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Most conversion rate optimization articles focus on A/B testing and large-scale data models. Truth be told, you need A LOT of visitors to be able to run statistically significant CRO tests.Chances are, if you are reading this post, you don’t have millions of visitors landing on your website each month.
While you might not have a statistically significant sample size, there are still plenty of things you can do to turn more of the visitors you do have into buyers.
In this post, we’re sharing the top tips to help you improve your website conversion rates.
Sure, there are dozens (and dozens?) more Google Analytics 4 metrics you could track. But, starting with these 10 commonly tracked metrics will give you a pretty high-level view of how your marketing is working…
If you want to track these in Google Analytics, you might find the visualizations limiting. It’s also a bit time-consuming to combine all the metrics you need in one view.
To better understand how your website performs in terms of traffic growth and conversions, we’ve made this plug-and-play dashboard that contains all the essential metrics for understanding how successful you are at optimizing different aspects of your website.
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To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
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If you want to increase conversions on your site, you need to understand who your best-fit customers are, like what are the goals, pain points, drivers that motivate them to take action, and the average time it takes to make a purchase, among other things.
“Creating and implementing an easy, effective, and attractive customer journey through the website is from my experience the best way to ensure that even sites with low traffic can convert at a good rate,” says Connor Hewson of Assured Marketing. “Firstly, by speaking with existing customers and identifying your users’ habits on the site through Google Analytics you can identify the patterns of which pages and which CTA’s are being the most effective. Then you can look at how these factors can be implemented throughout the site.
One of the most productive ways that I have found in boosting conversions on sites with low traffic is to implement contact forms on every landing page. Simply by giving users this option to scroll to a contact form rather than navigate to one makes enquiring a simpler process and more attractive in the eyes of the user.”
In addition, you can learn a ton about your customers by interviewing employees in your company, especially sales and support staff.
Jordan Brannon of Coalition Technologies adds, “The biggest hurdle for low-traffic websites is that there’s not enough traffic to allow for A/B testing—measuring lift from tweaks and changes can’t be done because there won’t be enough data. Here are some ways to compensate for the lack of data:
Start asking opinions from within your organization on how the site can be improved. You can also ask key customers with whom a relationship has been built and whose opinion can be trusted. Once improvements have been made on the website, ask others members of the target audience (i.e., people within the targeted demographic or psychographic group) to review the site and share their feedback.
Consult sales personnel, as they are valid resources and often have suggestions on how to address product or service concerns. They can provide material for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that can help aid conversions. FAQs within landing pages or product pages can allay concerns that potential customers or clients might have.”
Using website analytics, heatmaps, session recorders, and conducting useability tests can help you understand what people are and aren’t doing on your site. This can help you uncover barriers and bottlenecks.
“The most important step to increase the conversion rate on low-traffic websites is to track how users interact with your site,” says Eden Cheng of PeopleFinderFree. “Using website analysis tools such as this web analytics dashboard you can determine where the users are coming from (clicking through promotional emails, social media, etc.), what they want from your site, and how much time they spend on your site.
This will help you improve in the areas you are lacking and make your visitors excited to check on your site. Use story-telling with emotionally charged language to make your visitors eager to spend more time and maybe buy something from your site. Understanding your visitors’ requirements is the key to convert them and attract more customers.”
Anthony Gaenzle says, “If your website has limited traffic, it’s extra important to dig deep and develop a strong understanding of your audience so you can enhance your site to better serve their needs. By using platforms like Google Analytics, SEMrush, Hubspot, or others on the market, you can gain valuable insights into who is visiting your site, what content resonates most with those visitors, and how they are navigating through. With these insights in hand, you can craft content that keeps visitors on your site longer, more effectively answers their questions, and solves their problems.
You can also update poorly performing content by uncovering gaps and enhancing such pieces. Consistently updating outdated or thin content can have a huge impact on your conversions.
Once you’ve taken care of all site enhancements, be sure to add clear, concise calls-to-action so you can convince your visitors to make a purchase or move into your pipeline by downloading content offered through a lead magnet.”
Justin Smith of OuterBox adds, “One of the best things you can do is add a session recorder to your website so that you can better understand your users’ behaviors. You don’t need hundreds of thousands of visitors to understand how people are interacting with your website – even after just a few recorded sessions, you’re likely to see some common themes that will give you tangible insights into things you can change.
For example, maybe you see that users are blowing past your CTA button, likely because they didn’t notice it. With that insight, you could look to change the color of your button or increase its size. Subtle changes like that could make a huge impact on your conversion rate but without understanding your users’ current behaviors, you have no way of knowing what elements need to be changed.”
An often overlooked point when analyzing your site is to make sure you are attracting the right traffic in the first place.
“Ask whether you have the right traffic,” explains Elliott Brown of OnPay. “A low-traffic website can lead to a lot of conversions if the traffic is high intent. So start out by understanding your existing audience. Do they come to your site to seek solutions like yours?
If so, you’re in luck — your job is to figure out (and test your way into) the best methods of engagement. If your traffic is low traffic and low intent, you need to start figuring out how to attract the right people.”
For example, you can have the most optimized eCommerce store for gourmet dog food. However, if 95% of people landing on your website own iguanas, then you aren’t going to be selling much dog food.
Editor’s Note: This Google Analytics Website Engagement Dashboard can give you a high-level overview of key metrics, like number of unique visitors, average session duration, and percentage of new vs. returning visitors.
A great way to get additional insights into who is visiting your site and what they are doing when they get there is through qualitative research, such as moderated usability tests, unmoderated usability tests, and focus groups.
“You can lean more heavily on qualitative data at this stage,” says David Hoos of The Outloud Group. “Fix your more glaring usability issues by asking five people unfamiliar with your website to complete the same activity on your site. Pay attention to where they get tripped up and work to remove those roadblocks.”
Alex Birkett says, “Even if you don’t think you run a low traffic website in the context of A/B testing, you probably do. Fact is, it’s only a handful of websites that truly have limitless traffic to play with, and everyone else is just on the spectrum of how much traffic to do we have, and what can we do with it?
If you truly cannot run A/B tests, then you’re going to have to really be on big swings and qualitative feedback. Honestly, if you’re at this level, I wouldn’t even worry about experimentation or tweaking small variables; instead, go do things that get you traffic! If you can run a few tests per month, but it’s still quite limited, then I’d focus on evidence-based optimization. You can do qualitative and quantitative research to identify issues and then bucket them into categories like just fix it, investigate further, and a/b test it. For obvious fixes, just launch ’em. For the bigger swings/less certain ones, wrap it up in an A/B test.
Anyway, that’s a rambling answer to say lean in on qualitative research. Tools like Wynter, Qualaroo, HotJar, UserTesting.com, and good old Google Analytics can get you a long way.”
If you can only make one change, it would be to write better CTAs that actually match the intent and the buying stage of the type of visitor on the page.
“Having low traffic on your website isn’t that bad,” says Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers. “What you want to do is leverage the traffic you’re already getting by improving the visitor to conversion ratio. Adding powerful CTA (Call-to-Action) buttons along your content that resonates with your audience will help you optimize your conversion rate.
Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes and understand the problems and pain points they’re facing. Then, crafting a CTA showing your visitors that you have the solution to their problems will entice them to get in touch with you.”
For example, Karol Nowacki of Tidio says, “While we often put a lot of effort into polishing content on our blog and choosing exciting topics, we sometimes forget to give as much attention to preparing a compelling Call To Action. A strong, goal-oriented CTA can be a game-changer for improving the conversions rate on our website.”
Another way to generate more conversions is to incorporate more testimonials, reviews, and other social proof signals.
“The best way to increase conversions if your website is having low traffic is to leverage the power of testimonials and social proof,” says James Jennings of HomeGardenHQ.co.uk. “You need to understand that when it comes to turning your customer’s hesitation into conviction, testimonials from those who’ve tried your products or services will always do the trick. And making it visible on all of the pages of your website will be the key.
One of my websites was once having very low traffic. But when I added in-depth testimonials and social proof to my web pages, the conversion rate went up by almost 30%. When your site has low traffic, it only means that lots of your visitors aren’t convinced yet about what you’re offering. But when they’ll read some comments from satisfied clients, their doubts will surely be replaced with excitement about trying your products or services for themselves.
The best area to put the testimonials is on your landing pages and add at least six of the most authentic ones. And to make it more convincing and trustworthy, include a photo and name on the testimonial.
That being said, you need to deploy a series of strategies in order to have a better conversion rate. The best thing to do is to continuously test every new idea that you have. Compare the results to see which one works better, then stick to it.”
In addition, if you sell a service or a higher-priced product, adding live chat can help with objection handling and inspire buyer confidence.
“Add a chat option for your website,” says Jim Pendergast of altLINE. “Customers unsure about your products or services are likely to click out of your website, so have a live chat to help your customers better understand how to navigate your website. Chat options also allow you to interface with your clients to let you know how to improve your website for future users. You’ll develop a deeper connection with your customers, and you’ll save money on other marketing tactics.”
Daivat Dholakia of Force by Mojio “It’s easier to run live chat on a low traffic site. Since there aren’t as many visitors to begin with, the sales agent won’t have to move frantically between chats. In fact, you can usually have an employee run the chat on the side while doing other work during the day.
The other reason that it’s worth putting a chat feature on your website is that personalized experiences and instant customer service assistance will help you convert more leads. There are many people who don’t feel comfortable picking up the phone to ask a question but will send questions over chat all day. It’s also a good way to guide people toward the services or products that best suit their needs. I speak from personal experience here–my own team saw a spike in lead conversion when we started implementing a chat feature.”
When used in moderation, popups can be an effective tool to increase website conversions.
“Your call to action needs to be stellar,” says Andrew Taylor of Net Lawman. “Work on this and work on timing it well with your highest ranked pages within your website to ensure that a call to action pop up isn’t just clicked away.
It is all about the placement of the pop-up that matters, should it be at the very beginning of the page experience, halfway through? Make a conscious decision and allow that to work for you with the few people who come through your website for now.”
For example, Ed Spicer of Pest Strategies adds, “My business is affiliated with quality pest defense products. Including well-crafted pop-ups on your page will help direct people towards your products. When people come to my site looking for help with pests, they’re usually looking for ways to deal with infestations – it makes sense to signpost our offers.”
Another method that can work well for ecommerce and affiliate sites is to showcase your best-selling products upfront.
“As an affiliate marketer, we have seen a significant increase in our conversion rate (10+%) for product reviews when we provide just one or two products at the top as a sneak peek,” says Robert Lampros of Midwest Camping. “For example, a page reviewing tents for four would have our single best tent at the top of the page. Our theory is twofold – some individuals and families are moving fast enough to trust the author entirely or that they experience choice paralysis when confronted with the dozens and dozens of options that it is easier to just click on the ‘Best’!”
Caveat, this is only a good idea for some sites, like online publishers, blogs, and affiliate sites. Basically, anywhere where the discussed goal is consuming content.
“On low traffic websites, you need to find a way to keep users on your site for as long as possible and therefore, the potential of your conversion rate will mostly come down to how good your value proposition is and how easy it is to digest, this is the factor that will help boost conversions,” says Jenna Carson of Music Grotto. “One of our brands had 0.2% conversion and low traffic, we ran a test to see how many users could understand our value proposition within 10 seconds. We increased this number four-fold and conversions increased nearly in line with that too!”
Nate Nead of SEO.co adds, “We have found that increasing dwell time has the strongest correlation with increased conversions. Second to dwell time, are better calls to action, including forms and live chatbots that are above the fold. For increasing dwell time, interactive elements, including video, placed above the fold have been critical for us.”
One way to get more search visitors to stay on your content site for longer is to make sure the content you are writing matches the search intent of the keyword you are targeting.
“The best way to increase conversion rate on low-traffic websites is to ensure that you’re focusing on the user’s search intent,” says Brett Ehlert of Coalmarch. “If you have a website that only receives 100 visitors per month, but you’re providing them exactly what they’re looking for, they are going to convert at a much higher rate. If you rely on Google organic search traffic, this means understanding what keywords are bringing visitors to your site, and understanding what the searcher is looking for when they are searching these keywords, and then ensuring that your website or content is providing this.”
Janice Wald of Mostly Blogging agrees, “Go after low-hanging fruit. Use a keyword tool to find low monthly search volume keywords. The big blogs don’t go after low search volume topics. Long-tail keywords are so specific, they generally have lower monthly search volumes. Though each keyword may have low traffic potential, the numbers add up. Your posts will rank well with no competition to speak of and you will boost conversions.”
For example, Kateryna Reshetilo of Greenice says, “We have a low-traffic website, as we focus on long-tail keywords, so each page has only around a hundred visitors on average. In cases like this, it doesn’t make sense to spend time on micro-optimizations like changing the color of a button or its placement. It is best to focus on bigger things like what types of CTAs you are going to have and how many. Sometimes, it even makes sense to throw in many types of CTAs and over time track which ones get clicked the most.”
Besides search intent, you should also make sure your content is relevant and authoritative.
“When you have a low-traffic website, you have to ensure that your potential customers have a real reason to visit,” says Moody Nashawaty of MuteSix. “One very successful way to do so is by providing high-quality, relevant content that will establish your company as an expert in its field. When you begin supplying on-topic content, such as how-to guides for your products and services, then this will encourage conversions. Remember, the best customer is an educated customer!”
This sounds obvious, but if your site takes more than a couple of seconds to load on computers, tablets, or smartphones, then most people will leave.
“Check your website for speed and readability,” says Seth Lytton of The Detroit Bureau. “Customers aren’t going to spend more than two seconds waiting for a website to load most of the time, so get your website analyzed. It’s reputation for a slow website could prevent you from visits in the future. Also, make sure your content is easy to read and highly accessible. In essence, your website should pass the three Cs: clean, concise, and coordinated.”
Related: 15 Website Speed Optimization Tips That Anyone Can Implement
In addition to making sure your website loads quickly, you also want to make sure it is easy to navigate.
“What we do is make a few changes to the website layout,” says Miranda Yan of VinPit. “The right use of pop-ups and clearing clutter has helped us retain visitors and direct them towards conversions.”
Teri Shern of Conex Boxes adds, “These days, design and user-friendliness of a website are everything when it comes to conversion rates. When your website is designed badly, it won’t look professional, and your visitors are going to take this as a warning sign and potentially leave the site to find a better-looking one. User-friendliness ensures that your site visitors aren’t browsing for too long before finding what they need to. If they can get onto your site, and easily get to the point of why they visited it in the first place (e.g. buying a specific product or learning about a product), then they’ll be more likely to follow through with a purchase. Keep both the user experience and your end goal in mind when creating the website, and you’ll likely come up with good strategies to improve conversion rates.”
Updating your contact page can help you establish trust and credibility.
For example, Brendan Tully of The Search Engine Shop says, “A reasonable number of the client sites we work with have fairly low traffic because they’re either operating in a small geographic area or they’re in a specialty industry.
One important factor in getting these sites to convert well is making sure the Contact Us page is optimized to give all the information a visitor needs or might be looking for.
We talk about this in more detail in this post about Contact Us page optimization.
Some quick and easy changes you can make that’ll take less than 15 minutes:
These changes seem super obvious but we see these problems on client sites every single day. Small changes like this can make a huge change to conversion rate, are completely free, and take very little time.”
Of course, if your site is super new or your traffic is low, a better use of your time is to simply drive more traffic to your site. One way to do this is through paid ads.
“It’s difficult to understand your audience if the traffic is too low for a representative sample size,” says Christian Nelson of Reminderband. “If you’re an eCommerce website, try running a generous promotion and use a paid ad platform based on keywords or audience interests.
After your promotion, analyze your data for the landing page. What was your bounce rate? Average time on site? If those metrics are poor despite the attractive offer, you may need to rethink your audience targeting, pricing, or site usability. If performance shows promise, keep running those ads to build momentum. You can also retarget users who abandoned cart to catch more conversions that fell through the first time around.”
Once you have a few thousand visitors per month, you may want to experiment with retargeting ads.
Peter Thaleikis of RankLetter says, “Low traffic websites are inherently harder to monetize than high traffic sites. The best, proven way to increase conversions on low-traffic sites is through the use of remarketing ads (using Google Adwords, for example). Remarketing ads target people who have already visited your site and can be customized in a variety of ways. This way, you are indirectly improving your existing traffic and get the most out of the low traffic you got.”
In sum, you don’t need to have a large site in order to focus on improving conversions. These are the tactics you can use to turn more traffic into leads or customers.
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Jessica Malnik is a content strategist and copywriter for SaaS and productized service businesses. Her writing has appeared on The Next Web, Social Media Examiner, SEMRush, CMX, Help Scout, Convince & Convert, and many other sites.
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