Conversion rate optimization for WordPress sites

Sites are created taking into account any goals. Whether selling, entertainment, informing or lead generation: there are better and worse ways to achieve these goals. Many site owners are very familiar with search engine optimization: they know what to do to attract people, but often do not pay enough attention to the time between going to the site and performing the target action - buying or registering.

Conversion rate optimization is the process of improving the way users interact with a site to increase conversion. Many factors affect conversion rates — from site structure to color matching. We consider only the basic elements of optimizing conversion for a WordPress site.
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First, we need to give a definition of conversion in order to have a clear understanding of what we are trying to improve. Conversion rate is usually measured in percentage of site visitors who perform specified actions on the total number of site visitors. If, during a month, the site is visited by 1,000 people, and 7 of them will subscribe to the newsletter, the conversion rate will be 0.7%.

It is clear that there are two ways to increase the absolute number of conversions: to increase either the number of visitors or the percentage of users who performed the target action. In the first case, the conversion rate does not actually change, leading to missed opportunities. The second option leads to an increase in the conversion rate itself - and this is what will be discussed below.

WordPress is a flexible and powerful content management platform that is ideal for maintaining a constant conversion rate optimization process. On a bespoke website, which (compared to WordPress) does not have enough power to support the content management system, using the methods described below will be difficult, and it may require the participation of a professional developer. But if you know how to keep the site working on WordPress, you will not have any problems using the recommendations described in this article.

Set clear goals

Understanding what task each page should perform and how it relates to your core business goals is necessary both to measure success and to create improvements that will lead the site to these goals.

A site is a reflection of the business for which it was created, and a business, in turn, can set itself different goals: associated with lead generation, branding, sales, product advertising, customer support, news, promotion in social networks and so on. Pages designed to meet all these goals may ultimately look overloaded. They contain a large number of elements that are not really necessary, because of what the reader's attention is scattered, and the most important message is lost.

Do not put too much responsibility on each page. Set one clear goal for each individual page: attract new customers through an email subscription, for example. Let every element of the page works to accomplish this task.

Analytics and Split Testing

Data is at the heart of conversion rate optimization (CRO). Site owners should know how well a page works to achieve a conversion rate, and how any changes increase or decrease its effectiveness. Some strategies tend to increase conversion rates, but whether or not they work on a particular site depends on its audience. Continuous split testing of changes is of decisive importance in this case.

Split testing, also known as A / B or multivariate testing, allows you to demonstrate different versions of pages (usually the original and a number of modified alternatives) to different users and check which options are gaining the highest conversion percentage. The page that showed the best results becomes the same , and then they continue to test it and its modified versions. This is a gradual process of improvement, carried out step by step - so the developer understands what changes are affected.

An example of successful split testing, illustrating a number of issues that we discuss in this article, is taken from the site of Think Traffic . This internet marketing company had problems with a bounce rate on its website. Visitors came to the home page, but about 70% left it without performing the target action and not following the links. Using some of the basic principles of CRO and relying on data from its analysts, Think Traffic has developed a number of hypotheses about how they can increase the conversion rate. After a split test of a series of alternative pages based on these theories, the team found a solution that led to a 37% increase in conversion rate.

The desire of Think Traffic to attract the most different types of visitors to the site led to the use of several calls to action on the page. Some of them, according to analysts, were inefficient in terms of conversion, but were on the page, as they promoted the services offered by the company.

Part of the process of optimizing the conversion on Think Traffic consisted of the removal of idle calls to action , and, paradoxically as it may sound, it increased the overall conversion and reduced the frequency of failures.

Google Content Experiments - one of the elements of Google Analytics - is a great way to apply the practice of split testing to WordPress sites. This tool allows you to set goals and work with multiple variants of the same page to track the performance of each of these options, which helps developers to easily identify the “winning page”.

There is a plugin for integrating Google Content Experiments with a WordPress site, with which you can easily add the necessary snippet to your pages.

Alternatively, you can use Optimizely - this is a web service dedicated to split testing. It is not free, but it is multifunctional and has a plugin for integrating with WordPress.

Make the calls to action visible

Prizes to action is an element of the site (form, button or link to the landing page) that prompts the user to something. Such buttons should be obvious and attract attention, but not to the extent that they annoy or distract the user from the main content of the page.

Color, location and size - everything is of great importance when prompting the visitor to click on the button, in this case the text of the call to action is also important. Amazingly, even minor changes to these parameters can affect the conversion rate.

Techniques for improving call-to-action include the following:

• Use verbs in the imperative, such as "Buy" or "Register."
• Offer the user something valuable - for example, a free trial version or useful information in return for a click.
• Make calls to action different from the rest of the page; use white space and color to highlight them.
• Make them noticeable, but not annoying; Avoid blinking or scrolling text.

Call to action button on Askimet

On the site Askimet calls to action arranged correctly. They are clear, unambiguous, do not distract from the rest of the content and do not put any barriers between the user and the information he is looking for.

Avoid call-to-action pop-up dialogs, especially if they appear as soon as the user opens the page. They annoy, increase the frequency of failures and prevent users from doing what they came to the site for.

Use Landings

Landing - the end point of the funnel, in which a well-optimized website sends its visitors. Calls to action in other parts of the site - whether it be a blog, home page or product information page - should lead to landing. Landing is simple enough, user activity on such a page is easily measurable, it usually contains a form to collect customer information or provide an opportunity to make a purchase. The most widely used CRO is when developing a landing page, and here you need to use all the tips mentioned above.


Example KISSmetrics .


Basecamp example.

You can easily create your own landing page on WordPress, given that there are a large number of services that simplify this task and are well integrated with each other.

The Unbounce site allows you to create landing pages and perform split testing. It offers a range of templates that are easy to set up, and a large set of metrics for measuring conversion rates.

Although Unbounce has a wide range of capabilities, Premise can be better integrated with WordPress and managed through the WordPress admin panel. It is not as simple as Unbounce, and some of its functions are superfluous when developing landing pages and are more suitable for creating a site with mandatory registration. It is worth trying both to understand which of them meets your requirements.

Increase the performance of your site

Site performance has a significant impact on your conversion rate. People do not want to wait for information. If the site is “loaded” for too long, it is highly likely that visitors will immediately leave, and this will lead to a loss of conversion and give an alarm to search engines.

Finding out exactly which part of the site impairs its performance is not so easy, because each element from the server to the browser can add additional time to the load, and incorrect configuration of the site often slows down the WordPress platform itself.

Before you try to increase productivity, find out how long it takes to load your site and what exactly this time is spent on.

Pingdom offers a site speed testing service. Thanks to it, you can get useful information about how much time is spent on loading each page element.

The first thing a developer must do is get rid of unnecessary plugins. Many WordPress plugins reduce performance or add time to recover data when a page loads. Plugins that add unnecessary scripts to the page or request data from external servers can also slow down the page load. Social network widgets, counters and web analytics systems, as well as advertising plugins are not the best choice in this regard, keep them to a minimum.

The two easiest ways to reduce the load time for a WordPress site are to cache and use a content distribution network (CDN, Content Delivery Network).

Data caching

WordPress is a dynamic content management system. When she receives a request for a page, she accesses the databases and forms the page based on the information received and various PHP scripts. Next, it displays the page, including elements created from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The implementation of each of these stages requires a certain time.

Using data caching, you can save the results of this process in memory or on your hard disk. Therefore, instead of going through the whole procedure again, most visitors get a ready-made version of the page, which loads much faster.

The most popular WordPress cache plugin is W3 Total Cache . It is multifunctional and caches pages, database objects, and reduced versions of scripts, which can reduce network bandwidth usage by 80%.

Content Distribution Networks

Content distribution networks are a kind of caching, but instead of storing pages on a separate server, it distributes page elements across the network of Edge servers. For example, when a visitor requests a picture or a JavaScript file, they are sent from the nearest Edge server, and not from the one hosting the site, which reduces the time it takes to load.

W3 Total Cache can connect WordPress to various CDNs, including Amazon CloudFront and Akamai.

Optimize to get the “right” traffic

Although SEO optimization is beyond the scope of this article, it can affect conversion rates. As we noted at the beginning, one of the ways to increase conversion is to increase traffic. However, not all traffic is equally valuable. Increasing traffic through the use of the widest possible range of keywords is a tempting idea, regardless of how well these keywords match the goals of the site.

SEO optimization, which leads to the site of the "right" people (that is, potential customers), can reduce traffic compared to what it would be if you brought everyone to the site. Because of this, conversion can increase - both in absolute and relative terms. “False” optimization attracts visitors who are unlikely to find on the site what they are looking for, and this increases the failure rate and lowers the conversion rate.

Do not hide important information.

Most WordPress themes contain built-in sliders. They look good, but are not the best solution for optimizing your conversion rate. Part of the information when using such elements will be constantly hidden, and only a few users will wait for its next appearance. Visitors rarely view all the blocks in a row or use sliders, because they often associate sliders with banner advertising templates.

Placing a call to action on one of the successive elements is not a good idea . If the slider consists of three blocks, the call to action will be hidden two thirds of the time. It would be much better to use a static page, the information on which is always clearly visible.

The same goes for Flash and HTML5 Splash pages. They are outdated, out of fashion and terrible in terms of SEO and CRO, no matter how cute they look.

Conclusion

As a rule, CRO is a fairly simple process based on the principles of common sense. The most important thing when planning a conversion rate optimization strategy is setting clear goals and having a clear idea of ​​what you are trying to achieve, as well as how these goals relate to the needs of the business as a whole.

Evaluation of metrics and metrics to optimize conversion is equally important. Setting goals is meaningless if you do not use analytics and split testing to determine if your goals are correct and your chosen strategies lead to them. A CRO is an iterative process for making changes and evaluating them.

The main components of any strategy to optimize the conversion rate should be:

• A clear and consistent formation of the user journey - from getting to the site to performing the target action.
• Using SEO to get the “right” traffic, and not to attract everyone to the site.
• Understanding the purpose of each element that appears on the page, and how this element contributes to the achievement of the main goal of the site.
• Use simple landing pages with high-quality text content, attractive images and videos, and prominent CTA buttons.
• Extreme attention to the technical aspects that affect the user experience, and especially the load time of the site.

You can easily get lost in the details and start customizing every, even the most insignificant element of the site (from the exact shade of red in the call to action to perfectly adjusted placement of text on the page). But overall, the tips described here are a great starting point for an increase in conversion rate for any WordPress site.