10 Must-Have Website Features to Increase Conversion Rate

Gaining good traffic for your website is only half the battle won; converting that traffic into sales is what defines the success of your website. Though conversion rates may vary from one website to another, the best-performing websites report a conversion rate of 11% or more.

Finding a promising strategy that attracts people is crucial to the long-term success of your business, especially with the alternatives increasing each year. Captivating users long enough until they decide to complete an action is a skill that helps improve your web page statistics. If they lose interest before digesting most of your content, it is a clear waste of resources put in for the content.

Here are 10 ways to improve your website and motivate your audience to stick to your content, therefore converting them into meaningful sales:

1. Attractive Headlines

The headline is the introduction of your website and is important to create that first impression on the web page visitor. If your headline isn’t captivating enough, chances are that the reader won't even get to the main content body. The content, no matter how good, won’t matter if people lose interest at the sight of an unattractive headline.

Headlines, despite how simple they look, need marketers to spend hours and sometimes, days on them to ensure they are attention-grabbing and witty.

2. Website Performance

The speed at which the page displays the content is as important as the content itself. Longer load times can be loss-making as around 47% of customers give a maximum of 2 seconds or less for a page to load; if it doesn’t load even after 3 seconds, 40% of them tend to abandon the page.

Page performance also affects SEO rankings; slower loading times will push your website farther in the pecking order of websites in the searches.

3. Call to Action 

Call to action (CTA) components are highly important to boost the conversion rates as it tells the customer why they need to perform a specific action you tell them to do. Use simpler CTA buttons instead of links that have a higher click rate.

Simply providing a CTA doesn’t guarantee that the user will click on it. The CTA should have value and urgency associated with it.

Here are a few types of CTAs you can implement in your webpage:

• Lead generation
• Form submissions
• Read more buttons
• Social sharing buttons
• Inquiry buttons

4. Remarketing

Many unfavorable and unforeseen factors can prevent a customer from not being converted or resulting in web page abandonment. The circumstances might have been bad or perhaps the customer was just browsing through, in either case reaching out to them for remarketing will be beneficial in keeping your product at the frontlines of their mind.

Keeping track of these potential customers is a good strategy to convert them to sales at a later point in time.

5. HD Pictures

It is not difficult to understand why a text-oriented page without images can become boring very fast. Users are immediately drawn to web pages with images, associating the written content with a well-chosen image is more likely to keep the readers engaged. Keeping the users engaged for a longer period increases the chances of converting.

Throwing some color into the web page also helps, if possible avoid the usage of stock images as they tend to be overused and will seem highly unprofessional. Stolen images can be tracked and can have repercussions if the images were used without permission.

Taking effort in displaying original images of your product/service will be better trusted by the audience. Hiring professional photographers is also supported as their professional images come with the benefits of higher conversion rates.

6. Navigation

Organize the website for a better customer experience, poor navigation optimization makes people abandon the web page due to confusion. Many users get frustrated when they are unaware of the path that leads to their intended destination, in search of the relevant content they can lose interest and switch to an alternative webpage.

Providing sections of the product/ website will assist your customers in finding what they are looking for when entering keywords in the search bar. Make sure everything is properly filled accurately, which is done category-wise. Making customer navigation simpler to help your customers find what they are looking for will improve customer experience.

7.  Social Media Buttons

With the right place to provide a social media button, you can help the traffic go towards the social media subpages of the website. Having a social media face for your brand helps make it more trustworthy and reliable for your customers.

Ensure that the social media buttons provided are only the appropriate platforms according to the content. Satisfying your customers will lead them to share and recommend their peers. This word of mouth is greatly beneficial to expand your business to other platforms.

Keep in mind that there aren't too many social media buttons as this would seem a desperate approach to gather shares. Make sure to place these social media buttons without being a distraction to the main CTA button. The CTA button is much more important and any compromises to its integrity will impact conversion rates.

8. User Experience

Providing the best user experience is the foundation of the website. The user experience is fundamental and greatly affects the bounce rate and conversion rates. The customers need to be nurtured and assisted to improve the chances of being converted.

More than the promotion of the products or services the website should prioritize guiding the customer in their customer journey. Having numerous options to choose from in the main menu might do more harm than good if it creates confusion.

With crowded options, people are more likely to abandon the page due to the confusion. Strategically place the website design elements to direct the customers towards the high priority targets. 

9. Reviews and Testimonial Section

Customer reviews are helpful for people to make their purchase decisions, having a small section dedicated to reviews will improve customer satisfaction. Reviews are also good in gaining credibility from new customers who are uncertain about trusting your brand.

Displaying such social proofs is beneficial in increasing conversions as a majority of customers consider reviews equivalent to the reliability of personal recommendations. Failure in keeping the product[/service up to its standards might draw negative reviews.

Negative reviews will reduce conversion rates and will be difficult to overturn if not resolved immediately. Testimonial sections similarly provide social proofs with the added professional proof bonus. This is a greater way to instill confidence in your audience to do business with your brand.