It’s easy to get people to visit a website, that is, compared to getting them to fill out your online form. And that’s what you want, right? When they fill out the form you are receiving a valuable piece of information, their email. And doing so is called Conversion.
If your bounce rate is more than 40%, your web site is not doing a good enough job capturing their interest. Ideally you want a bounce rate of 10% or less. So how do you get the conversion you want?
Here are some tips:
1. Use Call to Action buttons: These buttons should be colorful, attractive and at the top half of your pages. You can add them to any and every page if you like. Pop ups work too.
2. Offer a freebie: Do you have a White Paper, Power Point Presentation, Video, Information Graphic or booklet you can offer? Joke of the Day? People willingly fill out forms to get their free info.
3. Make the forms short: We hate to fill out long forms. If all you want is their email, then just ask for that.
4. Use Landing Pages for ad campaigns: Landing pages reside on your web site but look different. They are more a flyer with a form than a web page. There are no menus or side bars. You can advertise your product or service discount and direct people to that page. Such as “http://yoursite.com/offer”.
5. Make your website easy to use: This is more about good design. The information on your website should be easy to access and logically laid out. Also called Information Architecture or IA.
6. Make it Mobile Friendly: We’ve all heard about Google’s new algorithm by now. As of April 21, any site that is not Mobile Friendly, moves down the search list. 20% of first time visitors to your site are using their smart phone. Time to look for some Responsive themes and upgrade your site!
You may be wondering how does one check on their conversion rate? If you have a google email account, you can go to the Google Analytics website and use that user name and password to sign in. Then, type in your web site’s address. It may take a week or two for any activity to propagate there, so be patient. Check back to their website again to read your stats. And let’s hope it’s good news!