When it comes to conversion marketing, things are never easy.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been working on improving the conversion rates of your website; there’s always something new you need to learn.

That is where ConversionXL Blog enters the stage and comes in as your handy, trusted sidekick.

ConversionXL is a website with incredibly well-researched and quality content.

Every time you read one of their quality articles, case studies, or insightful research, you can rest assured that you are getting not only the basics of a particular topic but also a clear idea of the steps you need to take, to implement every tip.

It’s super-actionable content rather than just talk of different broad concepts.

If you haven’t read their blog regularly, I’ve taken the time to highlight some of their best advice regarding website optimization, split testing, and pricing page optimization.

Enjoy!

A/B Testing

• Emphasize Your Sales and Special Deals Section. Dedicate a special section on your website for deals or discounts, since it’s one of the first things people tend to look for when browsing around web pages. Experiment with different placements and designs until you find what’s best for you.
• Bring Your Best-Selling Products to Front. Emphasize your best-selling products and capture your customer’s interests by showing them your most wanted deals.
• Make it Easier for Customers to Search. Accentuate your search bar – it’s one of the most utilized elements on a web page but often, the least visible. Don’t make the same mistake!
• Highlight What Differentiates You from the Crowd. Always make sure to display the benefits of buying from you rather than any other business. It’s crucial for your customers to know, what makes you special! What separates you from everyone else? Why should people buy your product? You may have a great product or great copy, but people need to understand why.
• Pay Attention to Product Descriptions. Give enough information to customers and address every question they may have about your products, to make sure they’re convinced that it’s the right choice for them! If they do not have enough information to make an informed decision as to why they should purchase your product, you should work on your copy. If you get any questions from potential customers via phone or email, at the very least add that information to FAQs your product pages.
• Make Sure the Shopping Cart Is Visible. Use persistent shopping carts on your website – they’re easy to implement, and they’re of great use to customers that are indecisive or constantly compare products from different websites.
• Make Customers Feel like They’re in Control. Clearly indicate the progress that your customers are making when they’re at checkout, trying to get their product. Why? Because if they decided on it, they’re interested in it and if they’re interested, they want to know they have at least some degree of control over it.
• Address FUDs (Fears, Doubts, Uncertainties). Answer any questions your customers may have in a Frequently Asked Questions section. Think of what you usually ask yourself before spending money on a product or service. It’s normal to have doubts so take this into account and reassure your customers of the value of what you offer by addressing every issue that may concern them.
• Always Feature Product Reviews. You’re more likely to buy something if a friend or a family member tells you about it. Apply the same idea to your business and include product reviews to give a sense of security and to reinforce the value of your products. Make sure these reviews are easy to access and visible to your customers. Remember, make it easy for your clients!
• Don’t Forget about the Call to Action. Make sure the purchasing process is as easy as possible for your clients. That means they shouldn’t be put in the position of looking too hard for ways of adding the product to their cart or checking out. Make the important call to action buttons obvious and easy to spot, place them conveniently enough for the customer, and take care of any other design issues they may have. Colors, design, size, placement and even choice of wording are important so never stop testing them to see what works best with your customer base.

For more research-backed tips on A/B testing, please read this full article here.

Pricing Page Optimization

• Keep it Simple. We can all agree that nobody has time for anything anymore. And certainly, not enough time to fully read something until the end or spend it trying to figure out by themselves what the other party is trying to say. With that in mind, try to make everything as easy as possible for your customer. Keep your pricing page simple, clean and easy to understand and remember. Set a price, stick to it, and you’ll notice that customers will start flooding your website in no time.
• Facilitate Comparisons. When deciding to buy something, most users just compare the price points of different providers to facilitate their decision. The best thing you can do for your own business is to capture your customer’s interest by explaining why your services are better compared to the competition. Do this in a clear and simple way and focus on your strengths and you’ll definitely gain an advantage!
• Include Currency Conversions. Make sure you address the various needs of all of your customers. That means you need to take into account the fact that your customers could be from all over the world. Therefore, you may need to start using a variety of currencies. The best way to handle this would be to offer them the possibility of at least seeing the prices in different currencies, if not purchasing your services or products in different currencies. You don’t have to include a wide variety of currencies, but at least show the prices in the major ones, such as euros and dollars. You need to be as transparent as possible, so include every payment-related detail your customer would like to know, such as exchange rate, conversions and additional commissions that might apply in the case of these conversions.
• Provide a Limited Number of Choices. If you are a business that is working with price plans, make sure you do not go overboard with the options you give to your customers. Too many options can confuse them, and the second they start to feel frustrated or lose interest, you know you are slowly losing them along the way. Of course, you can test various scenarios with various numbers of options if you want to make sure that you are properly linking these decisions to your own customers’ behavior. But if you want to stay on the safe side, generally a pricing page with three or four options is more than enough for your customers to feel in control and handle making a decision for themselves without getting frustrated by the huge quantity of information that is offered.
• Implement Up-Front Payment. This tip is something you should keep in mind because it is tied to your own business’ finances. It is important to you, as a business owner, to maximize cash flow in any way possible. If for example, the services you are offering are memberships of any sort, it is somewhat vital that you get at least a small percentage of the income up-front, because you cannot solely rely on payments over time for your business to succeed. However, you don’t want to be aggressive when requesting this of your customers, so make sure you are inserting this key condition in a very subtle way when explaining price plans.
• Use Clear Call to Action Buttons. Call to action buttons are an integral part of the purchasing process a customer goes through. It is for this reason that everything that is related to these calls to action buttons matters from the design, size, and placement to the choice of words. In this case, every little detail counts and further testing sessions can also go a long way as far as future improvements are concerned.

For study-based tips on optimizing your pricing page, please read this full article here.

Social Proof

• How Different Forms of Social Proof Are Perceived. ConversionXL has used eye-tracking to determine which type of social proof attracts users attention best. According to their research, there were significant differences in how long people pay attention to various types of social proof, which are driven by the fact that some of them contained large blocks of text. As a result, people had to invest more brainpower to understand them.
• How Different Forms of Social Proof Are Recalled. The research also showed that, when it comes to social proof, people are more likely to remember high-profile logos, press mentions, and testimonials with photos.

For more insights regarding which type of social proof works best, read this research here.

Website Optimization

• There’s No Room for Spaghetti Testing. If you want to optimize your website properly, you can’t just throw in different tactics and see what sticks. You need a systematic process that you can constantly follow and use it to prioritize work and learn which tactics work and which you should ignore.
• Conversion Rate Optimization Is Not Equal to A/B Testing. A lot of people mistakenly believe that A/B testing and conversion rate optimization are the same things. In reality, A/B testing is just a small part of the optimization process.
• Focus on Maximizing Returns and Increasing Efficiency. The point of optimization isn’t to validate your opinions and hypotheses but to maximize your returns. Accept the fact that, most the times, you will be wrong and adjust your strategy accordingly. Being wrong is where the money is.
• Make Sure You Understand Your Data. You can have the most robust testing and analytics tools, but if you can’t interpret the data accurately, see patterns, and distinguish false positives and false negatives, it’s all for nothing. You don’t have to become an analytics expert to make the most of your data; you just need to have a basic understanding of statistics.
• Be Skeptical of Case Studies. There’s a wealth of information regarding website conversion optimization on the internet. Although some of them are useful and insightful, most case studies are filled with low sample sized and false positives. Instead of mimicking what others have done, focus on learning what works for your audience. Or, what might be right for one company in one market may be wrong for you. Do not assume that one person’s case studies are right for your business. Your market and customers may be different. Be sure to run your own studies when you can.

For more tips regarding website optimization, make sure to read this article.

Writing Your Value Proposition

• People Love Exclusivity. Scarcity is at the base of persuasion. Studies have shown that scarcity can enhance the perception of different products and increase their desirability. People want what they can’t have, so make sure to mention how your product/service is extremely valuable when writing your value proposition.
• Introduce an Element of Altruism. Studies have shown that consumers prefer buying from brands that are perceived as altruistic and they are ready to switch to a company that supports a cause. Increase the perceived value of your brand by introducing an element of altruism in your value proposition.
• Reduce the Perceived Risks. If prospects don’t trust your brand, they will try to reduce their fears by looking for social proof. On the other side, when the perceived fear is low, the perceived value of your products increases. Use social proof in your value proposition, for instance, to increase the credibility of your brand.
• If Possible, Add Proof. If you have proof that people love your product, mention it in your value proposition. Say how many people have enjoyed using your products or if your company was mentioned by a reputable source.

If you want to learn more about how to write a proposition that can help you increase the perceived value of your business, check this article here.

Conclusion

One of the things you will love most about ConversionXL blogs is that they won’t waste your time with useless and repetitive content.

They only post about truly relevant topics, so you can always rest assured that, by the end of reading one of their posts, you’ll acquire precious information that can help you increase your bottom line.

I’ve included the reference posts on the ConversionXL blog for every topic.

So, if you want to study the subject further, I recommend you reading them entirely.

You should also subscribe to their newsletter since they publish interesting case studies and research constantly.

Do you have other trusted resources when it comes to conversion marketing? Share them in a comment below.