Startups, Let’s Increase Conversions on Your Website in 2021

With 5 simple steps

Illustration created by Gabriela Gurgui

Is increasing your conversion rate one of your goals for 2021? I bet it is, so you should reflect on this matter while you’re going through the guide included in this article.

“One excellent way to find insights that can increase conversion is to stop focusing on why people say “yes”, and zoom in on what makes them say “no”.” — Gregory Ciotti, Shopify content marketer

Behind a website that converts properly is a good copy and a great design experience for visitors, but even if you’re a startup, you can increase your conversions by having a clear framework to follow.

Begin with the steps below for creating a confident homepage, and then if you can’t afford a copywriter, read this article on how to articulate your web content in a professional way.

Source: coda.io

Focus on The Homepage

The homepage is considered to have the greatest impact on your customers. The longer it keeps their attention, the more often they’ll come back and become customers. It’s the page that differentiates you from competitors, so having a well-done structure will definitely increase your conversions.

Here are the homepage’s sections in numerical order, and what they should include.

Source: webflow.com

1. Hero Section

Have you heard of the 5-seconds test? It’s commonly used for measuring people’s reactions and impressions on a website. Since the human brain can’t focus on unnecessary details in 5 seconds, the memory will retain the hero section’s elements that stand out such as the value proposition, the call-to-action button, and the product’s image.

• (A) Value Proposition: Its role is to position the product away from competition in the mind of the customer. The proposition should be short and clear, also it should show the biggest benefit your customers will get by using your product. See Webflow’s example above: “The modern way to build for the web”, meaning a unique way of writing code (visually). Although you may not understand from the start what’s this about, it keeps you intrigued and you’ll want to read more, and it also differentiates them from the start.
• (B) Clarification Statement: Write under the value proposition a concise explanation, where you give a bit of context about what your product does. “Webflow empowers designers to build professional, custom websites in a completely visual canvas”, it states their customers clearly, how it helps them, and specifies what problem the product solves.
• (C)Primary CTA: Add a button that stands out with the help of its color (one prominent color that isn’t anywhere on the section) and which allows customers to know what to do next, an important action you want them to take. Usually, a good call-to-action should say ‘’sign up for free’’ or ‘’get started’’.
• (D) Image of the Product: You should always show an image of your product right on the hero section, it’s the most important visual element that visitors will see on your website, this is what they’ll remember the most. Not having a product image right from the start is like opening a store with empty shelves where nobody knows what you sell.

Source: pitch.com

2. Social Proof

Social Proof such as testimonials, or your customers’ favorite companies’ logos, influence considerably their decision in choosing your product over the others from the same industry. Knowing how to highlight testimonials and placing them in the right order requires a bit of strategic thinking, but it’s not hard once you ask yourself “If I were a potential customer, what would convince me to try this product?’’.

• Customer Logos: Place the most known ones by your customers. Because Pitch is a collaborative platform for teams, they added logos from companies as Notion, Dribbble, or Doist (used very often by teams too).
• Testimonials: Place the best one under the hero section, and the rest after presenting the features. Also, the image with your customer should be bigger instead of a small circle so it can have a greater impact.

Source: dropbox.com

3. Features & Benefits

Include your product’s features and add images aside as visual support of how your product works. Try to focus more on what benefits the product brings to potential customers than what advanced features you did incorporate the last month. As proof that people don’t care about these things is Apple’s website. They don’t bury you into tech fancy jargons. They just present their newest product in a very elegant way with images and confident messaging.

• Biggest Features That Define And Differentiate You: Present just a few features, but they should be the ones that solve the customers’ biggest problems and at the same time the ones that differentiate you.
• Focus a Lot More On The Benefits On Home Page: Again, show what problems are you trying to solve for the customers, rather than selling the product itself.
• Use Short Text: Focus on visual elements to tell a story instead, and avoid cluttering the white space with a bunch of unnecessary information.

Source: twist.com

4. Publications Where You Were Mentioned

If your company was mentioned in a publication, add a short preview of the article on your homepage instead of just showing the publication’s logo. It should look similar to a testimonial and be used the same way.

Source: lattice.com

5. Testimonials as Case Studies/Use Cases

Wondering how to capture people’s attention? Present case studies or use cases. If you’re a Business-to-Business company, rely on case studies, if the opposite, show use cases.

• Show Results & Impact, Customers Story: The best way to attract new customers is by making them see themselves in your current customers and their stories.
• Case Studies (B2B): A case study focuses on a single customer’s experience, and it’s more detailed and presents tangible results. It shows how your product helped the customer, how they implemented your solution, and how they benefited from it. (see Lattice’s case studies)
• Use Cases (B2C): A use case is more like an overall picture of how your solution helped a customer type, and encourages other people to imagine how your product could solve some specific needs they have. At the same time, use cases are customers’ success stories told in a more subjective way than case studies. (see Memberstack’s use cases)

Source: buffer.com

Pricing Page

The pricing page is very important in increasing your conversion rate as it is the page a customer would check when they’ll make a decision on whether to use your product or not. It should be an individual page that looks airy, with a lot of clean space. Don’t go too far, keep it simple, organized, and make the pricing plans be easy to keep track of.

• Simple Cards at The Top: Highlight the biggest differences between plans, and which one you want them to choose the most. The text should be on a larger scale and easily readable, you don’t want people to have a hard time understanding the differences between the plans and to feel overwhelmed right from the start.
• Table List View With All The Features & Checkmarks: The table list view should be a secondary action under the simple pricing cards after they understand the overall differences. Make it easy for the visitors to follow the features list, including just numbers or checkmarks, and empty spaces when a feature is missing. (See Webflow’s pricing page for a great example)
• FAQ Section: Include a FAQ Section under the plans, where you answer the most common questions your potential customers could have. This can be the tipping point in their buying process and you don’t want it to be missing from your website.

Do not do

For the record, just a few tips that will help you to organize your website’s content better from now.

• Too Many Similar Pages: One bad idea is creating a lot of pages that have the same type of content when you could just have one single page for that and limiting to what’s necessary to show.
• No More than 6 Navbar Links: Show the most important pages you want customers to check out. Limit yourself to pages like Home, Pricing, Features, About, and Blog.
• Too Much Text: Adding a lot of information won’t help the potential customers, it does the opposite. When a visitor sees just text without visual support, they feel anxious and overwhelmed.
• Focusing on Features Instead of Customers & Benefits: Don’t forget to present the product’s features in a manner that replaces tech jargon with solutions that your customers will benefit from in their daily lives. Most of them don’t understand the technical words you’re using.

Lastly, try not to complicate your work, neither your potential customers’ ability to understand your product’s purpose in their lives. Apply the framework that was presented to you in this article and check back in one year to see how your conversions have increased.