With WordPress, you have the ideal CMS in your hands to be well found in search engines. But how do you ensure that that actually happens? And if you are found well, how do you convert new visitors to more conversion on your WordPress website?
In this article, we discuss 7 WordPress tips with which you can increase the conversion on your WordPress website.
Tip 1. Strategy and objective
Before you randomly install all kinds of conversion plugins : first take a step back. Ask yourself what purpose these plugins should serve exactly. Your WordPress website is part of a larger set of online marketing activities. Besides your website you are probably also active online with e-mail, social media, newsletters and perhaps also with advertisements, forums, etc. All these separate activities (or ‘marketing channels’) can soon lead a life of their own, but if you use them strategically with one clear goal in mind, then it strengthens each other enormously.
Often it helps to describe in one sentence which goal all these online activities serve. That goal must also fit within the (larger) objective of the organization. And an objective must, of course, be SMART; specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic and time-bound.
For example A shoe store has the business objective of becoming the best selling shoe store in Rotterdam in the next three years. The online objective can then be to regularly make personalized offers to 10% of the residents of Rotterdam within a year.
Achieving an objective can be achieved in different ways, but in all the activities you do you can ask yourself: ‘Does this serve the purpose?’. Placing a news item with photos of the director’s granddaughter does not serve the purpose. However, posting content news about the latest shoe trends serves this purpose, especially if you also offer exclusive news when you subscribe to the newsletter.
Tip 2. Define a good call to action
Now that you have the objective of your organization, you can think about how your website can serve this purpose. For example, you want to convince the visitors of your WordPress website to purchase, persuade you to submit a quotation request, or convince you to change your mind. But how do you achieve that goal?
A useful hobbyhorse is to be the first to think about the call to action. That is a visual element on your website that you should trigger visitors to take action. What that element depends on your objective. For example, it can be a large button (‘Order directly’), a short form (‘Register’) or a telephone number (‘Contact’). These are, of course, only a few examples. It is important to choose one call to action; do not give your visitor any choice stress by showing three large buttons, a contact form and newsletter announcer; that is counter-productive.
In order to properly implement the call to action you have chosen on your WordPress website, thousands of WordPress plugins are available. Which should you choose now? We have listed the ten best plugins for WordPress conversion.
Tip 3: Make your website responsive
As nowadays almost half of the website traffic worldwide is generated through mobile phones, you want your visitors to be able to easily navigate your site no matter the device or browser they are using. So ensure that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly!
You can use Visitor Analytics to see from what device visitors are navigating your website.
And also to check out the operating systems (Windows, iOS, Android, etc.), browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.) and screen resolutions your visitors are using. It is important for your website to adapt to each type of screen with no elements overlay of distorted designs. So verify your visitors’ most common screen resolutions and use this information to your advantage!
Tip 4: Make sure your site has a good flow
Here is an exercise for your imagination: Website visitors slide through your marketing funnel: they start by discovering your product, then manifest interest and desire and finally end up buying! Now think about it! Is it easy for them to slide through your website as described above?
You must keep their journey on your website simple by removing any obstacle that stands in their way. For example, if they encounter bugs in the way they will probably bounce right off your website. For more details go to our bounce rate blog post.
Another bad scenario for them would be to start gliding through only to realize they ended up in a different part of the website than to one they intended. So make sure nothing stands in their way from one point to another!
Tip 5. Search engine optimization (SEO)
What good do you have to have a good call to action on your website if you do not have visitors? In short, there are two ways to attract more visitors; through advertisements or through organic traffic. More traffic through advertisements is fairly simple; with the right budgets and a well-equipped advertising campaign, you will soon see results. The disadvantage of this is that your number of visitors collapses when you lower or stop the advertising budget.
Attracting organic traffic is more complicated, but more interesting in the long term. Visitors end up on your WordPress website because they are looking for information related to your online activities. You must, of course, be well found in the search engines. Your WordPress website helps enormously, especially in combination with the plugins for search engine optimization (SEO).
Tip 6. Content, content, content
Finally, a well thought-out content strategy is of great importance; for search engines, it is very attractive if you continuously provide your website with new pages and/or messages. This content must be relevant and unique. For example, it helps enormously to regularly blog about relevant topics, but also to build a knowledge base, design landing pages and expressing your services clearly are ways to make attractive and relevant pages for Google. Do not be afraid to ‘give away’ your knowledge of that content strategy; your added value for customers is more than just knowledge.
A content strategy is a question of discipline and long-term breath; Ad campaigns give the same result, but for an effective content strategy you have to invest 1 to 2 years – depending on your industry – before you really start to notice anything. And after that you must, of course, keep going. But it pays! At Sowmedia, we have grown from a two-person company to a full-service agency with around ten employees/freelancers in just a few years through an effective content strategy.
A content strategy can, for example, be an annual agenda in which you plan to post something on social media every two weeks, write a blog every month and send a newsletter every quarter. Of course, the content of this content should serve the objective you defined in step 1.
Tip 7. Choose the right WordPress plugins
Depending on the above tips there are several plugins that we can recommend you to use on your WordPress website. We have written a separate article in which we deal with this.
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