We use WordPress, because it works.

If your search engine optimized website is built using WordPress, chances are you are using this as either your primary content management software or your blogging platform. Either way, your number one concern is engaging users and converting them into loyal clients and advocates of your brand or business. How can you increase conversions using WordPress? Below are 5 strong conversion improvement methods using WordPress.

1) A/B Test Your Landing Pages

Lift your conversation rates with split testing.
One of our favorite tools for split testing is Content Experiments, formerly Google Website Optimizer. It lets us split test a landing page for a relevant amount of time and provides accurate reporting to help us make decisions on what is best for the user. WordPress also gives us more options available to help shed light on usability and what helps your users to find what they need. With WordPress, you can A/B test an entire theme with SES Theme Split Test. For more advanced A/B testing with individual pages, Premise has a great set of tools and features. No matter the tool you decide to use, make sure you run the test long enough to come to a clear conclusion. Keep records of your baseline, measure your results, then let the winner go live!

2) Call To Action on Every Page & Post

Each page has a Goal
Both simple and complex websites have goals on every page. The homepage directs you to what you’re looking for, information pages help educate you, and action pages like contact and shopping pages completes your objective. Consider each section and category of your website as serving a specific purpose for your users. With WordPress, it is very beneficial to add a category-wide call to action in the sidebar and at the bottom of a page or post. The custom sidebar plugin is a great place to start for adding customized sidebars to any page on your WordPress site.

3) Clean up the Clutter!

Too many distracting elements will hurt your conversion rate.
WordPress gives us so many plugin and sidebar options that make it easy to go overboard on features. Keep it simple! Think of every page as having one specific goal. If an element on your page does not contribute or support that goal, get rid of it. The conversion optimization team at WTM Digital wants your site to be efficient for your users. Clearing a few unnecessary elements from any given page will give your users a more enjoyable experience.

4) Monitor and Improve Page Load Time

Extensive load times can cause high bounce rates.
Have you checked your website’s load time lately? There are many tools available that help you check this. Just search for “website speed test” in Google and give it a try. If your site takes more than 3-4 seconds to load you may need to have your site reviewed by WTM Digital’s optimization team. A plugin that could offer a huge boost in page load time is WP Super Cache. This decreases page load time by creating cached pages of your site. It takes much less time for a static cached page to load than it does for the extensive WordPress scripts to load.

5) Test with Your Users

Analytics will give you numbers; people will tell you why.
In order to truly create an exceptional user experience, test with your target market. Testing can be fairly inexpensive and the information you gather is priceless. It is very easy to be satisfied with a landing page to the point where you forget to receive your market’s input. Chances are, there is at least one element on your landing page that can be improved that you didn’t think of before. So how do you get this priceless information?

  • Have a colleague or friend test your website. This is most inexpensive form of testing and will give you trustworthy insight into the usability of your site.
  • Have you tried usertesting.com? This is a great resource for finding people within your target market who will follow a list of your pre-determined questions.
  • Set up an live focus group. This option is the most expensive and usually more time-consuming. However, this gives you the ability to personally monitor a user’s experience, interact with them, and ask them unique questions on the fly.

If you have any questions or comments about conversion rate optimization and how we use WordPress for many of our clients, send us a message or call us at 800-405-2947.