This reinforces the need for search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns so that your content can reach the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages). 

Yet, one of the biggest challenges with SEO is how often it changes. 

Thanks to constant Google algorithm updates and newly emerging search trends, SEO tactics fall in and out of favor all the time. 

If you don’t routinely optimize web content, holding onto top SERP rankings will be next to impossible.

In the current era, recent developments like the prevalence of AI chatbots, E-E-A-T, and slower indexing times are drastically changing the way SEO works – and you need to keep up with them if you want your content to continue to rank. 

However, some tried-and-true optimization tactics have yet to go out of style, like conducting targeted keyword research and creating excellent content that provides value to your audience. 

There’s a lot to know about optimizing web content, which is why we put together this comprehensive guide containing 5 steps to optimize any piece of content to perfection. 

Along the way, you’ll learn how SEO and content optimization has changed in recent years, so stay tuned to get the scoop on the latest developments. 

Why is Optimizing Web Content Necessary?

What does it mean to ‘optimize’ a blog post, video, or web page?

Optimization involves making enhancements to a piece of content with a specific goal in mind, which is usually to improve its performance on search engines like Google. 

Higher SERP rankings aren’t the only reason you may want to optimize your content, as you can also optimize for higher conversions, click-through rates, and a better overall user experience. 

It all depends on what your primary business objectives are, such as increasing revenue or improving brand awareness. 

Also, routine optimization is a necessity due to the ever-changing nature of SEO. 

Unless a piece of content is evergreen (meaning that it continues to stay fresh & relevant for readers), you’ll need to update it with new information periodically. 

Not only does this ensure that your readers always receive the most accurate, up-to-date information, it makes your content eligible to remain on Google’s SERPs. 

Since Google only wants to provide its users with the highest quality, most accurate information, its crawlers only rank content that’s relevant and recent. 

Give underperforming content a second chance

Another reason to optimize your web content is to tweak and improve an existing piece of content that isn’t as performing as well in the search results as you’d hoped. 

It takes a lot of time and money to produce high-quality content, so it’s worth doing what you can to optimize a post that doesn’t meet your expectations. 

After all, it could be something simple like an indexing error that caused your content to disappear from the SERPs. 

Once you rule out technical issues like noindex tags, indexing errors, and duplicate content – it’s time to take a cold, hard look at the content you produced. 

Ask yourself the following questions to help determine the root cause of the issue:

• Are you targeting keywords that have decent search volume and relatively low keyword difficulty scores?
• Does the piece feature a readable format with keyword-rich headings (H1, H2, H3, H4, etc.)?
• Were you able to provide unique insights about the topic derived from your own personal experience and expertise?
• Do your title tag and meta description accurately reflect the topic you explore in the content?
• Is the piece of content more than 700 words? 

If you answered no to any of these questions, then you’ve definitely got some optimization to do. 

The good news is that if you’re able to fix whatever’s holding your content back, you’ll enjoy higher SERP rankings and increased online visibility. 

How Has Content Optimization Changed in Recent Years?

In a field that’s known for constant changes, the last few years have been especially ripe with new developments affecting SEO.

AI chatbots took over the world while Google released back-to-back updates to their algorithm and Quality Rater Guidelines – just to name a few changes. 

Here’s a look at the latest SEO developments you should keep in mind when optimizing web content.

Link Spam Update 

In December 2022, Google released their latest Link Spam Update, which used a souped-up SpamBrain (their AI-based spam prevention system) to negate the effect of paid backlinks on SERP rankings. 

While paying for backlinks was always against Google’s guidelines, it was standard practice for many SEO experts – even those who favored white-hat techniques. 

The update’s effects were drastic on websites that used paid or unnatural backlinks, as many site owners reported significant ranking drops.

Going forward, website owners must focus on strictly organic link-building techniques, such as guest posting, link insertions, and relationship-building. 

E-E-A-T (Quality Rater Guidelines update)

Around the same time the Link Spam Update rolled out, Google updated its Quality Rater Guidelines. 

Most notably, they added an extra E to their famous acronym, E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).

The additional E stands for experience, which means websites and reviews that display first-hand experience and knowledge of topics are favored by Google’s quality raters. 

To ensure your content remains at the top of the SERPs, optimize your content by including anecdotes, real stories, and first-hand accounts that reflect your knowledge on a topic. 

The AI revolution 

AI chatbots were already taking over the world at the beginning of 2023, and it’s only been gaining momentum since. 

The entire internet has long been buzzing about ChatGPT, AI image generators, and AI content creation software.

Bing famously integrated ChatGPT into its search engine, which is already changing the way users approach search engines. 

While traditional SEO still works for now, it’s bound to change quite a bit in the near future. 

In the meantime, you can use powerful AI tools to make optimizing web content a lot easier. Tools like Copymatic will enable you to automatically generate blog posts, landing pages, and even entire websites. 

Chatbots can provide quick answers to any questions you may have while creating content – saving you the need to browse multiple web pages. 

Reduced crawling and indexing 

In order to reduce their impact on the environment, Google significantly reduced the amount of crawling and indexing it does to discover new websites. 

Their thinking is that excessive crawling and indexing powered by non-renewable sources is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. 

Not only that, but Google plans to neutralize its carbon footprint entirely by 2030, and reduced crawling/indexing is a part of that plan. 

What does this mean for SEO?

It means that crawling and indexing your new web pages will take even longer than before (it was already a lengthy process). 

While search engines like Bing and Yandex have incorporated IndexNow (an open-source protocol that enables instant indexing for participating search engines), Google has yet to implement such a solution. 

That means it’s more important than ever for site owners to publish high-quality content, seek out high-authority backlinks, and grow their social media presence to speed up the indexing process. 

Pro tip: The indexing process can be especially slow for link-building tactics like guest posting, so incorporate some link insertions into the mix. That’s because a link insertion involves adding one of your backlinks to an existing piece of content that’s already in Google’s index. 

5 Steps to Optimize Web Content 

Now that you’re up to speed on what’s new with SEO, it’s time to look at the most effective content optimization techniques to help you reach the top of the SERPs. 

Bear in mind that we’re only going to cover on-page optimizations, so if you’re interested in diagnosing and repairing technical issues, check out our in-depth technical SEO checklist instead. 

If you have a piece of content that’s underperforming due to on-page reasons (or if you’re creating a new piece from scratch), follow these 5 steps to optimize it for SEO fully. 

Step #1: Targeted keyword research 

The keywords that you target will make or break your SERP rankings, so you need to be smart about the ones you choose. 

Researching keywords is how you uncover topics relevant to your target audience, which will guide your entire content strategy. 

It’s more important than ever to find topics that are not only relevant to your audience but also cater to your expertise and first-hand experiences. 

Google’s algorithm is extremely adept at finding content that’s irrelevant or out of place, so you shouldn’t pursue a keyword simply because it has a lot of search volume. 

For example, if a website that sells car parts starts publishing trendy food recipes, it’ll stand out as irrelevant to Google. 

To find keywords to target, you can use our free keyword planner tool. 

It’ll provide essential keyword metrics like search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty, and current search trends.

Look for keywords that reflect your expertise, have high search volume, low keyword difficulty, and an upward search trend. 

Step #2: Proper keyword placement 

A mistake beginner SEOs make is to overuse their keywords, which stands out to Google as keyword spam. 

You want to use your keywords organically and in a few key locations, including:

• The title tag and meta description 
• Headings (especially H1 tag) 
• In the alt text for any images 
• Organically several times throughout the piece (including common variations) 
• In the first 100 words of the content 

If one of your blogs is underperforming on search engines, confirm that your target keyword appears in these areas. 

If they do and you still aren’t making any progress, it could be that you’re targeting the wrong keywords (in which case you’d need to refer back to step #1). 

Step #3: Use relevant and engaging visuals 

It’s been common knowledge for a while now that blogs featuring visuals perform better in the search, improve dwell time, generate more backlinks, and make posts easier to digest. 

That’s especially true if the visuals you use serve as supplementary aids to your content. 

Infographics, videos, and relevant images/illustrations are all great examples of visuals that make blogs more SEO-friendly. 

However, you should stray away from irrelevant images, even if they are visually stunning. 

Unless an image is able to add something or relate to the post’s subject matter, you shouldn’t use it. 

Also, every image that you use needs alt text (containing your target keyword) that describes what the image displays. This is helpful for users that are visually impaired, and alt text enables search engine crawler bots to know what the image shows (and how it relates to your content). 

Step #4: Use inbound and outbound links 

Your goal is to keep users engaged in your content loop for as long as possible, and the best way to do that is to interlink to related posts on your website. 

Using internal links is a great way to improve your dwell time and user experience, as you can direct readers from one post to another (or to a product/landing page) by using inbound links. 

As an added bonus, internal links help search engine crawler bots understand the structure of your website, which leads to better indexing. 

Whenever you’re creating a new post or optimizing an existing one, create a list of related content that you want to link to within it. 

Also, outbound links to authoritative sources (like research papers, government agencies, and educational institutions) will improve your SEO – so use them whenever possible. 

Step #5: Provide real value to your audience 

This last step is the most important, and it’s the least likely to go out of style. 

Above all else, you should do your very best to provide value to your target audience. 

That means publishing how-to’s and ultimate guides covering skills they want to acquire, keeping them up-to-date with the latest developments in your industry, and providing some good old-fashioned entertainment. 

As long as you do that (and ensure no technical SEO issues are holding you back), nothing can stand in your way of becoming a valued thought leader in your field. 

Concluding Thoughts: How to Optimize Web Content 

SEO has changed a lot in recent years, and it will only continue to change going forward – especially with the advent of intelligent AI chatbots. 

For now, creating as much value for your audience as you can through your content is still the way to go. 

Do you need expert help developing an airtight SEO strategy for your business?

Then don’t wait to check out HOTH X, our managed SEO services, and HOTH Web Copy, our enormously effective content creation service.

The post 5 Steps to Optimize Web Content Like an SEO Expert appeared first on The HOTH.

Without a well-designed homepage, your website will never perform as well as it should.   

The remaining article will look at what makes a great website homepage content and the best practices to ensure you take full advantage of this valuable virtual real estate. 

Ready to learn?

What Is A Website Homepage?

Think of your home page as the starting point on a potential customer‘s journey.  

When they type in your domain name, your home page is the default page that loads in their browser.   

Most homepages contain important information and facts about your business.

In fact, 64% of the website visitors want to see the company’s contact information on the homepage.

Although it’s typical to have a navigation bar to lead visitors to other pages on your website, a call to action (CTA) is also vital to success. 

Additionally, here are a few tips for improving the functionality of a killer homepage:

• Keep your website design fresh, simple, and unique
• Make it mobile-friendly
• Social media buttons for easy sharing
• Showcase your products and services
• Consider your page load speed
• Keep your homepage organized
• Content is vital to success
• Consider your color scheme
• Use relevant, targeted keywords

A well-designed homepage must hit your website visitors‘ pain points and show that you know how to help them. 

For example, 36% of customers click on logos to reach the homepage, so a well-designed website should have a clickable logo that sends users back to the homepage. 

Unless you can solve their problem, potential customers will never make a purchase. 

You solve their pain points by addressing:

• The problem or challenge your target customer is suffering from
• Asking what they need and giving it to them
• Asking questions that lead to answers
• Providing clear, simple solutions that can be digested while scrolling

What are the Benefits of Having a Homepage?

Some web experts describe your website’s homepage as the “welcome mat” of a nice home, inviting potential customers inside.  

The more inviting the mat, the more potential customers enter. 

Remember, when visitors first land on your site, they have no idea what they will find inside.  

A well-designed, bright, bold homepage with well-written web content (including testimonials) will convince them to enter because it makes a fantastic first impression.

Here are a few benefits to having a knock-out homepage:

• Online presence 
• Increased SEO efforts
• Increased credibility
• Content marketing expansion 
• Boost in advertising

Here’s the thing about most internet searchers and website visitors; they aren’t interested in what you do so much as what you can do for them. 

Putting several excellent benefits your services or products provide front-and-center is vital on your homepage.  

A short list of some of your top benefits that are easy to read, engaging, and compelling will go far in converting visitors to customers. 

What Should Your Homepage Content Contain?

Several sections are essential when crafting an engaging, inviting, and persuasive homepage. 

A digital marketing content strategy is critical for the success of any website, let alone a homepage. 

Some elements of a website’s homepage are more vital than others, but all are necessary to get the highest conversion rates, time-on-page, and CTR.  

They include:

• The Opening header
• Subheadline
• Call to Action (CTA)
• Supporting Image
• Benefits
• Social proof
• Navigation
• Content offer
• Features
• Resources
• Success Indicators such as case studies

More than anything, your homepage content makes that critical first impression on a new visitor. 

You have about 10 to 20 seconds to do this, so getting your homepage content strategy right is critical. 

If a visitor lands on your website and isn’t wowed, impressed, or intrigued by what they see, you’ve lost the race before they even fired the starting gun. 

Methods to ensure a high-quality homepage:

It’s highly unusual for a first-time visitor to a website’s home page to make a purchase. That’s why having a link to your resources is vital. 

That gives your visitors relevant information and, more importantly, improves their time on the page.. 

Here are some methods to make sure you have high-quality homepage content:

• Ensure your website can load quickly
• Use an introductory video to grab their attention
• Highlight your most engaging content to engage searchers
• Give visitors an excellent mobile experience (Google may penalize you if you don’t)
• Use a heat map tool to see exactly where searchers are looking on your website

Providing excellent resources also helps you establish credibility as an expert in your market or industry and improves your homepage user experience. 

Additionally, there’s no denying that potential customers like getting free stuff, especially when it’s something that can help them solve a problem, learn something new, or simply make them laugh. 

An e-book, white paper, how-to guide, free trial, contest, checklist, whatever. If it’s free and fits their current need, it should be on your homepage and ready to download.

How do I write my website’s homepage content?

Within moments of landing on your homepage, visitors already have a generalized first impression of your business. 

Your homepage content needs to give them a clear understanding of who you are and what you do. 

You also want to invite them to explore; if they don’t like what they see, you’ll get a high bounce rate. 

If, however, you wish to write your homepage content yourself, here are some excellent tips for doing it:

1. Star with a “Hero Message.” This bit of content is a “hook” message that gets people to pay attention. It should be short, specific, and instantly understood.
2. Write about what your potential customers want to know, learn, hear, etc. Remember, it’s not about your company; it’s about them, their wants, needs, desires, etc.,
3. Write short, concise, easy-to-digest bits of information rather than long-form info that takes too much time to digest.
4. Explain, in laymen’s terms, how you solve your customers’ problems and pain points.
5. Provide proof that what you say you can do, you can do.

Website’s Homepage Headline and Subheadline

Your homepage headline must be clear, concise, and simple. 

If a visitor needs to stop and think, your headline has failed.

For example, LifeHacker has a website headline we love; “Do Everything Better.” 

It’s short, super-easy to understand, and gets its point across instantly. 

Here are a few excellent tips to craft an excellent headline that works well:

• Make your headline unique, something that’s not been done before.
• Be very specific with the words, phrases, and terms.
• Give away something useful. People love free things. 
• Use adjectives that grab people’s attention.
• Always state the obvious. Don’t make people work to figure out what your headline is saying.
• Don’t be afraid to use emotionally-packed words.

Nearly as important as the website headline, the sub-headline should discuss a common pain point that your products or services solve. 

It should also describe how your product or service will improve a visitor’s life. 

A Primary Call to Action (CTA) is Fundamental to your Website Homepage Content

One of the primary goals of your website’s homepage is to move potential customers further down the sales funnel.    

One of the best ways to do that is with a call to action or CTA. As the name suggests, a CTA should compel a visitor to take action in a specific way. 

Ideally, a CTA  should be 4-5 words maximum, which is not a lot of word real estate. 

Some of the best homepage CTAs are used frequently, including:

• Try TheHOTH for Free
• Click to Make an Appointment
• Sign Up Today
• Download Our Free eBook
• Create Your Free Profile

Your call to action should be in a different font and color and be bold to make it stand out on your homepage. 

An Eye Catching Supporting Image Grabs Potential Customers’ Attention

Research shows that about 65% of the general population learns visually. 

That means, to retain information, 65% of people need to see it. 

It also means that a supporting image is critical on your website’s homepage. A supporting video isn’t a bad idea, either.  

Think about your supporting image as the front page of a menu at a fine dining establishment. 

When you see that picture, your mouth starts watering, and your brain starts thinking about all the yummy food you’re about to eat. 

That’s some powerful stuff, we think you’ll agree, and it’s why your homepage needs a high-quality supporting image front and center. 

Here are a few tips for picking the right images for your homepage content:

• Pick a high-quality hero image
• Keep your images relevant
• Showcase real people if you can
• Optimize for an SEO homepage design
• Choose the correct file type

Social Proof and Testimonials are Gold for a Website Homepage

Social proof is today’s “word of mouth” advertising and a necessity on every successful homepage. 

You can scream from the mountaintop how wonderful your services or products are, and some people might believe you. But, if you have several customer testimonials and include their pictures, many more people will believe what you’re saying. 

Here are a few suggestions for gathering social proof:

• Here are a few tips for getting social proof:
• Use endorsements
• Display your reviews and testimonials
• Give your customers incentives for writing reviews
• Create surveys or case studies and share the results

This last essential element for your website’s homepage is similar to social proof but even

more powerful. 

Awards, accolades, and recognition by famous people or celebrities all show web searchers that, hey, this business has it going on! 

Maido, one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, lets visitors know it right on their homepage. 

Social proof can sometimes be more powerful than testimonials, but a good mix is best.

Homepage Navigation Reduces Bounce Rate Significantly

Navigation is essential on your homepage to reduce its bounce rate, the number of people who click on your home page but never click on another page afterward. 

Like a well-drawn map, your home page should give visitors a straightforward menu they can use to go to any other page they desire. 

It should be well structured, easy to find, and even easier to use. 

Well-designed navigation will keep your bounce rate to a minimum and ensure visitors see more than just your homepage. 

Final Thoughts

Like the display window of a department store, your website homepage has a very specific purpose; draw customers inside where you can charm them with your wares and convert them into customers.

Need some expert advice? 

We got you! 

Book a call today!

The post How To Make an Unforgettable First Impression with Your Website’s Homepage Content appeared first on The HOTH.

The answer is call-to-action (CTA) buttons. These are buttons that prompt users, be they leads or customers, to take action rather than linger.

On a SaaS website, for example, an endless feature list is pointless if users can’t sign up or get a demo easily. A well-crafted CTA helps with that.

In this article, we’ve explained the 10 types of CTAs that most websites use and provided real-life examples to showcase how they’re utilized.

What is a CTA?

A call-to-action (CTA) button or link encourages users to perform desired actions on your website. This includes signing up for your newsletter, buying your products or services, and anything else that helps convert them from visitors into leads and then leads into customers.

A CTA can be as simple as a “Sign Up Here” button, a line of text offering a free demo, or a “Read more” button on content. The type of CTA you use depends on the action you want the viewer to take.

An eCommerce website, for example, wants to sell more products, so its landing page can talk about how helpful the product is or the latest sale, while the CTA can use language like “Save Money Now” and lead users to the products page.

Without a call-to-action button, users are left to their own devices after reading your landing page. Often, this leads them to click off rather than search for the sign-up, products, or services page. Consequently, conversion rates take a hit.

10 Most-Used Types Of CTAs With Examples

Brands and marketers can use multiple forms of CTAs, depending on the context and platform.

Here are the 10 main types:

#1. Lead generation

Lead generation CTAs aim to convert casual viewers or first-time readers into potential customers. These are essential for your website and a crucial avenue for lead generation.

You can use these CTAs anywhere you expect to get a high number of new visitors. For example, Sendinblue has an “Enroll” CTA button for their online courses that leads users to a detailed course syllabus breakdown and an introduction to the instructor.

(Image Source)

Other places to use this call-to-action button are in the sidebar, at the end of blog posts, atop landing pages, or on floating banners. They must be eye-catching and stand out from the rest of the text or images.

Regardless of the length of the CTA, it must tell users exactly what to expect when they click on it. In the above example, a CTA like “Get Started” or “Read More” would not have been as effective.

#2. Read more

A “Read More” call-to-action button aims to hook readers into viewing one or more pieces of content. It is most commonly used on blog home pages, along with a preview of the post. It gives users the option to read the full post or keep scrolling.

Here’s an example from The HOTH’s blog:

A “read more” CTA lets you display more pieces of content on a single page. It also enables accurate data collection since users have to click on each CTA button to view a single post.

This CTA type can also be used at the end of blog posts to lead users to the next piece and keep them on your website longer.

#3. Lead magnet CTAs

Lead-magnet-focused form submission CTAs are an effective tool to collect user information and introduce customers into the sales funnel by offering insights and research-based data in return. You’ll often see these CTAs before you can download resources from a website.

This CTA type uses lead magnets, such as eBooks, guides, case studies, or reports to gather customer information. Viewers are likely to see this as a fair exchange since they get valuable content in return.

Use actionable CTAs that showcase the content’s value rather than a generic ‘Submit” button. You can take it a step further and include an option to sign up for product updates and the company newsletter. Here’s an example from Kinsta:

(Image Source)

Forms like this can also act as a lead qualification tool. It shows that the reader is actually interested in a solution to a specific problem. Some forms are detailed and ask for the user’s profession and company name to immediately qualify them as a lead.

If a marketing manager from a major enterprise fills out a form, you can send them more info on your marketing tool. Similarly, if a student submits the same form, they aren’t a high-priority lead and don’t need to be added to the sales funnel. You can send them emails about any marketing courses you’re offering instead.

#4. Social sharing buttons

Encourage users to share your content via simple social media CTA buttons at the end of your blog posts or landing pages.

These buttons help users easily engage with your brand. All they have to do is click on a button to share the post with their peers or friends.

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Your brand benefits from social sharing since many people trust the opinions of influencers or regular professionals in their industry. So, if user A liked and shared your blog post, there’s a higher chance that one of their followers will read it and engage with your brand.

You can also display social sharing icons in the sidebar and include a counter showcasing the number of shares on each platform. This acts as social proof of how helpful the content is.

#5. Newsletter subscription

Email newsletters are a great way for brands to build relationships with their customer base by offering information, discounts, and insights. In addition, marketers can use them to capture email leads and guide users into a drip campaign.

Sure, this is a form of lead magnet, but it can be a harder sell to entice potential leads with. Most people probably already have multiple newsletters in their inbox, and they’re not exactly chomping at the bit to add another one.

So a plain “subscribe” button won’t do the trick here. Instead, your CTA should include 1 or 2 lines explaining why they should sign up — what’s in it for them. Here’s how Glossier does it:

(Image Source)

You can use email subscription CTAs on landing pages, sidebars, product pages, and at the bottom of your website. Make sure it’s easy to see and even easier to sign up.

#6. Event registration

Promote online and offline events on your website to build awareness, encourage sign-ups and gather contact information.

Event promotion or registration CTAs can be added to landing pages, like the one from Salesforce below, or in sidebars and next to blog posts.

(Image Source)

You can also use this CTA on the login page to boost ticket sales and place it all over your website to inform leads or casual readers about it.

The placement and text of your CTA also depend on the event and who it is meant for. For example, a generic webinar on marketing best practices in 2022 could interest most of your website visitors (if your blog is about marketing, that is), so it makes sense to include it throughout your website.

On the other hand, a webinar on a highly-specific topic within marketing campaigns, such as technical SEO, is only interesting to some visitors. It’s better to promote these events within blog posts related to the topic of SEO, so you can reach potential prospects who care.

#7. Lead nurturing

Once you’ve captured a lead, you need to nurture them until they complete a purchase and become a paying customer. You can do this using CTAs within your existing communication channels — emails are the most popular choice.

Lead nurturing moves a prospect from the awareness stage in the buyer lifecycle to the consideration stage and maybe even entices them to complete the purchase.

Take this offer from Calm, for example. Anyone who has signed up for the free version of the app is a prospect for their paid plans. The app uses the “40% off” CTA in its emails to nurture leads, drive click-throughs, and boost conversions.

(Image Source)

The best lead nurturing CTAs for you depend largely on the context and your goals. You can, for example, encourage users to sign up for a more in-depth course, showcase product features, or offer exclusive discounts to drive sales.

#8. Free trial/demo

One of the most common CTAs that most people have seen is the “Start free” or “Get a demo” CTA. This is a risk-free CTA, where users explore your product’s benefits and use cases without any financial commitment or credit card details.

This CTA type is built to convince users to get your product and see how useful it really is. Once a lead has the free version, you can upsell the paid plan by showcasing how it can further improve their work processes.

Most SaaS companies use this CTA. Here’s an example from HubSpot:

(Image Source)

Of course, the free trial or demo should be mind-blowing enough to make users realize they need your tool to be more proactive or efficient. Once they’ve realized this, a purchase is almost guaranteed.

#9. Related content

Marketers know that the longer a visitor stays on your site, the higher the chances are of them converting. When a user goes from one blog post to another and another, they’ll learn more about your product, learn about the value it offers, see your values as a company, and make the leap to purchase.

This is why related content CTAs are essential. They lead customers down a rabbit hole of different types of content designed to keep them on your website and push them further down the funnel.

Related content CTAs can be included within the content, such as between different sections of a blog post, or in the sidebar, via a simple link.

Kinsta improves on a generic related content CTA by integrating it with a comparison tool. This is excellent for both related reading and to help new visitors see the value of Kinsta’s products.

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Every blog post has this CTA in its sidebar. When users select a Kinsta competitor and click on “Compare,” they’re led to another blog post that compares the two platforms and explains why Kinsta is better.

This keeps readers on the site for long periods, but it also highlights how great the platform is and tells users why they should trust Kinsta instead of its competitors.

The only issue here is that it also shows up for blog posts that are completely unrelated to WordPress hosting. The more unique and relevant your CTAs (and related copy) are, the more it draws users in.

#10. Contact sales

You need a sales-focused page and CTA to close the deal at the end of your lead-generation and lead-nurturing efforts. This CTA will take customers directly to the “Contact Sales” page so they make the purchase.

But it’s not enough to write a basic CTA like “contact our sales team today.” You have to use the copy around the CTA to create urgency, show the impact or benefits of your product, and build FOMO (fear of missing out). It should make the customer want to buy the product immediately.

monday.com does this well:

(Image Source)

Notice how the copy next to the form highlights social proof of how great their software is? The message here is that it’s helped thousands of companies worldwide, and it can help you too, so why wait? Contact their sales team now.

Drive More Sales With Solid CTAs

CTAs are an essential marketing tool that drives conversions by leading users further down the sales funnel. A well-crafted CTA speeds up the journey from the home page to checkout by eliminating doubt and showing users exactly where to go.

The copy surrounding your CTA is equally important, and the copywriting experts at The HOTH can help you develop both without breaking a sweat. Give us a call today to get started!

The post The 10 Types of CTAs That Every Marketer Must Master appeared first on The HOTH.

Or maybe you’re frustrated that your old lead nurturing tactics don’t seem to hold up in 2022 and want to update ASAP… Wherever you’re at with your marketing strategy, we’ve got the cheat sheet for a fool-proof lead nurturing campaign.

Algorithms are constantly changing. In fact, experts estimate that Google alone updates its algorithms 500 to 600 times every year. 

What’s more, people are constantly changing too, and the channels that they paid attention to last year may seem boring today. 

So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to know that the best lead nurturing strategy in 2022 isn’t the same as the best strategy in 2021. Staying on top of your leads means staying up to date with the most current lead nurturing tactics and trends. And lucky for you, this guide breaks it down into digestible and actionable steps.

Here’s what to expect:

• What is lead nurturing?
• The benefits of a good lead nurturing strategy
• Why content marketing is the ultimate way to nurture leads
• 7 steps to a successful lead nurturing campaign
• Our top 10 lead nurturing tactics

What is lead nurturing?

In its most basic sense:

Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with your customers and adding value to your product, with the aim to increase the likelihood of a purchase. 

But for further context, think of lead nurturing campaigns as breadcrumbs leading towards a purchase. Each breadcrumb serves to keep the lead interested, build trust and authority, and assure potential customers that you can solve their problem. This can take the form of several channels working together, with email, pop-up forms, and calls-to-action that are all presented to the customer at just the right time. 

Think back to the fact we mentioned at the start of the article.

“Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads”.

When your marketing efforts generate a lead, it doesn’t mean that that lead is ready to click the checkout button and convert into a sale. Prospective buyers have questions, and lead nurturing is your opportunity to answer them and edge that lead through the buyer’s journey towards a decision. 

The benefits of a good lead nurturing strategy

Before you start shaping your lead nurturing campaign, it’s important to bear in mind the potential benefits that could be waiting for you on the other side.

A well-executed lead nurturing strategy can expect to benefit from:

• Leads that are 50% more sales-ready at a 33% lower cost.
• A 47% higher average order value.
• A 60 to 70% chance of converting repeat customers.

On top of that, it helps to further establish your brand’s authority in your industry. Consistently pushing out valuable content positions you as a thought leader, and consequently someone that customers are more likely to trust to solve their problem. 

When a customer sees you as an authority in your industry, you’re more likely to be at the top of mind for opinions and recommendations.

And with this study from Google finding that consumers are doing more research before purchases, using your marketing campaigns to position yourself as a brand authority will prevent you losing out to a competitor.

Oh, and there’s the small fact that only 35% of B2B marketers are currently implementing a lead nurturing strategy – giving you an immediate advantage.

Why content marketing is the ultimate way to nurture leads

A significant part of nurturing leads is assuring them that you have the solution they need to successfully achieve their goals. And when it comes to building trust and authority, there’s no better solution than content marketing.

Content creation places your brand in front of potential customers in a way that doesn’t feel forced. It’s not pushing a hard sale for your products and services, it’s providing them with genuinely valuable and useful information for free. The trust this instills in your authority makes conversion much easier down the line. 

Furthermore, content also promotes lasting relationships based on meaningful communications, which can prove more valuable in the long term than the immediate one-time sales from traditional ads. 

Content marketing, in many of its forms, comes into play at each and every part of a good lead nurturing campaign’s sale’s funnel. Keep reading to find out how to further incorporate content marketing and optimize your lead nurturing strategy for success.

7 steps to a successful lead nurturing campaign

Now that we’re up to speed on why a lead nurturing strategy should be a key factor in your digital marketing efforts, you’re probably wondering how to get started. 

Lead nurturing is a lengthy process that requires consistent effort. However, with these steps we hope to make building a successful lead nurturing campaign as comprehensible and attainable as possible.

1. Use multiple channels (including social media and email marketing)

A core pillar of lead nurturing strategies is to make sure you place the right content and CTAs in front of your prospective customers at exactly the right times.

In the past, lead nurturing campaigns have relied almost exclusively on an email drip campaign alone. But today, with spam filters, changing data protection laws, and a general disinterest for blatant sales emails, it’s just getting harder and harder to nurture your leads via a few emails.

Not only does this mean you have to get smarter with your email marketing (stay tuned for more tips on this later in the article!), but also taking your lead nurturing campaign to multiple channels. When you are pushing out tailored digital marketing materials across email, social media (from TikTok to LinkedIn), and even SMS, there’s more chance that you will catch the attention of your audience – while strengthening brand awareness and authority in the process. 

2. Get the help of marketing automation

Lead nurturing can be both repetitive and overwhelming.

First, you have to send out emails, social media posts, and website actions that consistently nudge your leads through the warmer and warmer ends of the buyer’s journey.

Second, you have to organize the campaigns to work together in synergy, appearing to the prospect at just the right time.

Luckily, this makes lead nurturing campaigns the perfect candidate for marketing automation. 

Marketing automation takes into account every aspect of a buyer’s persona, including what they interact with. It then compiles this data for every one of your individual leads to know exactly the kind of solutions and media that specific lead will react best to. 

In short, marketing automation understands your leads more than you will ever have the time to – so it makes sense to include it in your lead nurturing strategy from day one.

3. Follow up with your leads immediately

It may sound obvious, but not enough companies pay attention to it…

The quicker you follow up with your leads, the hotter they are. 

This tactic borrowed from sales reps can be suitable for both B2C and B2B leads, depending on the nature of your business. 

If you’re looking for an easy way to sweep up the low-hanging sales-ready leads before assessing the remaining leads that need to be nurtured with a targeted campaign, don’t underestimate the power of a timely follow-up email or phone call. 

Unlike cold outreach, quick follow-ups are more likely to catch the prospect at a time where they are considering investing in a product or service like yours. 

4. Get personal by segmenting your email list

Earlier we defined lead nurturing as relationship building, and how can you expect to grow a relationship without making personal connections?

Segmenting your email list is a key step towards sending your leads hyper-personalized emails that help them feel heard and understood. 

One popular method for segmenting an email list is to create lists of leads based on the products they were browsing when they signed up for your emails. This way, you know that you are sending them further information, deals, and CTAs based on products they are actually interested in. 

5. Use lead scoring

If you’re new to the concept of lead scoring, think of it as a way to prioritize your prospects, identifying the quality leads so that you waste less time and resources. 

Lead scoring ranks all of your leads based on how valuable they may be to your business, usually based on their browsing behavior, interactions with social media, and conversions. The lead score can then be interpreted to let you know which leads are ready for a prompt sales follow-up, and which need to be nurtured for longer.

6. Retargeting

A Retargeting strategy can often play a large part in a marketing teams’ lead generation budget, mostly due to its substantial use of paid ads. 

Retargeting is when a customer leaves your website, and is then shown an advertisement for your site on another website or on social media. It serves to remind the prospect of the products they were looking at, and hopefully nudge them back to your site and towards a decision.

7. Consider the buyer’s journey

When you consider the traditional sales funnel, marketing leads usually are positioned at the top of the sales funnel and the sales leads appear further down.

Digital marketing often segregates marketing from sales, however aligning the two in the buyer’s journey is a necessary part of both keeping a lead warm and ensuring it is sale-ready.

In terms of your workflow, this may mean identifying the key moments in the buyer’s journey where the lead changes hands between the marketing team and the sales team. Then setting shared goals and expectations across both teams.

Our top lead nurturing tactics

Now that we’ve covered the steps involved in establishing a successful lead nurturing campaign, it’s only right that we include some helpful tips that will help you truly excel in your nurturing efforts. 

Personalize emails, ads, and social media

When it comes to inbound marketing, personalization is a vastly valuable tool. When you speak directly to a prospective customer, addressing details like their name, their interests, and location, it makes them feel more like a person and less like a number. In fact, recent data has shown that email campaigns with a personalized subject line have an increased your open rate of 50%

You can do this in your email communications, whether that be in your newsletters, announcements, or follow-up emails.

And you can also add personal touches via your targeted messages on social media, retargeted ads, and strategic content on your website. All of which helps to build trust with prospects and set you apart from competitors.

Craft valuable content

Just as personalized communications help to build trust between you and your prospects, the more finely-tuned your content is to individual customers and their needs – the more you’ll see your sales rate increase.

You can do this by using data gathered through your marketing automation, segmented email list, or simply buyer personas. Crafting relevant content designed around their pain points, burning questions, needs, and demands. You can also target certain demographics on your email list with a specific tone of voice and length of content that best suits them.

Provide tactical freebies

No, we don’t mean giving away your product for free! But, it’s important to note that lead nurturing can be a long process that requires patience and endurance, and providing prospective customers with a little bit of value for free can result in a big pay off. 

A freebie like an eBook, video content, infographics, consultations, or research can all go some way to help your customer achieve their desired goal. Consequently, customers are aware that you do in fact have the answer to their problems, and further value is added to your products. Furthermore, the fact that you are willing to give away some of your valuable expertise for free only further solidifies their trust in your authority. 

Know where to put your calls-to-action

In any piece of content, whether that be on your website, webinars, a social media post, or in an email, calls-to-action serve to catch your customer’s attention with something you offer that they might be looking for. So, make sure you’re not leaving them out of your lead nurturing campaigns!

Calls-to-action should appear throughout your blog posts, social media posts, videos, captions and stories, demos, landing pages, emails – or just anywhere that you are touching base with a customer!

Use surveys to pre-qualify leads

Surveys can make for a useful tactic for new leads at the start of the buyer’s journey, helping you to customize lead nurturing and personalize communications. Just make sure that you only approach the prospect with relevant questions that allude to value rather than a hard pitch of your product. Then be certain that your follow-up actions fully reflect their answers.

This also means knowing what to do with the leads that come your way – based on their survey answers. For instance, if a lead lands on your website organically and answers the survey to say they are visiting “for research”, you should know that it is not an appropriate time to invite them to a product demo. Instead, consider inviting them to join your mailing list to get notified about future announcements and offers. 

In summary

When it comes to the lead nurturing process, the main thing to remember is that no one lead is the same. Every human has different needs, interests, browsing preferences, and behaviors. And as a consequence, every lead comes with a different requirement and budget in order to convert it into paying customers.

In 2022, lead nurturing is a multi-levelled process that requires an omnichannel presence. Your content marketing efforts need to meet the prospect at every step of their buying journey, and find them at every platform that they frequently check. Which is why marketing automation has become such a popular and effective solution for the sales cycle, with its deep understanding of personas, data, and characteristics.

Summary of effective lead nurturing tactics

To wrap up, let’s recap the main points presented in this article.

• Multi-channel targeting is essential.

It’s getting harder to convert leads by email marketing alone. Strive to meet customers in other areas of the internet that they like to browse and interact.

• Marketing automation understands your leads more than you have time to.

No team of marketers or salespeople have the time to pin down a persona for every lead on your list – but the AI involved in marketing automation does!

• Personalize as much of your content and communications as possible.

Personalization has long been a buzzword for nurturing emails, but it can extend as far as social media, retargeted ads, and strategic website content.

• Use lead scoring to identify qualified leads and structure your workflow.

Lead scoring helps you identify the leads that are ready for a follow-up and those that will require a targeted nurturing campaign.

• Understand that lead nurturing requires you to align sales and marketing in the buyer’s journey.

Despite marketing and sales having different approaches to converting and making sales, they are both required to work in synergy throughout a successful lead nurturing process.

Interested in learning more about lead nurturing, or driving in new traffic to get some leads to nurture? Give us a call. We’re here to help. 

The post Lead Nurturing 101: How To Nurture Leads appeared first on The HOTH.

Maybe you don’t have a sales page on your website. Or maybe your sales page needs some work. An incomplete or non-existent sales page is going to hurt your sales. Period.

Websites that neglect to write strong sales pages for their products or services leave customers confused, wanting more, or unsure of what to do next.

I’m going to give you the full breakdown of how to create a killer sales page that’s designed to convert customers, drive sales, and improve the user-experience of your website. It’s a win-win-WIN.

Let’s get to it!

What Is a Sales Page (And Why Should You Have One)?

A sales page is an individual page on your website for each product or service your business offers.

The point of this page is to connect with a potential customer, address everything they would want to know about the product or service you offer, remove any doubts they may have, and guide them to a sale.

A sales page has the potential to dramatically increase your conversions and rankings, but if it’s not done effectively it could hurt your business. Here are the most common mistakes I see with sales pages:

1. There is no designated page on the website that discusses the service or product
2. All of the services or products have been lumped together onto one page
3. They’ve tried to optimize the sales page for all of the keywords related to the products/services which causes the page to cannibalize itself

If done right, here’s how a killer sales page will help you.

Improved SEO

If you create an individual sales page for each product or service you offer, it will increase your ranking ability.

When you have an individual page for each service, Google will be able to index and rank each page when a customer searches for that service.

Google rankings have a direct impact on your page visits. So the higher you rank, the more visitors you’ll get to your website.

Customer Satisfaction

An individual page for your service or product will also improve the user’s experience on your website.

A page for each service makes it easier to navigate your website. Users like information right at their fingertips, so if anything is difficult to find or confusing to operate they’ll jump right off the page.

If you make it simple and easy, they’ll stay on the page longer–giving you a better chance of achieving a sale.

Now that you know why it’s useful, let’s get into how to create one.

Sales Page Template

A killer sales page highlights the following sections:

1. A Headline
2. An Overview
3. Benefits/Features
4. How it Works
5. Testimonials
6. Pricing
7. A Guarantee
8. CTA (Call to Action)

That said, each product or service can vary significantly, so some sections may not be applicable to you. It is up to you to determine which of these sections you’ll need for your sales page.

Let’s break these sections down step-by-step.

1. Grab Attention & Make An Impression With A Bold Headline

It’s not enough to get a customer to land on your website. The biggest challenge you’ll face is getting them to stay there (and better yet, buy your product or service).

The problem is that the average person spends around 10 seconds on a web page. Those first 10 seconds are meant to assess the page’s validity and usefulness to them. Users are hardwired to bounce from web page to web page because they know most web pages are useless.

If you don’t grab the attention of your customer within the first 10 seconds, they will be long gone before you can say the words “20% OFF!”

That’s where a powerful headline comes in.

Hook Them in With a Catchy Headline

Your headline should be a brief statement of the service or product you offer, and should be catchy enough to grab the interest of the customer.

If a website says “Dog Boarding in St. Pete, FL” and another says “The Most Trusted Dog Boarding Facility in St. Pete FL” which one is the customer more likely to click on? Probably the second one.

If you are creating a local service page, be sure to include the city or region in your headline as well.

Finally, make sure your headline contains your targeted keyword and is formatted with the <h1> tag.

Include a Subhead

Now you’ll need to expand on your headline and answer the question “What benefit will my customer receive?”

Customers are looking for solutions to their problems. If your customer doesn’t know how you’re going to help them right from the beginning, you’ll lose their business.

Keep your subhead short, sweet, and to the point. No more than two sentences. And then format it with the <p> tag.

2. Provide Them With a Quick Overview

When people land on a web page, they are looking to access information quickly and easily. Make sure your page is set up to help someone skim for information.

Your page will need an overview after the headline. This gives the customer a general idea of what they can expect from the page and whether or not it will be useful to them.

Create a Section Headline for the Overview

This should be a compelling headline that encompasses the main problem or solution.

If my page headline is “The Most Trusted Dog Boarding Facility in St. Pete FL” then my Overview Headline might be “Leave Your Dog With People You Can Trust”.

What’s my problem? I don’t want to leave my dog with some sketchy stranger (a valid concern).

What’s the solution? I need to choose a dog-boarding facility with trusted professionals.

Your section headline should use an <h2> tag.

Briefly Describe the Problem and the Solution

Now you need to identify the problem and offer a solution to introduce your product or service.

If my headline is “Leave Your Dog With People You Can Trust” my description might sound something like this:

Address the problem. Acknowledge the solution. Offer the service to help.

Finish Strong With a CTA

Don’t know what a CTA is? Pay attention, because you’re going to need this.

A CTA is a Call to Action. It gets the customer to do something. Do you want your customer to call you? To fill out an online form? To book an appointment?

Give them the tool to do it!

If a customer has to spend more than a couple of seconds combing through your website to find the right link, you’ll risk losing them to a competitor.

People want quick access to what they need. So make their life as easy as possible to keep them on the page.

End your Overview with a CTA like this:

[Call Us Today: 888-988-8909]

-or-

[Schedule a Free Consultation Now]

And then link your CTA accordingly.

3. Let Them Know Why Your Product or Service Is The Best

Odds are you’ve got a lot of competitors out there, and your customer will undoubtedly be weighing their options.

Why should they choose your service/product over the X amount of options out there?

You need to highlight the reasons your service is THE BEST hands down. How do you do that? By spotlighting the benefits or features of your service.

Add a Compelling Benefit or Feature Headline

Don’t get lazy here. This is your selling point. If the customer sees a section that just says “Benefits” they’ll likely keep scrolling.

Be specific and make it POP!

Try something like:

• “Fast and Reliable Service”
• “Data-Driven Strategy”

The customer should read the headline and instantly want to know more.

Don’t forget to format your headline with an <h2> tag.

Highlight the Feature or Benefit With a Quick Description

One of the biggest mistakes you can make here is drone on and on and on about why your product or service is soooo great.

Nobody is going to read a huge wall of text. It’s an eye-sore. And as previously mentioned, no one wants their time wasted.

Your description should get straight to the point about why you’re their best option.

Keep your sentences short and straightforward and add bullet points when you can. This should be as easy to read as possible.

Here’s an example:

See what I mean? Quick. Easy to read. Attention to the highlights. Done.

4. Walk Them Through Your Process

Now that the customer knows what they’re buying, you’ll want to show them the process.

If they don’t know where to start or what to expect, they might jump to a different site. So break down the process and make it fool-proof.

Create a Headline for Your Process

This Headline doesn’t need to be complicated. You can use “Our Process” or “How it Works” to start it off.

You want the customer to know exactly what this section is about.

This will use the <h2> tag.

Breakdown Your Process Steps

The worst thing you can do here is confuse or overwhelm your customer. You want them to feel like this process is going to be a walk in the park!

If your process shows a ton of complicated steps, they’re going to run in the other direction to find someone who makes it easy.

Use the <h3> tag to format your process steps, and then break down the step in a sentence or two.

It’s easier than it seems. Here’s a visual:

Sounds easy, right? Now the customer feels good getting started.

5. Give The Buyer Confidence With Social Proof

The customer will be looking for proof that they can trust YOU, so now’s your chance to convince them with some testimonials.

If you have any positive feedback from previous customers, show it off. If you don’t, you can include a snippet about your business that will help establish trust.

You want them to think, “If other people like it, I probably will too!”

Start With a Trust-Building Headline

Yeah, you could say “Customer Testimonials” but where’s the fun in that? Your headline has just as much potential to build trust as the actual proof does.

Kick it up a notch with “We Are Your Best Choice for Your Pet.”

And then add that <h2> tag.

Show off a Little

Now you can share your testimonials. If you have a lot–kudos to you–try to narrow it down to your top two or three.

A good rule of thumb is to choose testimonials that highlight the benefits or features you talked about earlier on in the page.

Remember to get the point across quickly and efficiently. Too much text and the customer will stop reading.

6. Clearly Address Pricing

If the customer has made it this far into your sales page, they’re going to be wondering about the cost.

If you don’t address the pricing upfront, or if you tiptoe around it because you’re worried about spooking the customer, you might lose the customer.

Instead, build trust with them by staying honest and direct with the pricing section.

Add a Pricing Headline

Now is not the time to get fancy. Call the pricing section what it is. “Pricing” “Packages and Pricing” or another headline that clearly introduces the pricing.

You can even pose the exact question the customer will ask, like “How Much Does It Cost To XYZ?”

Format it with the <h2> tag and you’re set.

Give a Price Breakdown

Clearly show the pricing for the service or product, or address how the pricing is calculated and where to find it.

If the pricing requires a quote or contact to the business–explain it while being as straightforward as possible.

Here’s an example:

Simple, yet informative.

7. Risk-Reversal With A Guarantee

If your company has a Guarantee, this is a great way to start wrapping up your page.

If the customer has doubts, a guarantee will help put their mind at ease. The fewer the doubts the customer has, the easier it will be to secure their business.

A Guarantee should look like this:

If you do not have a guarantee, go ahead and skip this part (or consider creating one!).

8. Finish Off Strong With A Final CTA

Wrap your page up with a killer CTA. This is the final move to lock in your customer.

Create Your Final Headline

This is the last thing the customer sees. Finish it off with a powerful headline that compels the customer to do something.

Be sure to format it with the <h2> tag.

Sum It Up

In one to two sentences, sum up your page and give them the next step to take action.

Your final CTA can look like this:

And you’re done!

Conclusion

Our sales page guide is one of many you’ll find online–but we can assure you that this template will boost sales and convince customers to buy your service or product.

If you want help creating a killer sales page for your website, you’re going to love our HOTH Web Copy product.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. We love hearing from you!

The post The Anatomy of a Killer Sales Page: Boost Traffic & Conversions! appeared first on The HOTH.

Most businesses create a site to list their products and services for potential customers. They want to turn a profit or expand their business. In their view, everything else is just window dressing. Or is it?

Why should you care about an About Us page if it’s not answering questions about your products or directly selling services?

Marketing studies have actually shown that more than half of website visitors check out the About Us page first. They want to get to know you and make an emotional connection with your brand.

Potential customers spend hours researching products, reading reviews, and comparing your prices to competitors, but it’s trust in your brand that pushes them over the edge to make a purchase.

That’s why building an effective About Us page is so important. In fact, one professor from Harvard Business School pointed out in 2017 that 95% of purchasing decisions are subconscious.

In this blog, we’ll show you the importance of having a good About Us page and provide a step-by-step guide on how to create your own.

Ready to dive in?

What Is an About Us Page?

As we mentioned above, the About Us page is an opportunity to establish trust with potential customers by sharing your unique story.

There are three objectives any good About Us page tries to achieve:

1. Reflect your brand’s image (as originally seen on the Home Page)
2. Build trust with the reader
3. Share the unique story behind your company

Remember that your company is unique. Even if you’re selling the same products as hundreds of other competitors, your story is different than theirs.

You want to share the reason for founding your company in an About Us page, as well as what you provide that others don’t and your core mission or values.

Consider that 83% of millennials think it’s important to buy from companies that align with their own beliefs and values. Millennials are now the largest generational block in the United States and a majority of them shop online.

You need to engage them in order to stay competitive going into the future.

About Us pages typically include a story about the company, high-res photographs or videos of staff, and mission or value statements.

The visual elements of an About Us page are up to you as the website owner, but we’ve identified key elements that need to be there for better results.

When helping clients create their About Us page, The HOTH follows an outline approach:

1. Headline & Subhead
2. Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
3. Our Story & History
4. Social Proof
5. Contact Information & Locations
6. Call to Action (CTA)

Keep reading below and we’ll discuss each of these sections in greater detail.

Use An Attention-Grabbing Headline & Subhead

Headlines are so important because it’s the first thing visitors will see. Think about walking past the front page of a newspaper. What do you notice first?

Your page’s headline should be in the <h1> format and answer the question of what services you offer. It should also be engaging and concise.

Underneath the headline is your subhead in the <h2> format. You’ll have more room here to explain what benefits a visitor can expect from your company. Don’t write more than 1-2 short sentences.

If your web copy is effective, you’ll grab their attention and they’ll continue reading the rest of the page.

Develop a Unique Selling Proposition

A unique selling proposition is a marketing term. It describes why your company is a better choice than your competitors.

This is where you can discuss your mission and demonstrate how your values align with theirs.

You’ll want to create a section title in the <h2> format and a description of your company in <p>. Most companies will post a few short paragraphs to get their point across. Don’t make it too long or they’ll be more likely to navigate away.

Here’s an example of The HOTH’s USP:

Share Your Company Story

This next section is an opportunity to dive deeper into the history of your brand. Some people will want to know how long you’ve been open and what accomplishments you’ve made over that time.

Make a headline in <h2>. The choice is yours whether you want it to be called “Our Story,” “Our History,” or something creative your team comes up with.

If you’re creating an interactive timeline or adding multiple sections, then use the <h3> format to break up the copy.

The description of your brand will be in <p> format and include any information that you think is relevant to potential customers. This section can get long real fast, so make it easy for visitors to scan the text by using short paragraphs.

Check out our page:

See our full About Us page here.

Provide Social Proof

One of the best ways to demonstrate your company’s excellence is through social proof. This includes testimonials from happy customers or third-party recognitions.

Testimonials on your website can appear as short paragraphs or video clips. Potential customers like to see these to learn more about your company.

Have you earned any prestigious certifications or awards? This is the place to brag about it!

As with the other sections above, your headline will be in <h2>, subheadings in <h3>, and any descriptions in <p>.

At The HOTH, we decided to have a little fun with ours and created the “Trophy Room” to showcase our accomplishments:

Check our reviews page for inspiration. You can also access our SEO case studies from there.

Don’t Forget Your Contact Information & Locations

Too many companies forget to add contact information to their website. This is a bad idea. Remember that an About Us page is attempting to establish trust with a prospective customer.

You want to give the customer all the pertinent information they need about who you are, and how to reach you.

You’ll also want to list all of your locations so they can find the one closest to their home or business.

Format your Contact Information & Locations section the same as the others. Start off with a <h2> headline and write the information in <p>. Use <h3> if you need to break up the content even further.

Wrap It up With a Strong CTA

You should never skip an opportunity to get your online visitors to take what they learned on your About Us page and perform an action.

First, decide what is the most important conversion for this page. Is it asking them to sign up for an e-newsletter? Or is it booking a phone call with an expert?

Once you’ve figured that out, write a targeted call to action (CTA) and consider using a button or graphic to highlight it. Here’s an example of a strong CTA from The HOTH:

Use the <h2> format for the title and <h3> if you want to include a subheading. We didn’t add a description to this CTA, but that would be in <p>.

Do You Need Help Updating Your About Us Page?

It’s easy to disregard the About Us page of your website when you’re so focused on making optimized sales pages. But, the truth is an About Us page has the potential to get a lot of traffic.

You should be using it to reinforce your brand and establish trust with visitors.

If you need help reworking your About Us page or if you simply don’t have the time to do it, you can reach out to the HOTH Web Copy team. Our content writing team is made up of the top 1% of all applicants. They’ll provide SEO optimized web copy that is crafted with conversions in mind.

The best part is you can monitor the performance of your new page any time with our transparent reporting system.

Book a call with us now to discuss your goals and learn what we can do to help you!

The post Anatomy of a Great About Us Page appeared first on The HOTH.

We rounded up 40 experts in conversion optimization to give us their BEST tips on cranking more sales out of your pages.

Let’s get into it!

What is the best way to improve sales page conversions?

Andy Crestodina – Orbit Media

Every sales page needs two kinds of content:

• Answers the visitor is looking for
• Evidence that we want them to find

When you mix these together, the page is both satisfying and compelling. But if you leave out answers to their questions, the page won’t satisfy their information needs. Leave out evidence to support your answers and your page is filled with unsupported marketing claims.

Once you have the content gathered together, your job is to lay it out on a page in the general priority that converts the visitor. The important questions should be answered at the top and the evidence that supports those answers should appear nearby.

source: How to design a website, Orbit Media

The final step is to add a clear, compelling call to action. It can be specific to the page, rather than a generic “contact us for more information.” Remember, the visitor came to this page for a reason. When the call to action aligns with their reason for coming, you have a far better chance of converting them!

Dennis Yu

There is no magic bullet to improve sales page conversions– but here are the 3 most common issues we see that hurt conversions and are super easy to fix:

Use Google and Facebook re-marketing pixels— you spent all that money to get them there. Not even 50% of sites are doing re-marketing on both channels. And less than 10% are using Google Tag Manager to drive these pixels– it’s a free tool!

Video sales letters— tell stories, don’t just sell. Why use stock art pictures when you can have a video selling? No need for a fancy camera and videographer– your customers want to hear from you and other customers. 70%+ are on their phones, so they don’t care about 4K, anyway– plus it slows them down.

Make sure your sales pages load fast— most sites are 8-9 seconds. Test it with Google PageSpeed Insights to find out what to fix. Get Google AMP and Facebook Instant Articles going if you want to cut load times down to under a second. Ask your LP provider if they integrate.

Lilach Bullock

I don’t think there’s an ultimate solution for getting more email subscriber conversions; at the end of the day, it depends on your business and industry, your audience, and your overall marketing strategy. That said, one thing that works across the board is this: always offer value (a resource, amazing tips, great offers, and so on).

Personally, I’m a huge fan of targeted content downloads. The tactic is very simple: you create guides/listicles/etc. on your blog and you add additional resources that visitors can download while reading.

For example, it could be something simple like a PDF version of your how-to guide which they can keep forever, or it could be an additional resource, something that helps enhance the value of your blog post: a listicle with useful tools, a checklist, a swipe file, and so on.

Marcus Miller – Bowler Hat

I wish there was just a single way to improve sales page conversions but the reality is – it’s just not that simple. To improve results you have to first ensure you have a sales pages that tick’s all the right boxes for the product or service you are promoting. We want persuasive sales copy, reviews, testimonials and anything else relevant to your product or service.

Then you have to look at how you drive traffic to the page for an initial and subsequent visit. We have to think in terms of a sales and marketing funnel here and you may need to expose prospects to different forms of marketing to help build confidence and trust and get to the promised land.

Caveat aside, the following are five tactics from our conversion optimization playbook at Bowler Hat.

1. Traffic Quality – the quality of traffic sent to the page will have a strong association with the results. If your visitors all come from poorly targeted banner ads then your conversion optimization will be an uphill struggle. If your traffic is highly relevant and primed to buy then everything is so much easier.

2. Value Proposition – everything starts here. You need to understand your customer. We like the Strategyzer Value Proposition Canvas so we can really understand the pains, potential gains and jobs a potential customer can alleviate with your product or service. If we know what their problems are and clearly explain how our product helps solve these problems and help them achieve their goals then we are on the right track.

3. Bring People Back – once someone has viewed the page and left all is not lost. If that user was engaged they may well come back and buy – if you continue to convince them. Remarketing is your friend here and driving further visits and engagement with content and ads pushing the benefits (value proposition) then you will up your conversion rates over time.

4. Micro Conversions – maybe you can’t make the sale initially but maybe there is some form of download or something you can exchange for an email.

5. A/B Testing – experimenting with different headlines, copy, calls to action and design features can all have positive results. A recent client selling car finance had a scary red “apply for finance” button – simply changing this to green had a positive effect. A/B testing should be ongoing with at least a master page and one or more variations being tested to constantly test and improve results over time.

The important thing to remember is that each product, service, marketplace, and the customer is different – so you have to work with this mindset of constant iteration and improvement – that’s how winning is done.

John Rampton – Calendar

Track everything. So many people believe improving conversions starts with the best page in the world… wrong. You should first start with tracking everything on the page so you know what’s going on.

I track everything down to the color of a button and how it performs over a different color. Bright pink has been the best converting I’ve ever had on a website.

After you know what’s going on, you can start testing things!

Marie Haynes

I really feel that Google is doing all they can to algorithmically determine trust these days. As such, adding things to your sales pages to help inspire trust in potential users could possibly help you algorithmically.

For example, if you use personal information, share how you will protect that info.

Or, if you sell the same products as many other people, include a lot of information on why people should buy from you. Are you the industry leader? Have you won awards? Are people raving about your services?

If you can convince people that you are the best, then you’re likely going to increase conversions.

Dave Schneider – Less Churn

The best way to improve sale page conversions is through split testing. Of course, that assumes that you have enough traffic / conversions to do a proper test, however, if you don’t have that, then you have bigger problems

A lot of page builders have this functionality built in, for example, LeadPages. If not, you can use a tool like Google Optimize, which is free.

I recommend making big changes to the page, because the bigger the changes are, the easier it will be to have a significant test. Do a bunch of split tests, and you’ll have a good converting page!

Dominic Wells – Human Proof Designs

There’s no one way to improve a sales page’s conversions. What works for some sites isn’t going to work for others. The most important thing to do first is to get a benchmark to compare against, and then you can do some split-testing.

If you know your current conversion rate, you can test different elements to see what will improve conversions.

Make sure to leave a test running long enough to get valid results, and make sure to only test one thing at a time. Also, make sure you see the bigger picture and how the tests affect your entire funnel.

It’s possible for example, that you can make a change which gets more people to sign up, but fewer people to become customers further down the funnel. This is also why you need to leave a test running long enough before declaring it a success (or failure).

Ian Brodie

A really great way of improving sales page conversions that most marketers overlook (because they want everything to be hands-off and automated) is to have a live chat widget like Drift or Intercom on your sales page and to proactively pop-it open with a question after a couple of minutes of inactivity on the page.

The truth is that for a new sales page, many potential customers will have questions and concerns that the sales page won’t answer (yet). But they won’t take the time to proactively email or message you with them. So by opening up the chat and asking them directly if they have any questions, you do two things:

Firstly, you increase conversions by being able to answer the questions they have that are holding them back from buying and by building a personal connection with them.

And secondly, you find out what the common questions and concerns are so you can improve your sales page and make sure those concerns are answered on it for the next potential customers.

David Krauter – Websites That Sell

Believe it or not… all salesmanship aside… all the super-techy-latest-whizz-bang functionality on the market aside… making sure the core elements on a page are working and properly designed will give the biggest boost in conversions.

Doing the basics right ALWAYS delivers the biggest bang for buck.

Let me explain.

When we take on clients to increase their conversions many times their load speeds are terrible, their cart functionality is cumbersome or worse, doesn’t even work. There are no clear call to actions and no direction for what to do.

On top of that people forget how they are driving traffic. Driving traffic from Google should have a completely different landing page to that for traffic coming from social media such as Facebook ads. But this is already going a little bit advance… As mentioned above, mastering and making sure the basic functionalities work will provide the quickest boost in conversions.

These are basic elements that need to be mastered before looking at any fancy tools or conversion elements.

Here’s a quick (starter) checklist of the essentials for a converting page:

– Small logo (no one will buy based on the size of your logo, it’s the least important thing on the page)
– Phone number with a call to action.
– Easy ways to get in touch, inquiry forms buttons to contact forms.
– Calls to action where to go next, what to do.
– Fast Website Speed.
– Make sure buttons actually work and lead people to correct pages.

Steve Wiideman

The best ways we’ve found to improve conversions on lower funnel content include the following for e-commerce:

1. Be touch-free or low-touch, using fields that include the autofill attribute (when possible) and appropriate keyboard specifiers for characters versus integers
2. Always think mobile-first, using large tap targets and obvious call-to-actions
3. Don’t make the user think; if they want to think, they’ll scroll, so have everything the user needs to see above the mobile fold line
4. Remove the top navigation from the cart, but allows allow the user to “Continue Shopping”
5. SSL compatible with the latest Mozilla and Chrome requirements is a must
6. Try to get pages to load in under 2 seconds
7. Offer as much unique content as possible, including high definition images, videos, and product reviews

For lead-generation:

1. Don’t force the user straight into providing their information
2. Ask a few Boolean questions and have a very short virtual conversation with the user to address their needs and to personalize the experience.
3. Prompt for voice triggers to enable users who have Google Assistant or Alexa to take their engagement off the website to book an appointment or complete a simple action that may take more time via keyboard
4. Compare the top 10 ranking pages, looking at every element that may be helping them drive leads, go back to archive.org and pay attention to what has changed over the years
5. Use VisualPing to track changes to competing pages, why reinvent the wheel when competitors are already running the same tests you have in queue?
6. Use JumpShot to track what keywords are producing conversions for your competitors and thread those search terms into your SEO strategy.

The most important activity any business can do to improve conversions is testing and experiments. UserTesting.com is a great source, as is Mechanical Turk. Be sure to have a large enough sampling of data before deploying major changes, as correlation isn’t always causation.

Allan Pollett

One of my first successful businesses online involved creating lead generation websites for the real estate industry. As an SEO specialist, I was very focused on driving as much traffic as possible to the sites. By ranking the sites at the top of the search engines, they were successful at getting lots of traffic. The sites ranked #1 for many of the most competitive real estate related keywords.

Even though I drove traffic, I wasn’t getting many leads if any. A typical site converts about 2% of its traffic into some kind of engagement: phone call, lead form completion, newsletter sign up or sale. My sites were failing. The problem was with trust.

The sites were generic and didn’t have an actual realtor on them. They were what they were designed for, to generate leads for realtors. To make them successful. I needed to change my model. Instead of generating leads for realtors the sites were reworked to focus on a specific realtor, whom I partnered with. By adding a person’s face and business address to the sites, the sites came across as more legitimate.

The trust was built and the leads started pouring in. People want to know they have come to a website, where they are dealing with a real person.

Building trust with your users is essential. So put a face to your business and built that trust. To take it even further add a video where you show the people in your company or have them demonstrating the products or services you offer. Pages with video covert 5 times higher than those that don’t.

Jon Tromans

Answering questions. Solving problems and looking at intent.

When someone arrives at your sales page there’s some sort of intent there, they want to do something. They may have a problem that needs solving by one of your services or like me right now need a curtain pole bracket as one has broken.

Use your titles, headings, and statements on the page to instantly answer these questions so for me I need to know curtain pole diameter and color.

Think deeply about what your customer wants from you and then echo this in your content. Make sure it’s to the point, easy to read with no distractions.

Finally, don’t forget your calls to action. More than one and in different styles. One may be a big button saying, “Get in Touch”, “Buy Now” or “Download”. The other could be a simple line of text.

When creating your page think about what your customer wants from you and then what you want them to do next. Make it easy for them.

David Leonhardt – SEO-Writer

There are many great ways to improve conversions. The one I found the most useful has to do with my query form. When I first implemented a floating form, I noticed an immediate rise in queries, even though my traffic had not increased substantially.

A “floating” query form is simply one that is not fixed at a certain point on the page. In my case, it stayed (or floated) in the upper right corner of the visitor’s screen, like in this screenshot:

When I tweaked my template for better mobile performance, the form stopped floating. In its place, a red “Get my free quote” button appears in the upper right corner. It now floats there, even as a visitor scrolls to the bottom. Here’s how it looks now when you scroll:

What does this do, in practical terms?

It ensures that when an impatient visitor shows up, they can send a request immediately.

It ensures that when a cautious visitor shows up and wants to scroll a bit and read a bit, they can send a request without scrolling down or back up.

It ensures that people who like to read every last word can also send a request from the bottom of the page.

Bottom line: wherever a potential customer is, it’s easy-peasy to send a request for a quote.

And that bottom line helps my bottom line.

Chris Makara

While there are several things you can do to improve conversions, the best way is to test and make iterations of your page. Of course, you’ll need to have enough traffic to really test in order to reach significant significance.

There are tools out there that can help implement and monitor the test (some are free, some are not). Or you could also set goals and event tracking in Google Analytics to help monitor the results.

While some tests will not outperform the control, ideally you will continuously move forward to incrementally increase the overall conversion rate of the sales page which will ultimately increase your sales numbers.

Joel Klettke – Business Casual Copywriting

As much as I wish I could list off just one “super-tactic” for improving sales page conversions that worked every time, the honest-to-goodness truth is that no such thing exists, and the reality is a lot less sexy: the best way to improve sales page conversions is to do really really good research.

To improve a sales page that is underperforming, you need to diagnose why.

For example…

• Is the promise you’re making the one leads care about?
• Are you making it in a way they cannot ignore?
• Does your call to action meet them at their current state of awareness?
• Are visual elements adding or detracting from your ability to sell?
• Are you even speaking to the right audience?

And those are just a FEW of the things that could be going wrong! To lift conversions, you need to spend some time gathering qualitative and quantitative data: watch how leads currently behave on the page (what they read, ignore, skip over, revisit, etc.), look at the paths they take — and then cross-reference that with insight into their pain points, anxieties, desired outcomes, and priorities as communicated in their own words.

Whether it surveys, chat logs, analytics, recorded user sessions… the best thing you can do to improve conversions on a sales page is to consult your data!

Jose Perez – Emet Digital

Heatmaps and session recordings through tools like Hotjar or Inspectlet. Often, A/B & multivariate tests or any modifications to the page layout are implemented based on guesses and hunches.

Heatmaps and recordings show you how visitors interact with your page – clicks, hover areas, exit points, etc. – which enables you to develop a more solid hypothesis for your experiment’s implementation. This way, you’re already ahead of the game because your hypothesis is based on fact, rather than assumption.

These are some common flaws that I see in sales pages due to lack of heatmaps and session recordings:

• Focusing on tweaks above the fold when most clicks through to “See Pricing” or “Buy” happen in different areas of the page
• Copy changes in paragraphs that are barely hovered instead of focusing on the text areas that are indeed grabbing people’s attention
• Click gaps. Users hovering/clicking on some icons expecting to see tooltips, accordions or modals with more info
• Distracting secondary elements. The antithesis of the above point – people’s attention being diverted from the main CTA’s by secondary elements
• Poor experience in small devices. CTA’s being pushed down from above the fold, and oversized or barely noticeable clickable elements

While some of these points may sound intuitive for those of you who already know about sales pages’ best practices, I cannot overstate their importance. Relying on actual behavioral data can help you make the right tweaks to boost your conversion rate.

Pierre de Braux – Spiralytics

For sales pages, there are a bunch of elements (CTA, form, headline, etc.) that you need to continually test and monitor to maximize conversions. Best practices will differ depending on who your target audience is and how your business operates.

However, one thing that drives conversion rates up across the board is ‘trust’. If you can establish a significant level of trust with a prospect on or before landing on your sales page, there’s no question that conversion rates would improve.

Most of the time, when prospects are considering a purchase, they’re wondering whether or not to trust your brand as the best available option. Addressing their doubts at this stage acts to reassure them and make them feel more comfortable about making the purchase.

To build trust, your website needs to have trust signals. That means accurate contact details, verified partner and security seals, payment badges, customer testimonials, active social media accounts, and SSL certificates. Make sure you’re giving your prospects every reason to trust you and make that all-important initial purchase.

Sonja Jobson –Fresh Coast Creative

The biggest problem I see with sales pages is clutter. It’s natural to want to stuff a page with every tidbit of information you think a buyer might want to know, but information overload will kill your conversions. Simplicity will sell. Here’s a framework for deciding what belongs on your sales page, and what you need to nix:

Get their attention: write a strong, clear, and compelling headline. Make it big and bold. The job of the headline isn’t to be clever or unique, it’s job is to convince a visitor to stay on the page and learn more all within the space of a second or two.

Frame their problem: why do they need what you are selling? What will their situation look like if they DON’T solve this problem? Fear mongering tactics are no good, but framing the problem in a really tangible way so your buyer knows what’s at stake will increase their motivation to buy.

Offer the solution: present your product or service as the solution to their problem – not a just another product/service to consider. Use benefits and concrete details to help your prospect visualize how your offer can solve their problem/get them what they want.

Include Proof: Appeal to the logical side of your buyer’s brain by backing up your offer with solid proof. Customer testimonials, case studies, and reviews work great.

Calls to Action: Include bold, obvious buttons throughout your sales page (not just one at the bottom). Make your call to action descriptive “Buy Now”, “Get Started”, “Request a Proposal”. Don’t make your buyer work hard, make it easy to take action throughout your sales page.

Sotiris Sotiriadis – Realistic SEO

I was working with my team on redesigning the website of a woman offering dating advice/education. She never did any SEO to the website but she was getting a very good amount of organic traffic. So, she reached out to me to help her with the SEO.

The way that she monetized the website was by selling online courses on how girls can achieve in dating better men. While my team and were examining her analytics, we noticed that she didn’t have a good conversion rate. So, we suggested to her that instead of focusing on SEO to focus on building solid funnels to take advantage of the current traffic and then increase the traffic in order to get more leads.

We were able to come up with a custom WordPress design that offered opt-ins ins using attracting CTAs. We created site-wide header opt-in forms for her, set up a freebie so that she offers value to her users and voila! Since the day 1 of launching the website, the conversions were flowing in steady but not slowly.

My overview on this is.. In order to get more subscribers, you clearly need to offer attractive value adding freebies, such as a mini course or a real value adding eBook and make opt-ins as easy as possible.

Dai Carillo – PureB2B 

There’s always been a debate between using a long-form or a short-form sales page. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Long-form sales pages are great for explaining everything about your product so there are more chances to convince them and they are beneficial for SEO. Short-form, on the other hand, converts visitors quickly.

The solution is to create a hybrid by putting all basic information and your most irresistible CTA above the fold. You can have a longer copy and more CTAs below that to explain your product or service.

A great example of this is Muckrack.com. From the first section, you already have an idea of their service/ product and two CTAs are available to target audiences on different stages (those who are ready to start and those who want to test the platform first). Below that are social proofs and a longer explanation of the platform’s capabilities.

Scott Fish – 32 Digital

The best ways to improve Sales page conversions:

Whether you sell a service or a product, there’s one thing that the person buying needs to feel in order for them to be comfortable making a purchase: Trust. They need to trust your business, they need to trust your product or deliverables, they need to trust themselves that they have made a wise decision. There are 3 ways to build trust in a sales landing page.

Let others speak to value. Reviews, Quotes, and other 3rdparty validating factors are a top priority for improving conversion rates. Look around at the sites you shop on, they’re filled with reviews – figuring out how to weave trust data into your product pages or sales page is important.

Show the value that your product or service creates. This seems easy, but selling without selling is difficult, but in doing so, you allow people to see the value (or hidden value for them individually).

Connect the brand to a customer’s experience. Getting personal improves conversion rates and if your customer has that moment in their purchase where they feel connected to the brand, it’s story, and what the product does, you will improve conversion rates.

Tim Brown – Hook Agency

The best way I’ve found to improve sales page conversions is by placing key visual indicators of trust factors the ideal customer cares out – in the proximity of the call to action button.

Whether it be publications your company has been featured in, testimonials with photos of the reviewer and 5-stars next to them, ‘fast and free shipping’, ‘made in the U.S.A.’ or whatever your particular demographic cares about the most – make them visual, and put them right next to the next step you want them to take.

In one A/B test I conducted I was able to increase sales 10k on the variant with ‘Fast and Free Shipping’ and ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ with little expressive icons placed right next to an add to cart button. Decrease friction, and give people an excuse to buy – it just requires a little bit of understanding of what their pain points are, and how you can alleviate them.

So dig into why people aren’t buying by talking with salespeople, and people who talk directly to the customers, as much as you possibly can. The more marketing people talk to salespeople, the better we get at actually showcasing the key differentiating features, and making the right selling points visual on sales pages.

Steve Kurniawan – Nine Peaks Media

In my opinion, the most important factor in improving sales page conversion is the value proposition, because of a simple reason: people don’t actually buy your product or service, but rather the benefits tied to it. So, properly communicating this benefit is essential, which comprises several different factors:

• Your value proposition must be well-developed and interesting, but at the same time, honest
• You should be able to properly communicate the uniqueness of your brand when compared to your competitors
• Your value proposition should be represented by all elements of the sales landing page: i.e., the design should represent the value proposition, the message is consistent, and so on.

In a nutshell, when designing your sales landing page, your main focus is how you can communicate the value proposition of your product, service, or brand.

Viktoriia Pavlova – Starlight

There is no “secret trick” that will help you boost your sales page conversion. It’s all about testing and listening to your website visitors. Here are a few techniques that will help you understand your target audience and adapt your web page design and content to convert them into customers:

User tests – this is the most powerful technique. Ask people from your target demographics to test your website and tell you their opinion. You will need to test it on at least 30 people to have a clear picture of what works and what doesn’t on your site. Based on the results, you can improve your websites design and sales copy.

Install heatmap – it will help you figure out where users click and how far they scroll down the page. It will help you to figure out where you should put your “buy buttons”, links or subscription forms to increase conversion.

Readability test – your website copy is the probably the most important thing when it comes to conversion optimization. You should use simple words and short sentences that users can understand without thinking much. Ask your target audience to have a glance at your website and ask them if they can quickly explain what it is about. And if they got it right, you are one step ahead of the competition.

After that, ask your audience if they find your sales copy appealing and whether they would buy the product/ subscribe to your newsletter. If they say no, investigate further what words and sentences made them feel this way.

Olesia Korobka – Fajela

Depending on the niche, you may have more or less mobile traffic to your page. The most common mistake that adversely affects mobile traffic conversion is when the page is built for desktop and then just resized for mobiles. That is, your dev just makes it fit a smaller screen but that doesn’t automatically make it convenient for the end-user.

For some industries, a more user-friendly approach is to start building your pages for mobile users first in mind and then extending it to a desktop version if a responsive design is an objective point. It is very important to test the pages loading speed on each type of device separately.

When the user gets to your sales page they should be already hot enough and they should understand right away that this page is the right one to make the purchase. Text should be sized big enough so that one doesn’t have to use a magnifier to read it. The images around the text should not be distracting. You can add arrows or image enhancements to make the user click the button or fill in information into the contact form.

It is better to provide a user with other options if they are not ready to make a purchase right away. Talk to them through some informational content, such as reviews from your other happy customers, videos or posts where it’s clear how your product helps to solve user’s problem.

Some users may need more time to consider. You can use a lead magnet with those users. You can offer them something they might need: add-on, checklist, e-book – in return for their email so that you could send them a few emails to remind them of your offer.

Melody Spencer – Swiftly Social Digital Marketing

To improve your sales page conversions I recommend keeping it short, sweet, and to the point. Remember, a good chunk of your potential clients will be using a mobile device.

Don’t make your page too long or to fancy. The ugliest, simplest sales pages tend to be the highest converting.

Also, be sure your images and messaging in all pieces of your marketing funnel align to increase the “know, like & trust” factor of your page.

Sameer Somal – Blue Ocean Global Tech

One major difference between a landing page and sales page is that a landing page doesn’t necessarily aim to sell. It could be used to achieve multiple goals like signup up for a newsletter or register for a webinar whereas a sales page is specifically created for conversions.

Below are a few considerations to increase conversion:

1. Build Trust to be an Industry Expert

An easy way to build trust with potential clients is to demonstrate your industry expertise by creating high-quality content.

2. Compelling (use another keyword) headline

Create a headline that visitors won’t be able to resist. The headline is the most read element on your page

3. Persuasive Call to Action button

Be clear and concise in your message that what you want visitors to do. for instance, you have a headline like this on your page “Create your custom designed logo for $50”

So your CTA should read like – “Create Your Logo Now”

Explore different CTAs to evaluate which performs best for you. Expert tip: Use multiple CTAs just make sure you don’t use too much.

4. Use Live Chat

The opportunity missed to engage is business lost. Having a situation where no one is available to handle customer queries, despite an “available” status showing on the chat box, leads to total failure and major reputation loss.

Natalie Athanasiadis – Ormi Media

The best way to improve your sales page conversions is to map out the action you want users to take before you start constructing everything. It’s a simple part of the process that gets neglected and then there is no real strategy behind the page which can really diminish your conversions. Ask yourself what specific action(s) do I want my users to take on this page?

By having a clearly defined goal every move you make, each call to action, every image or video and all of the content on page will be crafted to compel users to take that action! Remove any distractions that could cause users to click away and make sure your offer is compelling.

Business owners often think they if they tell users everything about their products or services that will be enough and if anyone is interested they will buy. Resist that urge to bombard users with additional information that detracts from the core focus of that page.

A sales page that is structured well, engaging, and easy on the eyes with clear calls to action and strategically crafted content is going to convert more of your existing traffic into buyers!

Craig De Borba – OnPoint Internet Marketing

How well your sales page converts have to do with many factors, some of which are traffic source and ad copy. But assuming you’ve got your messaging, ad copy and traffic source dialed-in the landing page copy and offers are the driving factors on-page. More than design, the offer made to the right audience will win every time.

What is the biggest boldest offer you could make? Make your offer so good that they’d be crazy not to take it and if the visitor leaves the page they’ll be kicking themselves for passing it up. Then make sure your page copy validates your claim and benefits by adding testimonials, case studies, and authority badges.

Make your copy very clear and concise with emphasis on the benefits and what problems your offer solves. Your offer is taking the visitor from where they are now to where they want to be (the more desirable condition), so highlight that and describe how that is. Visitors won’t read the entire page so use bullet points and lists for easy fast scanning for the reader, and emphasize core words that describe the new and improved condition or benefit they get.

Use imagery that connects with your audience on an emotional level. You wouldn’t want to put images of a male bodybuilder or female model in her 20’s when your product is for stay-at-home moms in their 40’s, identify with your audience.

Lastly, make sure your CTA is in a different color than other colors used on the page, you want that button to stand out amongst all the other design elements and the readers’ eyes to be drawn toward it.

Leonard Ford – Design Fire

One of the best ways to improve the conversion rate on a product sales page is to ensure there are no surprises to the potential buyer when it comes to cost. This can build trust and drive repeat sales. A good way to do that is to include shipping in the price of the product.

Consumers decide to buy a product based on the initial price they see. If they can justify that cost against the perceived value of the product, they are likely to click that buy button.

After they’ve made that choice, if they are then presented with a higher price due to shipping costs, they may re-think that cost vs. value calculation they made earlier. Including shipping in the price can greatly decrease cart abandonment rates for e-commerce shops.

The difference to a consumer of $25 plus $5 shipping versus $30 and ‘free’ shipping is enough to keep them moving down the funnel toward completing their purchase. It builds their trust that you have offered a product for a certain price, and that is indeed the price they are going to pay at the end. Building trust with the consumer is one of the key components to driving repeat sales. And we all know that it is less expensive to sell to a current customer than it is to acquire new customers.

Jason Scott – SessionCam

My number one tip for those looking to improve sales page conversion rates is the put the content that is most relevant to the user’s goals at the top of the page. As humans, we’ve have become notoriously impatient, especially when browsing the web. We want answers and we want them fast.

With that said, the content at the very top of the page is often the content that grabs our attention. By placing your most transactional content at the top of your page, you’re giving it the best chance of getting read by potential customers. I’d also recommend that you bear in mind your target demographic when deciding the type of content you’re placing at the top of your page.

Men tend to be more visual, whilst women seek information. Therefore, if you’re targeting one over the other, design your page accordingly. If you’re targeting both, make sure there’s sufficient content to impact everyone.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with images, videos, but make sure they’re good quality. Users can spot stock images from a mile off, so make sure your written content is accompanied by large, well-lit, high-resolution shots.

Gábor Imre – ROI Foundry

A perfect sales page must have a clear structure, brand-consistent design, great copy and its message should match with any search result or ad directing potential customers there.

The sales copy of the page is vital. Most pages only include some incentives, product features and CTA. It is also important to include product benefits: to describe the after-state the customer would like to be in (and can be with the help of the particular product or service) and emotionally connect with the potential customer via their pain points and needs.

The page should guide the customer through various stages: describing their problem, describing the after-state after solving their problem, introducing the product (with features and benefits, even step-by-step guides about the problem solving process if necessary) and providing proof (testimonials, reviews, social proof etc.), and only than directing them to the conversion point.

Chris Hornak – Blog Hands

The best way to improve the conversions of a sales page is first to create the page using a mix of research, best practices, and intuition. Then track and collect data to help you make smart decisions that will improve conversions and sales.

Before starting any digital marketing campaign it’s important that you understand your brand, it’s goals, and clearly defined target audience(s). You’ll also want to research what appears to be working or not working for your competition and use that as data before you have collected your own.

When creating the page you’ll want to start by hiring an experienced web development team who can help you navigate current best practices for sales landing pages.

You’ll want to listen to the web developers intuition, and they’ll need to look to yours as well. Combined you should end up with a page that has a strong chance of success.

Now that the page is up here comes the most over-looked phase. Tracking not only the conversions but other important signals that the page is or isn’t working.

One recommendation I give to businesses who want to know if their website is working is to apply a value to virtually every page of your website. By simply thinking about how much you’d be willing to pay per visit to that page. Maybe a blog post read is worth $1, but a sales page read is work $50. This method helps you start thinking about your visitors and content regarding value rather than metrics.

Eman Zabi – The Scribesmith

The best way to improve sales pages conversions is to hire a real copywriter.

Here’s my process: In my experience, the best copy usually comes straight from your target audience’s mouths. The trick is to weave in that consumer research with a benefit-focused copy.

I then identify pain points, magnify them, and then present your product as the only solution. And, then to really drive the point home? Paint a picture of what life’s like with your product in your prospect’s lives. Boom, your sales page’s now a lean, mean, converting machine.

You’ve got to remember to sell without sounding too ‘salesy’ though. Consumers can smell sleaze a mile away. Sound human, make them laugh if you can and clinch the sale by grounding your copy in research.

Ed Fry – Hull.io

Web pages are being left behind in a data-driven, real-time personalization world. When email, ads, live chat, sales enablement, and other channels are able to leverage lead & customer data to deeply personalize the way they engage, most websites show the same experience to everyone.

Poor sales conversions come from creating a poor, impersonal experience for your website visitors. The context to improve it comes from your data.

By syncing valuable data about a person into the page, you can personalize elements to tailor the copy, content, design & experience to them. For instance, swapping in their company name, logo, industry (and competitor) based testimonials, and so on.

Bring the same experience you’d expect from a good sales rep, not a generic send-to-all webpage.

Dmitriy – MiroMind

Improving conversions on the page depends on your niche and industry. If you offer custom services and solutions to clients, like software development, marketing, design, or any other more hands-on services, then your sale funnel begins from the first time the customer reaches out for more information, quote or consultation.

Therefore, service pages more often than not target the ‘leads’, or users that reach out to them. To get more leads, your page needs to be well-optimized in line with the best CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) standards for service pages. Although each industry is unique, there are certain ‘golden standards’ for service page CRO approach that are beneficial for most websites offering services.

1. Appealing design. Your design needs to be intuitive and appealing to your target market. Think about your customer and consider what the people you work with would consider appropriate. Firstly, your service page is the first impression of your company, it is a ‘storefront’ of your business.

Secondly, do not overdo with design elements. Your main priority is to not only make a visually appealing design, but also the one that any user will be able to navigate without even thinking about it. A good-looking website without clear instructions of where to click next is likely to miss out on potential customers.

2. Intuitive page layout. The page needs to be well-structured and follow a certain ‘path’ to lead a customer to a decision to reach out. First, interest them by outlining the issues they might have, or their ‘pain points’. Then offer a solution that will address these. Outline the benefits of your services as well as benefits of getting these services from your company (many years of experience, famous clients, money-back guarantee). Round it up with proof that your company is a trustworthy one by offering to view the portfolio or add detailed reviews about your services.

3. Have ‘buyer persona’ in mind. Converting pages are usually the ones that ‘speak’ to potential customer, addressing their issues and offering the right solutions. Consider the people that are visiting your service page and address the issues that are important to them.

If you are offering solutions for enterprises, then your content can either target big decision makers or industry experts. Decision makers are more likely to be interested in the benefits that your services will deliver to their company overall: time savings, cost savings, increased productivity and ROI.

On the other hand, industry professionals are more likely to be interested in more technical descriptions of your service. Aside from listing the benefits of your products, you need to address the pain points that your target customer might have. To address these points you need to have a clear vision of ‘who’ you are talking to.

4. Informative structured content. A lot of the times the service page is the first point of contact of the user with your business. Therefore you should treat it as such: the content has to explain both what you are offering and provide clear instructions on what to do next as well as provide benefits of using YOUR services. The content has to be organized and concise.

By quickly scanning through the content on your service page, the takeaway for your customer should be: what you offer, why your service is good for them, why they should choose your company and what they should do to get in touch with you.

5. Additional lifehack. After hundreds of optimized service pages we have noticed that adding a contact form on the right side of the service page increases the amount of leads. It does not mean the form replaces the CTAs, however we noticed that more people fill out the form which is right there in front of them instead of clicking on the Call to Action button.

6. Get creative with CTAs. Pay close attention to allocating CTAs: do not overdo it, but add it where applicable within the page. And get creative: while simple ‘Contact Us’ can sometimes do the trick, more appealing options that are in line with the rest of the content will get your service page more conversions.

7. Add visual proof where applicable. There is no better way to demonstrate your experience and expertise than showcasing the work that you have completed. Add examples of your work or before/after photos that will take your potential customer’s breath away. Having visual proof of the good quality solution to their issues will most certainly drive more leads your way.

Harris Brown – HFB Advertising

The best way is to do A/B testing.

The most important elements are above the fold of a sales page like the headline.

A compelling headline will grab the attention of your prospect to stay on the page.

From there you have:
• sub-headlines
• body copy
• photos
• colors
• layout
• fonts
• call to action

These elements are most likely the most important on the page. You may want to do bold, italic or a reverse knockout to make your message stand it even more. You want to capture the lead and not give away everything in the body copy.

I tell my clients’ all the time there is no magic pill that works optimizing and A/B testing all the time wins. Try a couple of options to start and then go from there.  Soon you will figure out what works best.

Here is a bonus use a tactic like scarcity.

By doing this the human brain is outwitting you that once it is gone you can never have it again.  We all want something that we can not have or don’t want to miss the opportunity. With these great sales page tactics, you will be on your way to capture great leads.

Craig Smith – Trinity Insight

Even though more consumers than ever are confident in using the internet, we are seeing an increase in customers who are nervous about making purchases online. Major retailers like Amazon offer free returns and an easy return process, and more people expect that wherever they go.

As a result, one of the best things retailers, Saas companies, and other businesses can do to increase conversions is to place clear policies on cancellations and returns.

For example, a travel website will say “free cancellation until X day,” removing the risk to customers. This way the customer makes a purchase then and there, rather than bouncing to make sure their travel plans are secured or until they want that room.

Not only does this increase conversions, but it also decreases marketing costs. Now that company doesn’t have to retarget that customer or keep marketing to them in hopes that the convert. The company’s efforts go elsewhere.

Almost any brand or industry can look at their sales pages and find ways to reduce risk, which is a major barrier that keeps people from buying from your brand. Offer a free trial, share your return policy, or promise a month-to-month contract.

When you lower the risk of buying your products or services, you increase the chances of a conversion from a new customer.

Andy Drinkwater – iQSEO

A sales page is the last hurdle in getting someone to actually convert from a visitor to a customer. But so many people bomb out at the last minute, unsure of their purchase for whatever reason.

There are so many strategies that you can employ to try and correct these issues, but I want to just talk briefly about the page layout on a mobile device – a huge problem for many.

If someone is landing on a sales page, then you need to remember that they have one small screen that should carry all of the information that they need. If they have to try and find it, then it is a stumbling block that you don’t need.

Three things to remember:

• When an item is added to a cart, make sure that the cart is visible on all pages. You should do this at the footer of the page.
• A complete summary of the purchase should preferably be on 1 screen/page. Try to reduce/remove scrolling.
• Include details about shipping and delivery times. Don’t make them click off to try and find this.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but certainly a few of the issues that can prevent someone from making a purchase.

Thank you so much to all the experts that contributed to this expert roundup!

If you enjoyed reading this article, help us spread the message about it, by sharing it on social media with your friends and followers.

The post How To Increase Sales Page Conversions: 40 Experts Weigh In appeared first on The HOTH.

In this post, Minuca Elena rounded up 25 conversion rate optimization experts to give their best tips for getting more subscribers.

Because email marketing has an average ROI of over 3000%+, just implementing a few of these tips will help you increase your sales!

Ready to grow your email list? Let’s get into it!

Tim Soulo – Ahrefs

I think the best strategy of getting high volume of email signups is to offer something valuable in return.

Guys from The Hoth have a perfect example of exactly that.

Go to their free backlink checker tool and try to run a report.

They will ask you to specify your email address. Which you’ll most likely do, because you want to get that free backlink report.

I’m sure that page brings them tons of new email subscribers every day.

So if you want the kind of subscribers that will look forward to your email, you need to convert them by using the value if your email newsletter.

In other words – offer them a free email course. Five to ten short and actionable emails delivered right to their email address.

This way people will subscribe to get a valuable freebie and they will actually look forward to receiving your emails. Which is your end goal.

I did just that on my personal blog back in the days, by creating a small blogging course that was delivered over email.

Servando Silva

This is one of my favorite questions as email marketing is one of my biggest traffic drivers in every website besides SEO and Social Media.

We use a mix of 2 techniques to get subscribers and we handle a database of over 50,000 subscribers from different blogs, increasing by thousands every month.

The first technique is simple and it requires a bit of money on the front end but works wonders. We set up the Facebook pixel in every website and blog we have and create retargeting lists with people visiting for the last 90 days or so.

Once the pixel has caught more than 1,000 visitors we start 2 type of Facebook Ads:

1. One just for promoting similar content to what they read
2. The second one to promote a lead magnet

Both ads are usually running at the same time and we get subscribers in both of them. It’s easy to get people back to your site with a retargeting ad because they already know you and if they read more interesting articles they are prone to subscribe without you asking for it.

The second ad is where most of the leads come through though because that one offers a lead magnet similar to the one you’d offer in your website sidebar or popup and again, sin they already visited your site before they’re very likely to subscribe and leave their email.

While this strategy requires some money, it doesn’t have to be expensive. For example, for a website that has just a few hundred visits per day or less, a $1 ad for promoting content and maybe a $2 ad for the lead magnet are enough. That means you’re spending $3 per day and that’s less than $100 per month. But your list could substantially grow faster with this strategy amounting for hundreds of extra subscribers per month.

If your websites have thousands of visits per day (it probably makes hundreds or thousands of dollars per month) then the content ad could spend something like $3 and the lead magnet ad another $5. That’s still just $8 per day and $240 per month while getting thousands of extra subscribers per month.

This is one of the main strategies we use to grow niche sites to 5,000-10,000 email subscribers in less than 6 months, while other people build them organically and it takes them years (if ever) to reach those numbers.

Obviously, this is always considering you have a budget to spend in your project and maybe for some people this isn’t as fun, especially if they’re beginners so here’s the second strategy we use which is totally free: custom email forms per blog page.

Everybody has several email forms in their websites or blogs located in key locations like sidebar, after post, footer, header bar, popups, etc.

While we have generic email subscription forms in most of our websites especially in the sidebar and after content, we have used another strategy that works 300% better. Using custom email forms in the middle of the content yields a 4-5% Conversion rate against the usual 1% from generic forms.

We use Convertkit to create custom forms for each post and after 2-3 paragraphs we put the custom form with a custom text that is way more appealing than a generic form in the sidebar or popup because it can be manipulated for what the traffic is looking for.

At the end of the day all the users go to the same list (or segment, like Convertkit calls it) but they receive different content based on which post your traffic was reading at the moment of signing up.

You can create different email autoresponder sequences for each interest so the open rate will be much higher and engagement in your site will be improved.

If you have a website with some posts already ranked bringing steady traffic I’d just add custom forms in the content for your top 10 articles and see how it works as that will be the 80/20 of your work and you don’t really need to put a custom form in all of your articles if you have hundreds/thousands of them.

For example, let’s say you have a website about digital marketing, however, you have 5 big categories including social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, Content Marketing and maybe PPC marketing.

Instead of just having a single form showing up everywhere where your visitors can learn more about “digital marketing” now you can put a custom form in the articles of each category and change the text so it shows “learn more about social media marketing” or “free email marketing cheat-list” or whatever you’re promoting for that category or post in particular.

Trust me, your CR will be much higher using this technique and also less intrusive as people will feel more related to your lead magnet from the very beginning.

You can apply this technique pretty much with every email service provider, however, some companies don’t let you segment your lists the way we do here easily and they also charge you for duplicated subscribers in different lists. This is why Convertkit works wonders for this strategy.

Mike Allton – The Social Media Hat

While I’ve used a variety of different techniques (popups, CTAs) and tactics (ebooks, workbooks, swipe files), there was one significant adjustment that I made a while back that had a dramatic impact on my email subscriber signup rate.

For several years, I have been using and testing different popup ad types and approaches. Certainly the most effective has been the “Welcome Mat” which greets new visitors as soon as they arrive on the site with a full-screen offer. My first test and offer was for a copy of my Blog Promotionology book which performed OK. It was certainly a valuable and informative resource that a portion of my readers appreciated.

But after 6 – 12 months running that lead generation offer, it occurred to me to take a closer look at my actual web traffic, and the content they were coming to read. It was not about blogging, but rather Facebook.

Not only was my top performing article about Facebook, but 8 / 10 of my most trafficked articles were also about Facebook or social media in general. Which meant that my blogging-related offer was missing the mark. No wonder it wasn’t getting an amazing conversion rate!

So I set out to create a new lead generating offer that would appeal specifically to my inbound audience. I put together an ebook filled with Facebook tips and tricks and resources and put that up as my Welcome Mat. That instantly quadrupled my conversion rate and has led to a dramatic increase in new subscribers over the past year.

Approximately 10,000 new subscribers in 12 months, without any paid advertising or other promotional activities. Simply creating a more targeted resource and offering it to my existing inbound traffic.

Greg Elfrink – Empire Flippers

The best way to get more email subscribers is testing your opt-ins. You can use a tool like VWO or a heat map to see where most of your visitors are hanging out or clicking in. Your opt-in offer will likely do the best in this spot.

Second, test different top of funnel offers. A downloadable ebook might not perform nearly as well as a simple checklist. Also, have dynamic opt-ins that flows with the content the traffic is reading.

If you have a blog post on selling websites, the opt-in offer should continue that conversation. If you have a blog post on buying websites, then that opt-in should continue that conversation instead.

Sean Si – SEO Hacker

Since our SEO Hacker blog mainly caters to our email subscribers, we’ve gone through numerous experiments in order to increase their number.

This is not to disparage any effect that branding and sheer reputation has – these are also effective tools to increase your email subscriber count since you’re relying on your business’ name and reputation.

However, after many experiments that best way we’ve increased our email subscriber count is to make the Submit/Subscribe Button Stand Out.

Aside from the research regarding the effect of the color red and green on the perception of people, trying out what works for your audience will quickly take effect. Run different design experiments on the subscribe button and check what design works best.

Sometimes, the problem with increasing your email subscriber count isn’t with the content but on how your audience perceives your newsletter offer. However, increasing your subscriber count will not bring benefits if your subscribers don’t open your email. So you must work on increasing your email open rate.

Matthew Woodward

Offer them something they won’t want to miss! Grab their attention and give them a solution to their problem….for free! That way you get a loyal subscriber which is worth much more than a one-off sale.

So offer something specific for your audience and then keep them engaged.

Once they have subscribed instead of just churning the same old c**p every week you need to listen to want they want, what their problems are and offer them quality solutions.

Reward loyalty with awesome exclusive content!

Chris Lee – Rank XL

Here’s one tip that can double or triple your conversions overnight. May sound overhyped but it’s true.

Go into your analytics and find your highest traffic pages. Create really valuable, hyper-targeted content upgrades for each of them. In my experience, things like “Download this post as a PDF” doesn’t work as well anymore. If you want those ridiculously high conversion rates, the content upgrade should be so valuable you can sell it if you wanted to.a

That might sound like a ton of work to create, but if you’re able to double or triple the number of subscribers you get, it’s more than worth it in the long run.

If you’re already doing what I explained above…

Then you need to be AB testing everything.

The type of opt-in form you use. The call to action (and opt-in incentive). The position and when it’s shown.

And here’s one that most people don’t really test out – your opt-in form stack. The stack is the combo that you’re using together. For instance, for my site, I currently have a full screen take over, header opt-in on the homepage, and a footer opt-in on every page.

The footer opt-in form was my highest converting form.

The stack you choose can affect your overall conversion rate on your site.

James Reynolds – SEO Sherpa

Without any doubt, the most effective strategy I’ve used to win more email subscribers is through post specific opt-in bribes, otherwise known as Content Upgrades.

Content Upgrades are bonus content pieces readers can subscribe to in order to gain additional value from the public content on your blog.

For example, you write a blog post “19 List Building Ideas To Grow a Huge Email List” your content upgrade might be:

• A list-building cheat sheet.
• A resource guide on list-building.
• A video showing how you’ve used the top list building techniques.

Content upgrades are effective because they are hyper-relevant. What’s more, they needn’t be time-consuming or difficult to create. In our example post; “19 List Building Ideas To Grow a Huge Email List” you might just save your best 2 strategies and use them as your content upgrade.

Alternatively, you could just provide a PDF version of your post or a checklist as I did here. This particular content upgrade is very simple, but as you can see from the statistics below, it converts like crazy:

Zac Johnson – Blogging.org

One of my favorite traffic sources is organic search results. Through this method, my sites are getting thousands of visitors daily. However, with search, you are likely getting a ton of users who visit your site and likely never return again. With this in mind, the best way to keep these users coming back for more is to get them on your mailing list.

For this to effectively work, you will need to have some great call to action forms on your site. Exit intent popup windows also work extremely well for this too. No matter what method you use, your call to action needs to be strong.

Don’t just offer ‘a free ebook’ or something too generic, you need to give your audience something they actually want and are ready to take action on.

WordPress tools like OptinMonster make this process extremely easy, and also allows for other lead generation forms and call to actions to be created throughout your site as well. Split testing each of these different methods is key to finding the right mix of content, call to actions and popup forms for your audience.

A perfect example of this is when someone searches for free coupons or discount codes on a site. If they have a popup that tells the user to enter their email to get a free discount code, you know they are doing to do it.

Alita Harvey-Rodriguez – Milk It Academy

If I had a dollar for every time I heard ‘email marketing is dead’, well I’d invest it in my next email campaign and on average my ROI would be $38. Yep, even with the explosion of new technology and the rise of social media, email well and truly still holds its ground and is growing!

It’s all about knowing how to deliver value and how to communicate directly to the hearts and minds of your customers. My top three tips for converting click-throughs into customers are:

1. Don’t send your subscribers through a maze

There needs to be as few steps as possible between a user clicking your call-to-action button and the point of conversion. Send them directly to a product page or dedicated landing page, if they have to go searching they’re going to give up and you’ll lose the lead.

2. Don’t spray and pray…TEST!

Don’t rely on spray and pray tactics! The way your subscribers convert is going to be entirely unique to your competitors. Don’t just run with what you think works best or what’s working ok. Create three or more campaign hypotheses and test. You can test variables such as button placement, color, images, gifs, subject line, offer, content, countdown timers, sending time and so much more. Don’t be fooled by the open rate, look at which variables lead to conversions or order value and refine them from there.

3. Segment your subscribers

Segmenting your list is the number one sure-fire way to drive serious conversions. You need to understand what stage of the customer journey the subscriber is at. Have they just subscribed but never purchased? Have they bought from you before? What products are they looking at? What did they click on last time you emailed them? Use tools like Google Analytics, your click-through reporting, purchase data and more to help you understand what segments you should create!

Ryan Biddulph – Blogging From Paradise

Solving specific subscriber needs boosts conversions.

Forget all hacks, tricks or silly shortcuts.

Conversions response to service, not manipulation. I found just helping my readers solve their blogging problems turned them into eBook customers.

Dwell on their specific problems, related clearly to your niche. Solve the problems through emails. Increase conversions.

Tim Bourquin – After Offers

Being in the email marketing and lead generation space, we know what it takes to get site visitors to convert into email list subscribers. The first thing we do is find relevant websites with high-quality content and traffic.

The next thing we do is set up each site with their own tracking code so they can implement our 100% opt-in form process, which starts after a user signs up to their initial email list.

The last part of the process is giving the end user a few different options and newsletters they can subscribe to with the simple check off of a box.

This sounds simple enough, but it’s actually a very complex process and something we’ve continually tweaked and mastered over the years.

The most important part of this process is making sure we can match up the best interests and mailing lists with the demographic audiences, and making sure it aligns with the interests and content focus on the site.

Alistair Roberts – Media Heroes

The secret to strong email subscriber conversions? Hyper-personalisation. Putting in the effort to strategically segment your email subscribers into unique audiences with concrete needs, desires, and psychological motivators will help you create personalized, localized email marketing campaigns that make people convert.

First, really think about how you want to segment your email subscribers and what will provide the best value for your business. Do you want to segment your subscribers based on demographic data such as age or gender? Do you want to leverage geographic targeting or send location-specific content?

My favorite method is to segment subscribers by their position in the sales funnel, enriched by insights about their website behavior. For example, when targeting brand new subscribers or loyal fans of your brand, you can track which pages they visit and which videos they watch on your website, to gain nuanced insights into their needs and interests. Using this data, you can create stronger email campaigns using dynamic content, tailored to their specific behavior.

Finally, to get a really strong conversion rate, it’s important to test and see which variations of your email’s subject line and content perform best. Like any kind of marketing, constantly testing and refining your email marketing strategy will help you discover what hits the sweet spot for your unique subscribers.

Dione Sui-San

With SEO being the main focus of our company, we realize that business owners are the majority of traffic coming to our site. With this in mind, it’s important to show that you not only provide a service that works, but also understand the market that you are selling to as well.

For us, we’ve found ‘industry reports’ to work extremely well. When someone loads up our site, they will see our best content… but not all of it on the same page. We’ve tested with locked content and popup windows for gaining access to our free reports, and this has worked extremely well.

It’s actually worked so well, that we’ve created unique landing pages with this same content and have run paid traffic back to our site. We can now measure how many site visitors and subscribers we are gaining daily, then looking at our daily spend as well.

Best of all, this is a working method that can be applied to nearly every service and niche market.

George Hartley – SmartrMail

Here are my tips on the best ways to get more email subscriber conversions.

When it comes to getting more sales from your existing email subscribers, by far the best thing you can do is tailor the content to what the subscriber will actually want to buy.

Many people will offer simple tips such as personalization where “Hi there” is replaced with the subscriber’s first name, and while this is something everyone should be doing, it’s still woefully inadequate.

Email marketers need to ensure all the content is relevant to the subscriber’s individual interests. For e-commerce stores, for example, this involves using data gathered from shopping habits to determine what products customers are most likely to want to buy.

Thankfully there are many easy to use tools to achieve this. SmartrMail is a company I founded a few years back now that makes email marketing easy for e-commerce stores. After a store owner installs the app, purchase history and other customer data is analyzed to determine what products should be sent to each email subscriber to generate the greatest number of conversions.

Steve Page – Giant Partners

Here are a few techniques used to grow email subscriber lists.

PDF Versions of resources/guides/infographics

If you are getting a lot of visitors to a page having a related guide or pdf version of the content is a great way to get people to give their email address. You can even make it more enticing by offering bonus content within the pdf not found on the page.

What I like to do is trigger a popup when the person clicks to download the pdf which gets a 75%+ conversion rate when the person actively engages to receive the pdf. This method has been more effective in my experience than popups or slide-ins.

Spin-a-Sale For Ecommerce

The Shopify app Spin-a-sale (https://apps.shopify.com/spin-a-sale) is a great way to grow your email list and get more sales. This creates a spin the wheel game on your website where people can spin a wheel to get a prize. In order to play, you have to enter your email address for a chance to win.

You can make the prizes time sensitive as well so they have to use the discount within a certain time frame which creates urgency and drives sales.

Kelso Kennedy – Chime

The best way to gain more email subscriber conversions is to make sure you’re providing real value for the visitor. Some of the best converting campaigns are around a single download, like a tip sheet, or targeted series, like 5 Tax Thursday posts for accountants, for example.

By providing real value, not just once, but on an on-going basis, and making that clear, is one of the best ways to increase subscribers (and keep them!).

It’s important to send highly personalized emails to as segmented an audience as possible (without going crazy!). The more an email appeals to your reader specifically, the more likely they are to find value in it and convert!

Consider gathering low-hanging information as early as possible, such as when your subscriber opts in. You can then segment based on a variety of things such as their biggest pain point, their location, or the size of their company, which will help make your CTAs more compelling.

Finally, keeping the simplicity of the message is key. If the email is too text heavy, your main message might get lost. Limiting to only one CTA would ensure people would get the point, and hence more likely to convert. Attention spans are short, and as over 80% of emails are opened and read on a mobile phone, it is best to keep the word count to a minimum.

Kurt Phillip – Convertica

How to get more email subscriber conversions? Incentivise incentivise incentivise. Give something away to get their email. If its a coupon code, say it will be delivered to their inbox, if its a Free eBook about “Top 3 Conversion Hacks Every Website can Use”, also get it delivered to their inbox. Someones email is like their mobile number, you need to give away value first instead of just asking them to “Subscribe to our newsletter”, which is ambiguous and doesn’t even get noticed anymore.

Srish Agrawal – Logo Design Team

The world of online marketing and branding is an extremely competitive space, however, it’s also an area we’ve had a lot of success with.

Whether it’s creating infographics, running expert roundups, or designing a new logo for a company, it’s important to always give your audience insight and gaining their trust over time.

This is what we are currently doing through the majority of our blogs and giving users the option to download industry reports and custom designed PDF reports. The benefit here is that not only are we providing value, we are also showcasing off our best design work as well.

Inside each download and report, we also include a free trial or coupon code for users to place a first initial order. Since we can track the progress of these unique coupon codes and trial links, it’s a proven marketing method that has worked time and time so.

So in short… provide your audience with something of value for free, in exchange for them joining your list — but also make sure the conversation keeps going, and also has calls to actions that you can track and measure over time.

Kimberly Giannelli – In The Lights

When starting a business, we all start in the same place—with 0 email subscribers (minus our family and close friends that we force to be subjected to our relentless sales pitches!).

When collecting leads by inviting people to sign up for your email list, one of the best things to consider utilizing is a lead magnet. A lead magnet is any sort of incentive to have people give you their email address. Most often we see a 10 or 20% discount code off your first order, a free shipping offer, some sort of downloadable PDF with templates or helpful information, or something else that your prospect will find valuable.

In determining the rollout of your lead magnet, you need to look at the potential buying profiles of your customer base. Each profile will respond to different products, offers and messaging.

Studying your Google Analytics traffic report is a great way to determine where to place your lead magnet. Perhaps a particular blog post is performing best, or your audience seems to be landing on a particular page of your site. That information will help you to determine the best placement for your lead magnet.

AND PLEASE! Don’t make your customers fill out a confusing web form. You don’t need to make an impossible to read CAPTCHA. It will just frustrate your potential lead and a bad first impression is never a good thing. Be clear with your users why they are filling out the form. Tell them what they can expect, and where and how their incentive will be delivered. That way, there are no chances of miscommunication.

Lastly, you can consider an exit popup- a lead magnet when a customer tried to leave your website. That 20% off code or free shipping offer might be just what they needed to purchase the item they were still on the fence about.

Keith Reinhardt – Fresh Address

Here are 5 tips for getting more email subscriber conversions:

1. Ask Everywhere: This might seem like common sense, but many marketers don’t collect email addresses at every point of interaction. This includes: EVERY page of your website, your social media profiles and email headers, every phone call or in-person interaction, and on every order form.

2. Relay the Value: People volunteer their email address in exchange for something. Be sure you clearly explain what value you are offering through email. If you provide expert commentary, let them know. Also, people really love deals! If you’re sending subscribers info on discounts and promotions, lead with that!

3. Streamline the Sign-Up Process: Make registering easy by asking for a limited amount of information up front. You can get the rest later as your relationship grows. Also, make sure to leave enough space in your input box for long email addresses. Otherwise, you are causing unnecessary typos & frustration. A study by FreshAddress found that:

The average email address is 21.9 characters long.
But to accommodate 95% of addresses, you’ll want to design a form field 31 characters long.

4. Focus on Quality, Not Quantity: When is 1,000 new email subscribers not really 1,000 new email subscribers? When your list is full of typos, junk, and disposable addresses! Figure out a way to catch the common errors people make when entering email addresses (e.g. “hotmial.com” instead of “hotmail..com”). FreshAddress offers an API that can automatically catch and correct typos and other misspellings. Even having a second page that displays what the user typed and asks them “is everything correct?” helps tremendously.

5. Confirm! Confirm every email address you collect. Ideally, by a promptly deployed email message. Getting an opt-in click on this confirmation email is the holy grail for email marketers.

Zygimantas Jacikevicius – Wise Team

Here are some of the best ways you can get more email conversions:

• Have a catchy subject line – one of the hardest things is to get people to open your email in the first place, you can have amazing copy written inside, but if it has a dull subject line not many people will open your email in the first place. We found that two types of subject lines work best – one that incites action and another that is generally vague enough to spark curiosity.

• Have a clear call to action – at the end of your value proposition have a clear call to action of what you want the recipient to do, this has a positive effect on conversions, for instance, if do you want them to download something, have a button that says download now, if you want them to contact you, have a button that directs them to a landing page where they can contact you.

• Personalize it as much as possible – we are all sick and tired of generic marketing emails, try to stand out as much as possible by using language you would use writing to a friend, try to be less salesy and more sincere, try to personalize it as much as possible, use their name, try to adapt the content to something they would be interested in.

Artëm Klimkin – Links Hero

I come from the Oversubscribed and Small Giants (these are two amazing books) type of mentality where “more” is not really a goal.

If you are a small (ish) business, maybe all you need is 1000 true fans?

After all, getting “more and more” subscribers has its CONs:

• List responsiveness goes down
• The database is kind of expensive to maintain
• Deliverability can suffer (emails bouncing, folks unsubscribing and flagging your emails as spam)
• And so on…

Using gimmicks is not really an option as well.

Yes, you can have an exit popup set up and maybe it will even increase your conversion rate… To only hit the wall when the exact same person unsubscribes from your list the next day.

What to do?

Just give away quality premium info for free without getting people to subscribe. Content is king but, please, also think about the packaging – if things look ugly people won’t buy into them.

Think of it this way…

Subscription is basically a conversion. And conversion takes a bunch of touch points – people need to be familiar with you before they leave their email in return for whatever you got (it better be something amazing). You won’t necessarily get “more” conversions that way but the quality of the leads you will get will be on another level.

I played with this strategy up to a point when people had to ask me about including them on my list! (and it works to an extent)

I agree, it is too extreme so you can just follow these steps instead:

• Setup FB’s remarketing pixel
• Retarget people that have already visited your website (say, some extremely successful page)
• Drive this traffic to your squeeze page
• Optimize the campaign (~$1 spent per email address is a good rule of thumb)

Pro Tip: the absolute majority of people will never sign up…but you can always retarget them via Facebook and GDN itself.

Good luck!

Danielle Read – Read City Writing

Offering potential email subscribers a valuable reason to sign up to your list is crucial.

Long gone are the days of ‘sign up to our newsletter’ opt-ins. Because let’s face it. No one cares about your newsletter. They want to know you’ll be sharing information that will actually add value to their lives. Whether that’s a free download upon sign up, a discount code or access to a secret online store.

Make the incentive to join your list truly valuable and you’ll be growing it in no time. Your opt-in, or lead magnet should have a whole lot effort poured into it. Something that people would actually want to buy. give it away for free, and you’ve got some pretty big fans coming your way.

Thank you so much to all the experts that contributed to this expert roundup!

If you enjoyed reading this article, help us spread the message about it, by sharing it on social media with your friends and followers.

The post How To Get More Email Subscriber Conversions: 25 Experts Weigh In appeared first on The HOTH.

First, someone comes on your site, reads some content, then it may need a few more visits until that person subscribes to your newsletter, and then through email marketing, you can get him or her to your sale page and convert them into clients that invest money in what you are offering.

Each step requires a new conversion. That’s why conversion optimization is essential to be able to maximize your chances of achieving your goal. To help you with this process, we hired Minuca Elena to make an expert roundup and reach out to internet marketing experts.

We asked them the following question:

What is the best way to get more homepage conversions?

We received a variety of answers that will help you grow your business. It doesn’t matter experienced online marketer or even a newbie, by reading this post you will understand how to design and improve your site’s homepage to convert at a higher rate.

Ann Smarty – Viral Content Bee

Last year I wrote a piece on how you can increase your landing page conversions by asking a question and I’ve seen this trick work especially well when it’s done on the home page.

Questions trigger that natural reflex in human beings forcing them to pause and find an answer. And in our cluttered digital marketing world, a short pause is usually all that’s required to get a conversion.

Take a look at socialtriggers.com homepage that utilizes the tactic both on the home page copy and within its lead-gen popup:

It’s impossible to say no to that!

It’s actually a very smart idea to re-enforce those questions by first using one within a copy and then asking a related one again in the lead-gen form. It’s called “foot in the door” tactic, leading the user down the conversion funnel. You can easily set up both (as well as A/B test) using already existing plugins and builders.

My favorite tool for niche question research is Serpstat which allows you to filter your keywords so you only see searched questions:

That’s a huge source of inspiration right there!

The bottom line: When working on your home page copy, use question research to get inspired and find a way to catch the user’s eye right away.

Patrick Langridge – Screaming Frog

Try to think of your homepage almost as a product or service page itself. This doesn’t mean make your homepage like an e-commerce landing page, but to ensure your homepage has a strong purpose and call to action as any good landing page should have.

As a user on mobile I always like floating menus and buttons for easy navigation, ideally with a CTA floating so there is always one on show, preventing an additional barrier to conversion.

Make it super clear to users what your business is, what you do and why they should buy from you or use your service. From my experience, I’ve seen far too many homepages that use confusing language which is often brand-driven and relies on users to know and understand your terminology.

In the case of most brands, users simply don’t. So ditch the buzzwords and focus on clear language which highlights your USPs.

Ensure your key product and category pages are internally linked to from the homepage. It’s important to signpost these key pages to users, to make it as easy and obvious as possible to get to pages which are likely to convert users.

Ron Sela

The ultimate goal in marketing is to drive conversions, which inherently lead to more sales, and larger profits. To achieve this, your website homepage is more important to your conversion rate than many people realize. Here are three tips to streamline your welcome mat to encourage visitors to come on in!

1. Use High-Quality Testimonials

Studies show that over 90% of online consumers read reviews before buying, with almost as many trusting online reviews as much as the opinions of their friends or family.

By displaying social proof on your homepage, your brand gets a seal of approval that first-time visitors take comfort in.

People need to be able to trust brands before they will buy. By using success stories and testimonials from happy customers, your homepage can become a powerful asset in the top of your sales funnel.

2. Use Conversion Components Above the Fold

Placing any form ‘above the fold’ on your webpage is more effective, as it instantly grabs attention before people lose interest by navigating around your site.

With a great conversion form above the fold that includes a high-impact call-to-action, visitors will immediately be drawn to your offer, before they even scroll down.

3. Explain the Benefits of Your Service Explicitly

Harping on about the features of your product will quickly deter prospects. However, if you tie the features to benefits they can relate to, then your conversion rates will improve.

Think about the “why” – why are people coming to your website?
By figuring out what they need, you can paint a picture of how they can benefit from your product or service, which will make the conversion so much easier.

Sam Hurley – OPTIM-EYEZED

My two primary methods to maximize homepage conversion:

#1: Personalization

But how do you personalize your homepage?

I use a combination of cookies, entry source and IP details to create custom messages to visitors…

My site uses Wishpond and its API (an Application Programming Interface) to provide website users with a tailored experience — which makes them feel part of something, rather than just a number.

It’s this positive feeling that encourages metrics like a 32%+ conversion rate for new subscribers.

#2: Chatbots

If you don’t use one today, you’re already far behind.

Chatbots serve two main purposes:

1). They increase website engagement and keep visitors (happily) on the site for longer, without 24/7 human interaction

and

2). They weed out time-wasters, while also quickly directing visitors who may have otherwise sent long questions through contact forms etc.

Conversational commerce is awesome for homepage interaction and conversion!

(The average time spent on my site is almost 8 minutes, across both mobile and desktop.)

Kurt Phillip – Convertica

It really depends on what your goals are and how much traffic is coming to your homepage. We like to follow the 80/20. On what pages do 80% of your conversions/revenue come from? We focus on this.

If you do have a large % of your traffic to your homepage, use this as an opportunity to direct users to an area of the site you want them to convert. Comparison tables work really well at this. Most people use them for comparing products for an amazon review site, but you can also use them to direct users to different areas of your website.

Bryan Eisenberg

Websites with high conversion rates from their homepage all have one thing in common. They build their reputation for the value they provide their customers.

Websites that have high converting homepages tend to see a lot of direct navigation traffic. That is, people who know the brand are typing their url in the browser, or visiting it from a bookmark on their computer.

The #1 secret of converting visitors, since I started helping businesses increase their conversion rates in the mid 1990’s, has been to ensure the people who bought from you once were so delighted that not only did they come back to buy from you again but they would tell other people (by reviews and word of mouth) that they should buy from you.

Secondly, many do a great job in their social channels demonstrating their values. Because of that brand storytelling, people are already pre-disposed to buy from their website when they get there.

Lastly, they do a great job reminding people once they get to the website of the value that they provide them. One of the best at this is Amazon, where repeat Prime customers convert at 74% of the time. Focus on providing value to your customers, be exceptional at delivering it and you can Be Like Amazon.

Kim Krause Berg – Creative Vision Web Consulting

When someone arrives to a website homepage they have 3 to 5 seconds to understand if the site has what they are looking for. It’s similar to when we walk through an indoor mall where each store has displays set up. Unless we see an item, or sign, or something that expresses the message, “We have what you’re looking for,” we keep on walking.

These displays are expertly prepared, from the lighting to product presentation to provide a compelling reason to enter the shop. They must also describe and target the type of customers they serve.

Address Your Target Market by Identifying Who They Are

Most homepages focus on what the company offers. There is rarely an expression of emotional depth or attempt to connect with the searcher.

Your website visitors want to be acknowledged. The best way to do that is to clearly address them. Your images should look portray people like them. Your text should be written with terms they understand. Content is less about “We”, “us” and “our” and more directed to specific users, offers, answers or solutions.

For example, you can write, “Cat lovers with finicky eaters may like to try,” and “For women over 50, this product repairs…”, “Home-based business owners on strict budgets chose…”, etc. The sentence identifies who the company is targeting, what they offer and motivates action (“try”, “chose”, “repairs”).

Performance and Inclusion

Connecting with visitors means knowing what computer devices they use and building an accessible homepage. There are an infinite number of environments and situations where mobile devices are used, so performance such as page load and layout of page content is important.

Inclusion design considers everyone, regardless of whether they require glasses to read or assistive devices to listen to the page. Conversions immediately increase by improving usability.

Who/Where/What/Why/When/How and A Verb

A homepage answers questions. It walks up to complete strangers in the hopes of having a conversation. I watch how people interact and try to emulate how we do that. We share information with people we trust, so design for credibility. We like to feel welcome, so address visitors by identifying them and showing them something you know they want to see.

We respond to action, so give your visitors something to do (buy, shop, read, follow, sign up, subscribe, order, find, explore, try, contact, watch demo, share, download, etc.) We have feelings, desires, needs, short memories or poor eyesight, so choose colors, words, images and layout that portray empathy and acknowledge the human being who has arrived.

Mads Singers Sorensen

A key aspect of good copywriting is to stop telling what you sell and start explaining what problem it solves.

I see it so frequently in the SEO and web dev industry where companies consistently are telling clients how many links they will build or the likes, but what they need to talk about (and sell) should always be the benefit the clients gets from the work.

As a client one doesn’t care what happens, but focus on the relevant result, that will help them change their business – Sell the vision, not the product itself.

Another key aspect of a good landing page is having testimonials – either video or clear testimonials linking to the LinkedIn profile or the likes, to make it clear it’s a review from a real person and not just any “Bob bobster” the site owner made up.

Bruce Clay

There are many obvious answers: increase traffic, have exactly what the visitor wants at an acceptable price, and nurture existing clients. Respond promptly, demonstrate concern, and speak their language sensitive to their needs.

But you can also build your brand and trust. You can be seen as the only top-shelf high-value solution to the visitors issues.

A conversion (or micro-conversion) can be many different things, and thus each is different. We believe that each site, and their competition, is a unique problem and that there is no one-size-fits-all conversion easy button.

Matt Diggity – Diggity Marketing

Homepage conversions are all about trust, credibility and quickly showing what it is that you do.

Most of the time, one’s homepage acts as a portal and is not optimized for any keywords.

Which means that people don’t have any specific search intent when they land on the homepage – They probably got there through a link.

The name of the game is to first make yourself look credible.

This all happens above the fold. A nice custom logo goes a long way.

“As featured on” logos and customer testimonials are extremely effective as well.

Step 2 is to tell your story. Let the reader know what it is that you offer in explainer videos, bite-sized paragraphs of your service and product offerings, etc.

Lastly, convert them. A strong CTA to your prime offerings towards the bottom of the page.

Warren Whitlock

The most important part of any conversion process (funnel) is how you set goals. Your goals need to work for the viewer. A clever piece of copy or graphic design won’t help much if you are not in alignment with the customer journey will drive people away. Design your site so that the viewers most important concern is addressed up clearly and then design their next step as something that you know will delight them.

If your viewers are returning customers, make it easy for them to login in and move one. For your new visitors, make sure you offer an easy next step that satisfies their most burning question (your top FAQ). Rather than close the sale, get the click.

Remember, customers need to go through a process. It’s obvious to us that we have a great offer, it sometimes take a while for them to know, like and trust what we recommend. Be consistent, reward them and they will move forward from the home page to whatever you suggest they do.

Melanie Nathan – Cheer Digital

I’m not sure if it’s the very “best” way to get more homepage conversions, but what I like to do is heavily research and find out all I can about my target audience.

I really try to understand and determine preciously what my audience wants and needs. If you’re unable to do this, I recommend hiring a professional to do it.

Knowing your audience, especially if you’re trying to sell something to them, is simply THAT important.

After that, it’s just a matter of developing a targeted sales funnel and also creating homepage content that satisfies and informs. Easy peasy, right?

Talia Wolf – Get Uplift

Start with the “WHY”. Why are people on your site? What was happening in their life at the very moment that brought them to your site?

When you can answer that question, you’ll have a much clearer understanding of what content and experience your prospects need from you.

People don’t just randomly end up on websites, we’re all Googling (or Binging…?) our way from problems, pains, and solutions.

Identify those pains, concerns, and hesitations your prospects have, and solve them on the page with the right copy, the right images, and content.

Best practices will only take you so far (not very far at all), if you want to increase your conversions dramatically you’ve got to appeal to people on the emotional level, understand their emotional-drivers and show them that you understand them.

Rather than focusing on the solution, you’re selling, its price or features, focus on the prospects and their intent. WHY did this person come to my site today? What is her biggest pain or concern? How can I show her that we’re going to solve that for her?

Minuca Elena

When people land on your site for the first time, the first conversion that you have to do is not to make them subscribe to your newsletter or buy your products, but to make them stick around on your site. If your site loads slowly, the visitor may not even wait to see it and he or she may click back. So, you need to have a site that loads fast, under 3 seconds.

For that, you should keep as fewer plugins as possible and resize and compress all the images on your site. There are many more things that you have to do to ensure your site loads quickly but these two simple things will make a big difference from the beginning.

Your homepage should answer one main question: What can your readers and future clients gain from you?

The focus should be one the client and how can he or she benefits from your products or services. For example, if you are a business coach or a fitness trainer, don’t state all your credentials on your homepage (you can do that on your about page).

Say how you can help people, how their life will look like after working with you, like “you will get more clients” or “you will lose 10 pounds a month”. Mention clear achievable goals. Make it easy to understand what your site is about even for a new reader.

If your brand is about you, your skills, and the services that you provide, then you should also include a professional photo of yours. If your business relies on the company you run, than your photo may not be necessary. For examples, on the homepage of a construction company would be more appropriate an image with workers building a house than to see the photo of the company owner in a suite.

Your homepage should also include testimonials. Some people, especially beginners, include testimonials from friends. Other have testimonials from only the most famous clients. Personally, I prefer to get testimonials from all my clients, no matter how famous they are.

Also, it’s best to include the full name, the photo and if possible the site of your client. If you provide services to other companies, then your industry may be smaller than you think. It’s possible that your potential client knows or wants to talk with one of your former clients about the quality of your work before making an investment. Even if most people will not do it, it’s still gives more trust to show you have nothing to hide.

Also, you should include some examples of your work, like pictures of your products, or before and after picturs of your clients (this works for makeup artists, plastic surgeons, anyone in the weight loss industry etc.)

James Jacobsen – iPull Rank

The key to increasing homepage conversions is to first have a strong understanding of your users and your goals. This can be achieved through various UX tasks, that include, but are not limited to: User testing, user research, surveys, prototyping and data analyzation. Using these as a foundation, you can start to mock, implement and test. Many times, the most important items to focus on are:

• The pages CTA’s: Is the content, and the buttons/actions on the page clear and concise.
• Viewport: What content is important for a desktop user vs. a mobile user? How can these differing experiences be handled?
• Personas: Do you have multiple types of users? If so, is there a clear path set for getting each to the content that is relevant to them?
• Colors and type: How you handle color and type goes a long way in retaining users and getting them to the point of conversion. For example, if your user base trends toward senior age, having type that is too small can be a turn off.

While there is no cookie cutter route to increasing conversions, having a clear understanding of your users and using that to determine layout/content goes a long way to getting them from A-Z successfully.

Sam Soh

You need to have engaging content that visitors can relate to. For example, if you are using stock images, it is imperative to use photos that are of the same ethnicity as your target audience. At a glance of the homepage, the visitor must feel at ease and know that they have landed on a website that was created just for them.

In addition to photos, the content should also be as localised as possible. It might sound obvious but most of my content writers are not from the same country as my target audience. This additional scope of work to localise the content which you receive from the freelance content writers is very crucial for better conversions.

Daniel Christensen – Morningdove

The most basic way to increase your homepage conversions is by continually testing. This will show you what types of people are coming to your site and where they are clicking.

Ideally, you should have as close to ONE goal in mind for everyone who visits your site as possible – sign up for your newsletter, watch this video, read your blog posts, download your ebook, buy a product, etc. If you don’t, deciding this should become your top priority.

Once you have this goal in mind, all your copy, all your graphics, and all your CTA’s should be designed around it. I read once (about email marketing) that the point of the first line is simple: to get the reader to move on to the next line. The point of the second line is to get the reader to the third, and so on.

This is good advice for building a high-converting website as well. Create a hook so that visitors will stay on your site and work their way to your main goal. Get rid of anything that takes away from it. Even if a certain design element is appealing, you need to have the gall to delete it if it’s lowering conversions.

Brian Jackson – Kinsta

You should be sending traffic to landing pages or even your products/plans page. According to a study by Aberdeen Group Research, every 1 second delay in page load decreases customer satisfaction by 16 percent, page views by 11 percent and conversion rates by 7 percent. So one easy way to increase conversions is to ensure you have a fast and snappy website, whether this is your homepage or place of the conversion.

Here are a few tips to increase the speed of your website:

• Upgrade to higher-quality hosting. Don’t go the shared route. Make sure they have plenty have data center locations to ensure your server is closer to your visitors. This helps lower TTFB.
• Decrease external scripts and dependencies.
• Use a CDN to decrease latency and speed up delivery of assets further away from your hosting server.
• Optimize your images! A good rule of thumb is to keep images under 100KB a piece.
• Figure out what you can and cannot cache. Deliver as much content from the cache as possible.
• Go for premium DNS. Cheap DNS sucks. Although there are some exceptions to this such as Cloudflare.
• Offload heavy media when needed (videos, PDFs, etc.)
• Use a tool like New Relic to find out where the bottlenecks on your website are.
• Whatever you do, always optimize for mobile.

Mandy McEwen – Mod Girl Marketing

The best way to get more homepage conversions is to have a compelling call-to-action that provides massive, free value to your visitors. Having a good CTA with an awesome “freebie” is great, but that only gets you so far.

In order to entice your visitors to give you their name and their email address, there are a few things you should do first. To start, ensure that your “freebie” is targeted to a particular market, so you can speak directly to them and their pain points.

Sure, you’ll be getting traffic from various sources and not everyone will be your specific target market, but it doesn’t matter! Because ultimately, you can’t provide your product/service to everyone.

So, you should ONLY be concerned with visitors who fit the criteria of your target market and not worry about the rest. The next way to encourage people to give you their name and email address is to include testimonials on your homepage.

Of course, if you have testimonials from your ideal target market (aka your dream clients), then make sure you include those on your homepage so your potential prospects can identify with those individuals and start to get an idea of how you can help them achieve similar results.

Dimitar Karamarinov – onLoad Agency

When it comes down to driving conversions straight from your homepage, or the least, lay the path for success later down the road, you have to build and validate your expertise, authority, and trust while providing if not the best, the minimum viable UX to allow, or even best, push people to convert.

While there are a ton of variables and rules for the many niches out there, there are a few key factors that will make or break business for you.

Mostly accustomed to classic web development and SEO, the mix of metrics like FP (first paint), FCP (first contentful paint), FMP (first meaningful paint), TTI (time to interaction) have a key role in how and what perception users get from the very first moment landing on your website.

If you have your technology up to date, to design a loading experience that pleases the user is crucial to laying the path to success.  However, a poor loading experience will not condemn you to fail, but it’s a rather great advantage, especially if used to your advantage.

Without getting too deep on detail, but the right mix of developer skills, design, and dark or grey pattern know-how could elevate the loading experience from an intro, all the way to leverage and even an accelerator to a sale.

Prioritize interactive elements or draw attention to any above the fold benefits that will build up your desired subconscious presumption.

It tricks such as sneaky design, misleading wording and muddled descriptions enriched with NLP techniques such as one my favorites, scaremongering, could take business and turnover to a whole new level.

If you combine those with the right dose of “baiting and switching” you could easily take the user to the next level where new traps await, such as a booking form (at best) or an evil-crafted landing page where you can further “push” to sell.

Although the line between conversion optimization and dark patterns is slightly blurry, to push for sales straight from your homepage is a challenging and ambitious goal which is far from impossible.

Alexis Pratsides – Mint Twist

No matter how much traffic your website gets, conversions are vital to ensure your business is profitable. Conversions occur when a desired outcome is completed through the action of a user, this can be anything from filling out a registration form to buying your content.
From my point of view, these are the main ways to increase conversions on your homepage.

1. CTA buttons: These are more clickable than links, especially on mobile devices. CTA buttons should be tailored to your target audience. Consider A/B testing with the button colors as this can impact your performance.
2. Testimonials: Visitors want to know if your website is trustworthy – testimonials do just that.
3. Social media links/follower counts: These act like testimonials and show the authenticity of your brand.
4. High-quality images: It’s 2018. Consumers value quality, and if your images don’t have it, why should your product?
5. Video: Visitors want to know who’s behind your brand/website. Videos act as a great way to engage with an audience and to show personalization.
6. Easy to scan content: People don’t have the time to sit and read through long paragraphs. Make sure your content is scannable, which can be done by bolding key points.
7. Chat tools: Having a live chat feature can help your visitors engage more and resolve potential concerns.
8. Above the fold content: Ensure the most important parts of your landing page are above the fold. This includes opt-in boxes or any other conversion element.

Your homepage is the beginning of the user journey, therefore ensuring it can get conversions is a must for all webmasters. The tips mentioned in this article are proven search engine optimization tactics that can help you convert, but at the same time increase your website traffic.

Hákon Ágústsson – My Twitter Alerts

DO CUSTOMERS UNDERSTAND WHAT YOUR PAGE IS ALL ABOUT?

Before starting a conversion optimization and A/B testing, it is best to know the opinion of users on your website.

There are some good tools for measuring the level at which visitors understand your page:

1. Session Replay App

With the use of session replay tool like Fullstory, any activity on your webpage will be recorded. You get to see how users uses mouse, scrolls, key press, and clicks on your page. You also figure out errors users encounter on your page.

You won’t be needing expensive tools, the free trial and free plan can be used for a start. It will be beneficial and fun to know the happenings on your page.

2. 5 Seconds Tests

People’s first impression on your site can be measured using usability tests to optimize the precision of your design.
You can show users five seconds screenshots (fivesecondtest.com) and ask them questions afterwards like:

– What is the company’s name?
– Opinion about the page?
– What product they think the company sells?
– Does the brand appear reliable?

When you understand the two tools that are explained above you will get valuable insights on how your customers behave on your website.

Johnny Baskin – Nomadic Advertising

If you want to increase your homepage conversion rate first you need to make sure you can track your current results properly. Use heatmap software to track user behavior on your site and make sure you have a way of easily split testing changes.

Once you have those elements in place it’s important to make sure your website evokes emotion through an enticing call to action and relatable images. Address any possible objections quickly.

Remove any unnecessary complexity and make it easy for users to follow your call to action. Users should be able to convert in as little clicks as possible without getting lost.

Dennis Seymour – LeapFroggr

It starts with identifying your main goal on the homepage.

– Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter?
– Do you want to segregate them to different “buckets” so your newsletter can be targeted? (You can do this within emails but some autoresponders cannot handle this function)
– Do you want them to contact you
– Do you want them to head on over to your critical content?
– Do you want them to check your about page first?

You can see where I’m getting to here. There are a bunch of things you want your visitors to do, but for the homepage, aim for just 1. The most important thing that will bring returns for you.

Ask yourself, “what’s the one thing that I want them to do when they land on the homepage?”

Once you answer that, you’ll be able to track conversions and setup better tests (like moving buttons, putting the form above the fold, etc) and that will lead to higher conversions.

Thank you so much to all the experts that contributed to this expert roundup!

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The post How To Increase Homepage Conversions: 23 CRO Experts Weigh In appeared first on The HOTH.