your conversion rate.

Capture More Leads from Your Blog for Free Today with Blog CTAs

Adding calls to action to a blog shouldn’t feel like solving a Rubik's Cube. Yet, that’s often the case with content management systems like Webflow or WordPress. Why should your engineering team spend days working on something as basic as blog-wide CTAs?

‍Blog CTAs is here to solve this issue. You can get CTAs up and running within minutes. The result? You can boost your conversion rate by 3 to 7 percent, meaning more leads and opportunities.

Transform Your Sidebar: Boost Conversions With Smart CTAs

If your blog’s sidebar isn’t pulling its weight, you’re leaving money on the table. CTAs placed in this area can help convert casual readers into leads. Blog CTAs automates this process, making it easy to capture more leads without a developer’s help.

This quick change can have a big impact on your conversion rate. Why wait? This is a smart and easy place to start if you want to improve website conversion rates.

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Blog CTAs is more than just a tool: It’s a competitive advantage. This software lets you do more with less effort. You won’t need a team of developers to make your blog work harder for you. Get on the waitlist today and see how you can benefit from smart, automated CTAs that save you time and increase your conversion rate.

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Tired of Not Driving Enough Revenue from Your Blog?