I wanted to talk to you about ways to improve your conversion rate, starting with your homepage. It’s often the first thing customers see, so its a good place to start. Let’s walk through three quick wins you can make to your homepage.
Quick Win 1: Optimizing Your Logo
When people land on your homepage, what's the first thing they see? Nine times out of ten it’s the logo.
There’s a simple reason for this: People read in an “F” pattern. Top to bottom, left to right. That means they are going to start in the upper left of the page. Which is where you want your professionally designed logo.
If you don’t have a great looking logo yet, hire an illustrator or logo designer, or submit a project on 99 Designs, where you can effectively crowdsource your logo. You want to make sure a professional logo is the first thing visitors see.
Quick Win 2: Tagline
Knowing that the logo is the first thing customers will often see (especially since its on every page of your site) there’s another easy quick win we can implement in the logo, and that’s a tagline. To communicate your brand message to the consumer, add a tagline to your logo. You can't fit a long one into a logo, but three to five words can be powerful.
For example, our client and purveyor of fine teas, Harney & Sons, has a name and logo that doesn’t communicate what they do at all. It’s totally ambiguous. But with the addition of three words, MASTER TEA BLENDERS, they quickly and easily communicate to everyone who sees their logo what it is they do.
That’s important because visitors aren’t going to spend time trying to decipher what it is you do, they’re going to bounce back to Facebook in the hopes of finding some more spicy memes.
Quick Win 3: Toll-Free Number
The third must-have item is a toll-free phone number. Yeah, we all have cell phones, and we don't really pay for long-distance anymore but a toll-free number still says, "Hey, I'm a legitimate for real business."
You can get one for about $30.00 a month from services like Grasshopper or Ring Central. Then, forward it to the appropriate phone line. Once you do, make sure you display it prominently in your header. A quality theme like Turbo by Out of The Sandbox even has a place for it in the top header.
These seem like obvious recommendations, but very few sites have all three in place. Three of the easiest and quickest ways to increase your conversion rate.