Do you wish you were getting more conversions from your landing page?
A landing page is a standalone web page created with one focused objective. It leads visitors towards a single action, such as making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter. This is the page’s CTA or call to action.
According to a study, the average landing page conversion rate is 26% and only less than 10% accomplish conversion levels of over 70%.
So, what makes less than 10% of high-converting landing pages different, which lead them to over 70% conversions?
In this article, I am going to reveal the anatomy of a high converting landing page, so you can skyrocket your conversion rate.
I’ve spent years analyzing and designing the most successful landing pages. So, let’s get started.
Note: This is a guest post by John Turner, the co-founder of SeedProd, the best landing page builder plugin. We publish an expert column on WPBeginner every other Thursday. This is an invite-only column, meaning we don’t accept unsolicited guest post offers.
I will cover quite a few topics in this post. Here’s a handy list so you can jump to the section you are most interested in:
A landing page should have a single purpose: conversion. So when designing your page, you should only include elements that will entice users to convert. Eliminate the rest.
That’s why the highest-converting landing pages get rid of distractions like the navigation bar, header, and footer that you see on general-purpose websites.
These elements distract users from your call to action by inviting them to go elsewhere.
Currently, only 16% of landing pages don’t have a navigation bar. This is one reason why so many landing pages have poor conversion rates.
For similar reasons, you should also include only the most essential links on your landing page. Reducing distractions like this can increase conversions by at least 10%.
It’s easy to reduce distractions using a landing page plugin like SeedProd. It lets you quickly build a distraction-free landing page without the extra elements that are included in your WordPress website’s theme and built-in layouts.
One of our customers, OptinMonster, quickly built a distraction-free landing page for an ad campaign they run, which helped them increase conversions by 340%.
On some landing pages, users give up because it’s unclear what they actually need to do, or it takes too much work. High-converting landing pages make conversion easy.
Aim to offer a frictionless and efficient user journey by focusing on a clear message and ease of conversion. Here are a few things you can do to optimize your landing page for usability.
Minimize the Number of Clicks Required
Make your landing page easier for users by minimizing the number of clicks required to convert. Every extra click can reduce your conversion rate by 10%.
I tell my customers to track how many clicks it takes for users to sign up or make a purchase and then work out ways to reduce that number.
Next, I recommend thinking about the lead capture form on your landing page. The harder it is to complete, the less conversions you will ultimately have.
Now, the average number of form fields on a landing page is 5, and many experts recommend using just 3 or 4. But in my experience, reducing the number of fields is not always the best approach.
For example, even less motivated visitors who are not very interested in your product might be willing to fill out a very short form. This will result in more conversions, but you may get better quality leads by using a longer and more detailed form.
Also, fewer form fields will provide you with less information, robbing you of valuable insights about your users.
So aim to design a form that balances ease of conversion with the quality of information.
Capture Partial Entries
No matter how straightforward your landing page is, you will always have users who start to fill in a form and then give up. Normally you’d simply lose the information they entered.
The average form abandonment rate is 68%, so you are missing out on a lot of information.
The best WordPress form plugins offer smart tools to combat form abandonment, such as WPForms’ Form Abandonment addon, which lets you capture partial entries.
This means that the plugin will collect all of the information entered into a form as a user types, even if they don’t end up submitting the form.
You can use the partial information you captured to follow up on these potential customers, such as by setting up automated emails to recapture their attention.
3. High Converting Landing Pages Use Compelling Copy
A landing page needs to grab your visitors’ attention, tell a story that compels them to keep reading, and ultimately drive them to take the desired action (convert).
Here are a few things you can do to make your landing page copy more compelling.
Understand Your Audience
To write compelling copy, you will first need to understand your target audience. This is the group of people who are interested in your products, services, or content.
They are likely to have similar interests, needs, demographics, or other characteristics that draw them to your products and services.
Discovering these factors using tools like Google Analytics will let you create better content that resonates with your users, leading to more conversions and sales.
Start With an Attention-Grabbing Headline
Only 20% of visitors will read the full text of your landing page, but 80% will read the full title. Make sure it grabs their attention.
You can optimize your headline using online tools like WPBeginner’s free headline analyzer.
This tool will give your headline a score, and suggest ways you can improve it to get a higher score. Just repeat this a few times to create the perfect headline for your landing page.
Include the Right Keywords
Chances are that most of your landing page visitors will come from Google, whether from organic search or your pay-per-click ads.
To maximize your traffic, you need to discover the keywords that will bring customers to your landing page and write great copy based on those keywords.
Include Your Unique Selling Proposition
Some beginners make the mistake of just listing the features and benefits of their products and services on their landing pages. In my experience, this isn’t very convincing when you want someone to convert into a subscriber or customer.
If you want to get more conversions on your landing page, then you will need to focus on your unique selling proposition (USP). Essentially, this is the thing that makes your product/service different and better than anything that’s already available.
For example, here’s a small coffee business with a USP focused on the strength of their coffee and innovation.
Make sure that your unique selling proposition is clear and reflected throughout your copy. This is the best way to convince someone to pick your product over the competition.
Add Images and Video
Use eye-catching images to grab attention, break up your text, and illustrate your offering. Content combined with pictures has an 80% greater chance of being read.
Videos also improve conversions. 96% of people report that they watch explainer videos, and studies show that adding a video to a landing page increases conversions by 86% on average.
Increase the Perceived Value
Increasing the perceived value on a landing page is very important for convincing visitors to convert, whether it’s subscribing, buying a product, or taking another desired action.
It’s best to quantify the benefits with a number, such as the percentage saved. The WPBeginner team did this by showing a dollar value for a video course they offer for free.
Offering lead magnets such as eBooks is another way to incentivize users and increase perceived value. Studies show that 55% of landing page submissions come from lead magnets.
4. Foster Trust Among Your Audience
Building trust on your landing page is very important because it reduces perceived risk. Visitors who don’t trust you won’t risk spending their money or sharing their personal information.
Social proof builds trust with new users by demonstrating that your previous customers found your product or service valuable. 9 out of 10 customers trust reviews and testimonials, and social proof can increase landing page conversions by 5%.
Your users have probably already left genuine testimonials and reviews on Facebook, Yelp, Google, TrustPilot, and other platforms. Tracking these reviews down and including up-to-date testimonials on your landing page can be a lot of work.
That’s why I recommend using Smash Balloon Review Feeds Pro. It will automatically find testimonials and reviews from multiple platforms and showcase them on your page using stunning layouts.
This will save you time and keep your landing page looking fresh. Best of all, these genuine testimonials will build trust with your audience and improve your landing page conversions.
5. Have a Compelling & Prominent CTA
Now that your landing page has an attention-grabbing headline and compelling content, and you are building trust using social proof, you will want to make sure your users click your CTA button or fill in your lead capture form.
Don’t leave this to chance! You can use directional cues to guide your visitor’s attention and nudge them towards taking the desired action.
These cues can be quite obvious, such as an arrow pointing at your CTA button or using a contrasting background color that’s hard to miss.
They can also be quite subtle. For example, you might use an image with people who are looking in the direction of your call to action or a mouse hover effect to highlight your CTA button.
Notice the visual cues on the landing page below. It features a photo of a man looking toward the form that needs to be filled in, and that form is placed in a box. Also, the ‘Step 1’ and ‘Step 2’ labels guide the user to what needs to be done next.
6. Turn Abandoning Users Into Customers
Even the most effective landing page will have visitors who decide to leave without taking action. Research shows that as many as 9 out of 10 visitors abandon landing pages.
A super effective landing page will grab the user’s attention before they leave and redirect their attention back to your offer. This is where opt-ins can come in handy.
OptinMonster is the best conversion optimization toolkit for WordPress. It has Exit-Intent technology that lets you track when users are about to leave your landing page so you can pop up a tailored message just in time.
In my experience, you can expect to see a 2-4% increase in conversions simply by using Exit-Intent. In some cases, this can be significantly more.
For instance, the lead SEO consultant at Fastrack used an OptinMonster Exit-Intent popup to recover 53% of abandoning visitors.
You can use the popup to offer incentives such as custom coupons, time-limited offers, a BOGO (Buy One Get One) offer, and other promotional tools to convert those visitors into customers.
Do you want to convert visitors to your WooCommerce store into customers?
Bringing traffic to your WooCommerce store is only half the battle. The other half is to convert those visitors into paying customers. One of the ways you can optimize your online store is by using targeted messages and offering incentives to boost conversions.
In this article, we will show you how to easily convert WooCommerce visitors into customers.
Why Do You Need Conversion Optimization for Your WooCommerce Store?
Most eCommerce stores rely on search engines or paid advertising campaigns for traffic.
There are many other ways to get more traffic to your website. However, more than 75% of visitors who find your website through search engines will never find it again. Of the people who stick around, only a small percentage of them will add products to their carts.
In the end, more than 69% of shopping carts are abandoned without making a purchase. Shipping costs, a complicated checkout experience, and bad design are among the top reasons for abandoned carts.
Considering these statistics, your WooCommerce store will continue losing potential sales if you don’t work on converting those visitors into customers.
How Do You Convert Visitors Into Customers?
The process and technique that is used to convert visitors into customers is called conversion rate optimization (CRO). Marketers and usability experts use CRO to successfully drive visitors to become customers.
Basically, you remove obstacles that affect a user’s experience on your WordPress website. You also provide incentives that convince users to buy.
Lastly, if a user must leave without making a purchase, then your goal is to try and get their information through lead generation. This allows you to communicate with them via email and offer personalized messages, special discounts, or new product announcements.
In the early days of eCommerce, you needed programming skills to work on all these tasks, but not anymore. Now, you have tools that make it extremely easy to do all these things without writing code or acquiring any new technical skills.
That being said, let’s take a look at different ways you can convert WooCommerce visitors into customers.
1. Offer Discount Coupons and Free Shipping
One of the easiest ways of converting visitors into customers is by offering incentives like discounts and free shipping.
They also help convert abandoning visitors and reduce abandoned carts. For instance, if a visitor is about to exit your online store without checking out, then you can show a popup with a discount coupon.
The best way to show discounts, flash sales, free shipping, and other offers is by using OptinMonster. It is the best conversion optimization and lead generation software.
OptinMonster lets you create different campaigns for your WooCommerce store, including popups, slide-in scroll boxes, floating bars, countdown timers, sidebar forms, and in-line forms.
Besides that, it offers powerful display rules to show the campaign to the right person at the right time.
For instance, it allows eCommerce targeting, where you can show your campaigns based on cart total, specific product pages, how long a customer has spent in your online store, and more.
You can also create a spin-to-win campaign to offer discount coupons and free shipping to users. This helps create engagement and is a fun way to boost conversions.
2. Promote Products That Your Audience Prefers
Another way to get more conversions in your WooCommerce store is by figuring out which products your audience likes the most and then promoting them. This way, you can improve the visibility of top-selling products and boost conversions.
MonsterInsights lets you set up eCommerce tracking, which helps record conversions, revenue, and user behavior in your WooCommerce store. It also offers eCommerce reports, so you can easily view top products inside your WordPress dashboard.
Once you know which products your audience prefers, the next step is to promote them in your WooCommerce store.
A simple way to do that is by improving their visibility so users can easily find and purchase them. For example, you can show top-selling products under other items, in the sidebar, or within your content.
With MonsterInsights, you can easily show top products across your website. It offers a Popular Products feature that lets you add products at the end of a blog post to boost conversions.
You can also create high-converting sales pages to promote different products and boost conversions in your WooCommerce store.
A sales page has a single purpose, which is to get people to buy your products or services. A high-converting sales page will have clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons, engaging product images, and other details to help users buy the product.
You can easily create high-converting sales pages for WooCommerce using SeedProd. It is the best WordPress page builder that lets you create custom landing pages without editing code.
SeedProd offers 300+ prebuilt templates, multiple customization options, a drag-and-drop page builder, and more. It also integrates with email marketing tools and other third-party tools.
Did you know that email lists get 10 times higher conversions than social media campaigns?
Building an email list for your WooCommerce store can help improve your revenue. You can tell your subscribers about the latest products, promotional sales, upcoming campaigns, and more.
You can also send targeted emails to specific subscribers. For example, if you are launching a new product in a specific location, then you can send out an email campaign for subscribers from that particular country.
To get started, you will need an email marketing tool like Constant Contact. It is very easy to use, and you can easily collect email addresses, manage them, and segment them into different groups. Plus, it helps you set up automated drip notifications and other email campaigns.
Once you’ve started collecting emails, you can take things one step further and try different ways to grow your email list.
For example, you can offer discounts, giveaways, and other incentives to customers in exchange for their email. You can see our complete guide to uncover more ways to grow your email list.
5. Leverage Social Proof to Boost Conversions
Another simple hack for converting WooCommerce visitors into customers is by showing social proof.
People feel more comfortable with their buying decisions when they know others have also bought the same product and had a great experience.
There are different ways to show social proof on your WooCommerce store. For instance, you can use TrustPulse to display real-time user activity notifications, such as the latest product purchase.
Besides that, you can also show testimonials and customer reviews on the product page to boost social proof.
They can help you gain trust from your visitors and encourage them to purchase the product.
Another way to boost conversions in WooCommerce stores is by using FOMO or fear of missing out. You can add a countdown timer to a discount campaign and encourage users to make a purchase before time runs out.
6. Run a Giveaway Contest
If you are looking for a way to boost engagement on your website and increase eCommerce conversions, then running a viral giveaway contest is a great way of doing it.
A competition gives your WooCommerce visitors a fun reason to return to your store and stand a chance to win free products.
In return, you can ask users to participate in the competition by following your social media pages, signing up for an email newsletter, inviting a friend to participate, and more.
This way, you’ll also grow your social followers, increase your email list, promote your brand, and build a relationship with your audience.
The best way to run a giveaway contest is by using RafflePress. It is the best giveaway plugin for WordPress that’s easy to use. RafflePress offers a drag-and-drop contest builder with lots of customization options.
Upselling is a technique that encourages visitors to purchase a higher-priced product instead of the one they already have in their shopping cart.
These products might have a higher value, offer more features, or have better quality. As a result, they are also more expensive and more lucrative for your business.
For instance, let’s say you are selling plugins or software in your online store. You can offer users a higher pricing plan with more addons and upgrades than the base plan.
There are several ways you can upsell products in WooCommerce. First, you can show different products on a product page at the bottom and ask visitors to buy them instead. Or you can create a popup to upsell particular products.
Besides that, you can also showcase different products on the checkout page before a user makes a purchase. Or you might promote products on the thank you page, enticing a customer to buy more items.
Another simple method for boosting conversions in your WooCommerce store is offering express checkout buttons. This allows users to skip different steps in the checkout process and go directly to the payment page.
This provides a better shopping experience for customers and makes the buying process quicker. A user can simply click a button to make a purchase. As a result, you’ll see more conversions and less cart abandonment.
Personalization helps you improve the user experience by making your content more personal for each visitor. You can create product offerings for different users to boost WooCommerce conversions.
For example, you might greet logged-in customers with their names, show them products based on their browsing history, and offer them discounts or coupons.
Do you want to make a landing page for your Google Ads campaign in WordPress?
A Google Ads landing page is optimized to help you reach your campaign’s goals. Creating the right landing page is crucial for getting maximum sales and leads from your Google Ads.
In this article, we will show you how you can make a Google Ad landing page in WordPress including the ability to dynamically change content.
Why Make a Google Ad Landing Page in WordPress?
When someone clicks on your Google Ad, you can redirect them to any page on your WordPress website. This might be a page that already exists on your site, such as your request a quote page, product page, etc.
However, sending those visitors to a generic page could confuse them if it’s not closely related to the ad they clicked on. This can cause visitors to leave your site, and you’ll miss out on those sales.
That’s why many successful website owners create customized landing pages for their Google Ads.
This gives you the freedom to fine-tune the page to help you reach your Google Ad campaign goals. For example, if you want to get more sales then you might add a call to action (CTA) button, a form that accepts credit card payments, and powerful social proof such as customer reviews and testimonials.
No matter whether you want to get more sales, generate leads, or reach some other goal, an effective Google Ad landing page will give you a higher conversion rate.
With that in mind, let’s see how you can easily make a Google Ad landing page in WordPress.
How to Make a Google Ad Landing Page in WordPress
The easiest way to make a Google Ad landing page in WordPress is by using SeedProd. It is the best landing page builder for WordPress.
SeedProd allows you to easily create beautiful landing pages that you can show to anyone who clicks on your Google Ads.
The SeedProd plugin works with many popular third-party tools that you may already be using to get sales and capture leads. This includes top email marketing services, Google Analytics, and more.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Note: There is a free version of SeedProd plugin available on WordPress.org, but we will be using the Pro version since it has more powerful features. It also includes a selection of professionally-designed landing templates that you can use in your Google Ad campaigns.
After activating the plugin, SeedProd will ask for your license key.
You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website and in the purchase confirmation email you got when you bought SeedProd.
After entering your key, go to SeedProd » Landing Pages in your WordPress dashboard.
We want to design a Google Ad landing page, so go ahead and click on the ‘Add New Landing Page’ button.
All of SeedProd’s templates are easy to customize, so you can use any of the designs for your Google Ad landing page.
However, many WordPress blog and website owners use Google Ads to get sales, so you may want to click on the ‘Sales’ tab.
SeedProd will now show all the templates that are designed to help you sell more products and services.
To take a closer look at any design, simply hover your mouse over that template. Then, click on the magnifying glass icon.
This will open the template in a new tab.
When you find a design that you want to use for your Google Ad landing page, simply click on ‘Choose This Template.’
You can now type in a name for your landing page into the ‘Page Name’ feld.
SeedProd will automatically create a ‘Page URL’ using the page name. This is the web address where your Google Ad landing page will appear.
Even though we’re making a landing page for a Google Ad campaign, it’s still a good idea to fine-tune this page for the search engines.
By optimizing your landing page for SEO, you may get some extra visitors from relevant search engine result pages. To learn more, you can see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide.
With that said, it’s a good idea to include relevant keywords in your URL. You can change the page’s automatically-generated URL by typing into the ‘Page URL’ field.
When you’re happy with the information you’ve typed in, click on ‘Save and Start Editing the Page.’ This will load the SeedProd page builder interface.
This simple drag and drop builder shows a live preview of your landing page to the right. On the left is a menu that shows the different blocks and sections that you can add to your Google Ad landing page.
SeedProd comes with lots of ready-made blocks that can help you get more conversions, including pricing tables, countdowns, and customer testimonials. You can build an entire Google Ad landing page within minutes using these ready-made blocks.
You can also use SeedProd blocks like spacers, columns, and dividers to help organize and structure your Google Ad landing page. This can help visitors navigate your landing page and find the information they want.
When you find a block that you want to add to the Google Ad landing page, simply drag and drop it onto your template.
To customize a block, go ahead and click to select the block in the SeedProd editor. The left-hand menu will now update to show all the settings that you can use to customize the block.
For example, if you click on a Testimonials block you’ll be able to change the name of the person quoted and add some new testimonial text.
Images are a great way to catch the visitor’s attention and communicate more of information. For this reason, many of SeedProd’s landing page templates come with placeholder images.
To replace the placeholder content with your own image, simply click on the Image block.
Next, in the left-hand menu simply hover your mouse over the image and then click on the Trashcan icon to delete it.
Once you’ve done that, there are a few different ways to add a new image to your Google Ad landing page.
Once option is to click on ‘Use Your Own Image.’ You can then either choose an image from the WordPress media library, or upload a new file from your computer.
Don’t have an image that you want to use? SeedProd comes with a built-in library of thousands of royalty free stock images that you can add to your Google Ad landing pages.
To see SeedProd’s stock image library, simply click on ‘Use a Stock Image.’
Next, just type in a word or phrase that describes the image you’re looking for and then click on the ‘Search’ button.
SeedProd will now show all the stock images that match your search term.
When you find an image that you want to use, simply give it a click to add the image to your Google Ad landing page.
Many online store owners use Google Ad campaigns to advertise their products and services.
If you created an online store using WooCommerce, then SeedProd has a number of special WooCommerce blocks that you can add to your landing page, including Add To Cart and Checkout blocks.
These blocks make it easier for customers to make a purchase, which is great for your conversion rates. It also lets you design a Google Ad landing page without being restricted by your WooCommerce theme.
To take a look at these eCommerce blocks, scroll to the ‘WooCommerce’ section in SeedProd’s left-hand menu.
You can now add any of these blocks to your Google Ad landing page.
As you’re building your landing page, you can move blocks around your layout by dragging and dropping them. This makes it easy to create a Google Ad landing page with a totally custom layout.
SeedProd comes with ‘Sections’ too. These are rows and block templates that can help you quickly create a nicely organized Google Ad landing page.
You can see all of these sections by clicking on the ‘Sections’ tab.
From here, you can preview any section by hovering over it. When the magnifying glass icon appears, give it a click. To get more sales, you may want to take a look at sections such as Hero, Call To Action, Features, and Testimonial.
To add a section to your page, click on ‘Choose This Section.’ SeedProd will now add the section to the very end of your Google Ad landing page.
Color can be a great way to catch the visitor’s attention, and help reinforce your WordPress website’s branding.
To change the background color of any section, simply click to select that section. Then, click on the little cog icon that appears.
Once you’ve done that, click on the Background Color field and choose a new background color using the popup settings.
People typically pay more attention to personalized content. With that in mind, you may get more sales by showing personalized content on your Google Ad landing page.
SeedProd has full support for dynamic text replacement, so different visitors see a different message based on the search term they used to find your ad. For example, if you’re targeting the keywords ‘summer offers’ or ‘Black Friday’ with your ad campaign, then you might dynamically change your heading to include those terms.
To add dynamic text to your Google Ad landing page, simply click on any Heading or Text block. Then, go ahead and click on the Insert Dynamic Text button.
In the popup that appears, click on ‘Query Parameter.’
This lets you pass data via the query parameter on your page. For example, you might pass in the phrase ‘Black Friday’ and then show that text in your headline.
As you’re working on your Google Ad landing page, you can preview your design by clicking on the Preview button. This launches your landing page in a new tab.
When you’re happy with how your landing page looks, it’s a good idea to optimize the page’s settings, as this can get you more conversions.
Many landing pages use forms to capture leads and potential new customers.
To connect your landing page to your email marketing service, simply click on the ‘Connect’ tab. You can then hover your mouse over the email marketing service that you use on your website, and click on the ‘Connect’ button when it shows up.
SeedProd will now walk you through the process of connecting your Google Ad landing page to your email marketing service.
When you’re happy with how your Google ad landing page is set up, you can click on the ‘Save’ button and then choose ‘Publish.’
Now you simply need to open the ad campaign inside your Google Ads account, and add the URL for the landing page you just created. Once you’ve done that, anyone who clicks on your Google Ad will be redirected to your landing page.
A beautiful, professionally-designed Google Ad landing page can help you reach your campaign goals. However, there is always room to improve your conversion rates.
With that in mind, it’s a good idea to monitor your landing page’s stats to see what’s working and not working. You can then use SeedProd to tweak your landing page’s design, and fine-tune it to get even more conversions.
The easiest way to measure important metrics in WordPress is using MonsterInsights.
We hope this article helped you learn how to make a Google Ad landing page in WordPress. You can also go through our guide on how to add push notifications on your website, or our expert picks of the must have WordPress plugins for business websites.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you looking for the best WordPress banner plugins?
Banner plugins make it easy to add high-converting banners to your WordPress website. You can then use them to promote your products, highlight your services, sell advertising placements, and more.
In this article, we will compare the best WordPress banner plugins to help you boost your website revenue.
Why Use a WordPress Banner Plugin?
Many website owners use banners to encourage visitors to take some action on their website, like buying their products or services. For example, you might use a banner to promote your online courses.
Banners are also a great way to generate leads. You might create a banner that offers visitors a coupon code if they sign up to your email newsletter.
Whether you want to show a banner announcements on your eCommerce store, use a simple banner to generate leads, or sell banner ads in a slider, a WordPress banner plugin lets you do it without writing any code.
Some WordPress banner plugins also have advanced targeting features, so you can show personalized messages to the right people at the right time.
They may also come with professionally-designed templates for your banners, and offer other design tools to help you customize them.
That being said, let’s take a look at the best banner plugins for WordPress for various industry use-cases.
Pro Tip: There is a free version of OptinMonster that you can use to get started. They have a special free plan that can only be found from inside their WordPress plugin dashboard.
OptinMonster lets you add all kinds of banners to your website, including floating banner bars like in the image below.
This is a “sticky” floating bar that attaches to the top or bottom of the page and follows visitors as they scroll. This allows you to show a banner without annoying the visitor or interrupting what they’re doing on your WordPress website.
OptinMonster also has full support for popup banners. You can even level-up these banners with OptinMonster’s powerful exit-intent technology. This allows you to show a popup just as the user is about to leave your website.
Many website owners use these extent-intent popups to convince visitors to stay on the website by offering them exclusive discounts.
Popups are a great way to get the visitor’s attention, but they can also become intrusive. With that in mind, OptinMonster gives you the option to show your banners as slide-ins.
These are small popups that OptinMonster shows in the bottom-right corner of the screen as the visitor scrolls down. As you can see in the following image, slide-ins are a way to show content without interrupting whatever the visitor is currently doing on the website.
Gamified popups are a fun alternative to the traditional banner.
Many website owners have increased their conversions and overall engagement by using OptinMonster to create ‘spin to win‘ banners.
Even better, you can create all of these different banners within minutes by using OptinMonsters huge library of templates.
All of these templates are fully mobile responsive. This means your banner is guaranteed to look good on mobile devices, tablets, and full-sized desktop computers.
Simply choose a template from the OptinMonster setup wizard, and you’re ready to start creating your banner.
All of OptinMonster’s banner templates are easy to customize. Just open the built-in OptinMonster editor and start making changes using simple drag and drop. You can also remove content from the template and add new content with just a few clicks.
Let’s look at an example.
Many of OptinMonster’s banner templates have optin fields, so you can collect names, email addresses, or phone numbers, plus a call to action (CTA) button. To customize this button, you just need to give it a click.
The OptinMonster editor will then update to show all the settings you can use to customize that field or button.
You can now go ahead and make your changes in the left-hand menu.
For example, you might type a new call to action into the ‘Button Text’ field.
Once you’re happy with your banner, you’ll want to show it in the right places, to the right people, and at the right time.
OptinMonster makes it easy to create advanced targeting rules.
This allows you to show personalized banners based on things like the page the visitor is on, their location, and even the device they are using. You can even show different banners to first-time visitors and returning visitors.
OptinMonster comes with hundreds of powerful targeting rules to help you maximize your banner conversions.
Smart website owners often use OptinMonster banners to:
You can set up TrustPulse within a few minutes, and then create notification bubbles that show recent purchases, form submissions, sign ups for a free trial, and more.
TrustPulse’s notifications aren’t banners in the traditional sense. However, TrustPulse has an Action Message campaign that lets you show text in a notification bubble.
TrustPulse’s Action Messages are perfect for letting visitors know about sales, promotions, updates, and much more.
Plus, they use the power of social proof so you can get maximum conversions.
The TrustPulse editor makes it easy to create an Action Message that acts exactly the same as a banner would.
When the visitor clicks on your Action Message, you can redirect them to any WordPress page or post such as your landing pages or product pages. You can also send visitors to any third-party URL, which is perfect for promoting your affiliate links.
TrustPulse comes with built-in analytics so you can see which pages and Action Messages have the best conversion rates. You can then use this information to fine-tune your content and boost your conversions even further.
Advanced Ads is an ad management plugin that works with all the major ad types and networks. This includes Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, and Amazon Ads.
Using this plugin, you can create and show unlimited banner ads on your WordPress website.
Large banners can be intrusive on devices with smaller screens, especially mobile devices. The good news is that with Advanced Ads, you can choose to show or hide your banners based on whether the visitor is using a smartphone, tablet, or a desktop computer.
You can also show or hide your banners depending on the visitor’s user role, or whether they’re logged into your membership site. This is a simple but effective way to show personalized banners and boost your conversion rates.
Advanced Ads supports lots of different ad placements as well.
Price:Advanced Ads starts at €49 (about $52 USD) per year. There’s also a basic free version you can use to try it out.
Upon activation, WPFront Notification Bar adds a new area to your WordPress dashboard under Settings » Notification Bar.
Here, you can build your banner by working through the different menus and checkboxes. You can then simply type your banner text into the standard WordPress text editor.
You can also encourage visitors to click on your banners by adding a button.
This button can redirect the visitor to any page, post, or third-party URL. It can also run JavaScript code.
When it comes to customization, this free plugin is much more limited than premium plugins like OptinMonster.
For example, there are no professionally-designed templates and no drag-and-drop builder. However, you can change your banner’s color and height.
If you accept user registrations on your WordPress site, then you can show or hide the banner based on the visitor’s role. After creating your banner, you can choose where this banner will show up on your website.
WPFront Notification Bar can show your banner at the top or bottom of the page. It can also hide the banner until the visitor scrolls.
If you like to schedule your banner campaigns in advance, then WPFront Notification Bar gives you the option to set a start and end date.
AdSanity can show ads from external networks like Google AdSense. However, you can also create your own banner using web design software such as Canva and then upload it to WordPress.
Once you’ve done that, you can show your banner on any page or post using a shortcode that AdSanity creates automatically.
AdSanity also adds three new widgets to your WordPress dashboard: Ad Group, Random Ad, and Single Ad. You can use these widgets to add banners to any widget-ready area of your WordPress blog or website such as your sidebar.
Many WordPress website owners want to show several different ads in the same area, similar to a banner slider plugin.
With AdSanity, you can group ads together by creating ad groups. Once you’ve created some ads and assigned them to ad groups, you can place these groups on your site in exactly the same way you place single ads.
Once you’ve done that, your ad groups will rotate through their different ads on every page refresh. In this way, AdSanity can also work similar to a banner slider plugin.
This plugin has separate sections where you can create unique banners for the different areas of your WooCommerce store. This includes WooCommerce’s cart, checkout, thank you, and product pages.
This makes it easy to run lots of different campaigns at the same time. You can even show multiple banners on the same page.
Product images are a big part of running a successful WooCommerce store. With that in mind, you can use this plugin to create image carousels showing lots of different products.
You can also set a start and end date for your banners, which is perfect for scheduling all of your different campaigns ahead of time.
Since this banner plugin is designed to be used with WooCommerce, you’ll need to install and activate the WooCommerce plugin first. If you need help, then please see our complete guide on WooCommerce.
Price:WooCommerce Banner Management costs $99 per year for a single website. There is also a limited free version that you can download from the official WordPress repository.
Once you start adding banners to your website, you’ll want to track how many people are clicking on each banner and whether those banners are bringing you conversions.
After adding MonsterInsights to your website, you can see how many people are clicking on your banners, where they come from, and whether they convert. You can then make data-driven decisions to encourage more people to interact with your banners and boost your conversion rates.
Price: MonsterInsights starts at $99.50 per year. There is also a free version version that lets you track your banners, no matter what your budget.
Expert Pick: Which is the Best Banner Plugin for WordPress?
In our opinion, OptinMonster is the best banner plugin for WordPress because of all the different types of banners you can create, including popup banners, floating banners, and full-screen banners. It also comes with a huge selection of templates, so you can create high-converting WordPress banners within minutes.
Not to mention it also comes with powerful personalization and targeting features that are helpful for publishers, eCommerce site owners, and just about every small business website.
If you are a blogger or publisher looking to sell ads, then we believe that WP Advanced Ads is the best banner ad management plugin for WordPress.
If you are an eCommerce website owner, then we believe that TrustPulse is the best social proof banner plugin for WordPress.
Conversion tracking is the ability to track and measure the success of your various marketing efforts.
Depending on your business, the conversion is the desired action you want users to perform on your website.
For an online store or eCommerce website, a conversion could be a successful purchase.
For a news/blog site, the conversion could be a successful subscription to the email newsletter.
For a professional services website, a conversion could be a user filling up a contact form.
Simply put, conversion tracking shows you how many of your website visitors successfully perform the desired action.
Why is Conversion Tracking Important?
Conversion tracking is important because it helps you make data-driven decisions to grow your business.
For instance, it shows that users from a specific traffic source are more likely to convert. You can then focus your attention on getting more traffic from that particular source.
Conversion tracking also helps you uncover the users who are not converting so well.
For instance, you may learn that users open the contact page, but many abandon it before submitting the form. You can then make your form easier by removing unnecessary fields, making it conversational, changing colors, setting up partial form submission, etc.
Basically, you need conversion tracking to measure your success and failures and then improve upon them to grow your online business.
That being said, let’s take a look at what tools we’ll need to set up conversion tracking in WordPress.
Tools You Need to Setup Conversion Tracking in WordPress
Most conversion optimization experts rely heavily on Google Analytics. It is a free tool provided by Google that helps you track your website traffic.
It shows where your users are coming from, and what they do while on your website.
If you are running Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and Twitter Ads to promote your business, then you’ll need to set up those for conversion tracking.
This may sound complicated, but you’ll only have to set it up once, and we’ll walk you through every step of the way.
Ready? Let’s get started.
Setting Up Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics
First, you need to install Google Analytics on your website.
The easiest way to do this is by using MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin on the market that comes with enhanced eCommerce tracking, form tracking, and other conversion tracking tools built-in.
You’ll need the PRO version of the plugin to access eCommerce and other conversion tracking features. For basic tracking, the free version works as well.
Upon activation, you’ll see the setup wizard. Go ahead and click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button.
Next, you can follow the on-screen instructions to connect your WordPress site to Google Analytics using MonsterInsights. For more details, see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.
With MonsterInsights, you can also easily create a Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property. GA4 is the latest version of the famous analytics platform, and it will replace the old version on July 1, 2023.
Now that you have installed Google Analytics, let’s set up conversion tracking on your website.
Turning on Enhanced Ecommerce Conversion Tracking
Ecommerce tracking helps you see which products are doing well on your site, which products are being looked at but not purchased, and what’s bringing you the most revenue.
Google Analytics comes with enhanced eCommerce tracking, which works for most eCommerce websites, including WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, and more. However, you’ll need to enable it for your website manually.
Step 1. Turn on eCommerce Tracking in MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights comes with an eCommerce addon that lets you properly set up eCommerce conversion tracking in Google Analytics.
It works with all top eCommerce platforms for WordPress, including WooCommerce, MemberPress, LifterLMS, Easy Digital Downloads, and more.
First, you need to visit the Insights » Addons page to install and activate the eCommerce addon.
Step 2. Turn on Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Analytics
Next, you need to enable enhanced eCommerce tracking in your Google Analytics account. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard and select your website.
From here, you need to click on the Admin button located at the bottom left corner of the screen.
On the next screen, you’ll see different Google Analytics settings.
Under the ‘View’ column, click the ‘Ecommerce Settings’ link.
After that, you need to turn on the ‘Enable Ecommerce’ and ‘Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting’ options.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button when you’re done.
Google Analytics will now turn on the eCommerce reporting feature for your account.
Afterward, you can return to your WordPress dashboard and visit the Insights » Settings page. From here, switch to the eCommerce tab.
MonsterInsights will automatically detect your eCommerce software and enable advanced eCommerce tracking for your store.
Note: the manual process for adding eCommerce conversion tracking has a lot of room for errors, so we strongly recommend using a plugin like MonsterInsights.
Viewing eCommerce Conversion Tracking Reports
Now that you have enabled eCommerce conversion tracking on your website. Let’s see how to view these reports and use them to make informed decisions about your business.
Ecommerce Conversion Reports in MonsterInsights
Simply go to the Insights » Reports page inside the WordPress admin area and then switch to the eCommerce tab.
At the top, you’ll see your most important metrics, like the conversion rate, transactions, revenue, and average order value.
Below that, you will see a list of your top products with quantity, sale percentage, and total revenue. This shows you which products are doing well in your store.
Next, you’ll see your top conversion sources with the number of visits, conversion share, and revenue. You can see which sources are bringing you more revenue and which traffic sources are not very effective.
MonsterInsights will also show you shopper behavior reports with the number of times products were added to and removed from the cart.
That’s not all the data. You can drill down these reports even further inside Google Analytics.
Ecommerce Conversion Reports in Google Analytics
In Google Analytics 4, you can head to Reports » Monetization » Overview to view the report.
Here, you can see the total revenue your online store is making. Besides that, there are more metrics you can track, like items purchased, first-time purchasers, and total purchases.
On the other hand, you can visit your Universal Analytics dashboard and click on the Conversions » Ecommerce from the left column.
The overview section offers the most important stats, such as revenue, conversion rate, transactions, and average order value.
You can further drill down to view different reports. For example, you can switch to shopping and checkout behavior reports to see how users reach the conversion page. You can also figure out what stopped them at the last minute from completing the transaction.
Turning on Form Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics
Not all websites use an eCommerce platform to conduct business. For instance, a restaurant website may use an order delivery form, or a salon may use a booking form.
Many businesses use contact forms to capture leads from their website. A lot of news and blogs use an email newsletter to convert website visitors into subscribers.
To track them, you need to enable form conversion tracking in Google Analytics.
MonsterInsights comes with a Forms addon that lets you easily track form conversions on your WordPress site. It works with all popular WordPress form plugins, including WPForms, Formidable Forms, Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7, and more.
Simply go to the Insights » Addons page. Scroll down to the ‘Forms’ addon, and then click on the Install button.
Upon activation, you need to visit the Insights » Settings page and switch to the ‘Conversions’ tab.
MonsterInsights will automatically detect your WordPress form plugin and will also start tracking miscellaneous WordPress forms on your site.
Viewing Your Form Conversion Reports
You can now view your form conversion reports inside your WordPress admin area.
Head over to the Insights » Reports page and switch to the ‘Forms’ tab.
You’ll see a list of forms on your website with their impressions, conversion, and conversion rates.
This helps in tracking how each WordPress form is performing. You can optimize low-converting forms while increasing the visibility of high-converting forms.
Setting Up Goals for Conversion Tracking in Universal Analytics
So far, we have covered how to track eCommerce and form conversions.
What if you wanted to manually set up conversion goals and track them in Google Analytics?
For instance, you may want to consider users visiting a specific page as a conversion. Since it is not a form submission or an eCommerce transaction, it will not appear as a conversion in your reports.
Universal Analytics allows you to create your own goals and track their conversion.
However, an important thing to note is that Google Analytics 4 doesn’t have goals anymore. It is one of the major differences you’ll see between the new and old versions.
That said, let’s see how to set them up in Universal Analytics and track them on your website.
Go to the Google Analytics dashboard and click the ‘Admin’ tab on the bottom left. Then, in the View column, click on Goals.
Now, you will need to create a new goal.
Simply click the ‘+ New Goal’ button to set up a new goal.
Next, you will need to select the goal type. Universal Analytics offers 4 types:
Destination: This tracks whether a visitor went to a specific page. This could be a thank you page or any conversion page on your site.
Duration: This tracks how long a visitor spends on your website. More time spent on a website means more engagement.
Pages/Screens per session: This tracks how many pages an average visitor looks at on your site.
Event: This can track all sorts of things, like button clicks, video plays, and downloads. It requires a bit more setup than the other options.
Destination and Event types are the most commonly used goal types for most businesses.
For this tutorial, we will create a ‘Destination’ goal to track visitors who view our thank you page after completing a form.
First, provide a name for your Goal. It needs to be something meaningful so that you can easily identify it in your Google Analytics reports.
After that, choose ‘Destination’ as your goal type and click the Continue button.
Now you can simply provide the last part of the URL you want to track as the destination.
For instance, if your page is: https://www.example.com/thank-you-for-booking/
Then you should enter the following: /thank-you-for-booking/
Below that, you can optionally add value for the conversion. This makes sense if people are completing a payment form or if you know how much each lead is worth to you on average.
If you want to track a funnel, such as a customer moving through a checkout process, then you can also do this as part of the destination goal. This can help you pinpoint areas you might want to improve.
Once you’re happy with your goal, click the Save button. You should then see your goal listed in a table. You can edit it, switch it off and on, or create more goals here.
Viewing Your Goal Conversions in Universal Analytics
Now that you have created your goal, allow Google Analytics to collect some data. After that, you can view your Goal Conversion report under the Google Analytics dashboard.
Simply, go to the Conversions » Goals and then click on Overview.
Like all Google Analytics reports, you can drill down to view visitor journeys and get deeper insights.
Google Analytics 4 replaces goals with events. You can manually configure events to track different user interactions in GA4.
First, you’ll need to go to the ‘Admin’ settings from your GA4 property.
Next, you will need to navigate to the Property column.
After that, simply click the ‘Event’s option.
You are now ready to create a new event in GA4.
Simply click the ‘Create event’ button to get started.
You should now see a new window slide in from the right. This is where all your custom events will be listed.
Go ahead and click the ‘Create’ button.
On the next screen, you can enter details of your new event.
Google Analytics 4 already has pre-built events. Simply click the Custom event name dropdown menu and choose an event. For example, we’ll select the ‘file_download’ event for this tutorial.
GA4 will automatically enter the specific Parameter and Operator for your custom event.
Next, you can enter a value for your event. For instance, we will enter ‘.pdf’ since we want to track PDF file downloads. However, you can enter any specific word you use to organize filenames on your site.
After entering these details, click the ‘Create’ button at the top.
You will now see your new custom event listed under the Custom events area in GA4.
Viewing Your Event Conversions in Google Analytics 4
Now that you’ve created a custom event in GA4, the next step is to view the conversions.
To do that, simply head to Reports » Engagement » Event: Event name from the menu on your left and view the report.
You can now repeat this step to track other custom events.
That said, an easier way of tracking user behavior is by using MonsterInsights. The plugin automatically sets up different events in Google Analytics.
This way, you don’t have to manually configure events or worry about messing up your tracking.
Google Ads Conversion Tracking in WordPress
If you run Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) to bring targeted traffic to your website, then you may want to track those conversions.
Setting up is a bit complicated because it requires adding code to your website. However, with MonsterInsights, you can easily set up Google Ads conversion tracking without editing code or hiring a developer.
First, you can go to Insights » Addons from your WordPress dashboard and install the Ads addon.
Once you install the addon, it should automatically activate.
From here, you can go to Insights » Settings and head to the Publisher tab.
Next, you can scroll down to the ‘Ads Tracking’ section.
Here, you will need to enter the Conversion ID, which will be in this format: AW-123456789.
If you’re tracking Google Ads on an eCommerce store, then you can also enter the Conversion Label.
To find the Conversion ID and Conversion Label, you’ll need to go to your Google Ads dashboard and create a conversion action.
Viewing Google Ads Conversion Reports in Google Analytics 4
Your Google Ads conversion tracking will now appear in your Google Analytics reports.
In Google Analytics 4, you can head to Acquisition » Acquisition overview and then navigate to the ‘Session Google Ads’ report.
After that, click the ‘View Google Ads campaigns’ option at the bottom of the report.
This will expand the report and show more details about your ad campaigns.
You can see the total number of users, sessions, Google Ads clicks, and more.
Viewing Google Ads Conversion Reports in Universal Analytics
For Universal Analytics, you can open your website property.
After that, view the Google Ads report by going to the Acquisition » Google Ads » Campaigns section. Here, you can see conversions for all your paid campaigns.
Use UTM Parameters for Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics
UTM parameters are special tags you can add to URLs to pass important information to Google Analytics.
For instance, if you want to track users coming from a particular ad, then you can add UTM parameters to your ad URL like this:
MonsterInsights makes it super easy to build URLs with UTM parameters. Simply head over to the Insights » Tools page and select the ‘URL Builder’ tab.
Simply enter the UTM parameters you want to use, and it will automatically generate the URL, which you can then use in your campaigns.
For instance, you can enter a campaign source, like a newsletter or Google, which tells you where the users are coming from. After that, you can define a campaign medium, such as emails or banner ads, and enter a campaign name.
MonsterInsights will also give you additional options to add campaign terms and content.
This is useful if you’re split-testing different emails or paid campaigns.
For creating a custom URL, you can leave these options blank.
Next, you can scroll down to the bottom to see your custom URL.
Go ahead and use the link for campaigns and track conversions on your website.
Viewing UTM Parameter Reports in Google Analytics 4
Now that you’ve added UTM parameters to a URL, you can track its performance in Google Analytics.
First, log in to your GA4 account. After that, head to Reports » Acquisition » Traffic Acquisitionfrom the menu on your left.
You should now see traffic from different sources on your website, such as organic search, email, display, and more.
You can use the search bar to filter the traffic source for your custom campaign. For example, if you’re tracking conversions from a newsletter, then you can look up ‘Email’ in the report.
After that, you further drill down and filter your traffic.
Simply click the ‘+’ button under the search bar.
GA4 will then show different options to filter your traffic.
You can select Traffic source » Session source from the dropdown list.
Next, Google Analytics will list your email campaigns.
You can now see which campaign performs best and gets the most conversions.
Viewing UTM Parameter Reports in Universal Analytics
In Universal Analytics, you can track the conversions of your campaigns under your Google Analytics dashboard.
Simply switch to the Acquisition » Campaigns » All Campaigns report.
Your campaigns will appear here.
You can click on any of them to drill down further.
Setting Up Facebook Conversion Tracking in WordPress
Facebook is the largest social media website on the planet, with billions of active users. This is why Facebook ads are sometimes the easiest way to reach a niche audience.
Now, if you are running Facebook ads, then you may want to see how well your ads are doing by implementing conversion tracking for your Facebook ads.
Usually, you’d need to add a code snippet to your WordPress website to track Facebook conversions. However, WPCode makes it very simple, and you can simply enter the Facebook Pixel ID to set up tracking.
First, you’ll need to log in to Facebook and visit the Meta Business Suite. Then, click on All Tools » Events Manager.
Next, you need to add a data source to the Event Manager.
Simply click the ‘+ Connect to Data Sources’ button in the left-hand menu.
You should now see different options to connect your new data source.
Go ahead and select the ‘Web’ option and click the ‘Connect’ button to continue.
After that, enter a name for your pixel.
Once that’s done, you can click the ‘Create Pixel’ button.
Next, you need to choose how to connect your website and send activity to Facebook.
At the bottom, you will see the Facebook Pixel. Go ahead and copy the pixel ID.
Note that you’ll need at least the WPCode Plus plan because it includes the Conversion Pixel Addon. However, there is also a free version of WPCode you can use to get started.
Upon activation, you need to visit the Code Snippets » Conversion Pixel page and go to the Facebook tab. From here, you need to paste the Facebook Pixel ID in the respective field.
WPCode will now automatically add the code to your site that’s needed to track Facebook ad conversions.
Setting Up Twitter Conversion Tracking in WordPress
If you run Twitter Ads to promote your business, then you’ll need to set up Twitter conversion tracking to measure the success of your ads.
Simply log in to your Twitter Ads account and click on the Tools » Event manager from the menu at the top.
You should now see a pixel created by Twitter.
Go ahead and click the ‘View Twitter Pixel’ option.
On the next screen, you will see different options to add the Twitter pixel to your site.
You can use the ‘Pixel Code’ method and simply copy the code.
You will need to add this code to the header of your WordPress site.
First, you need to switch back to your WordPress website’s admin area.
If you haven’t already done so, then go ahead and install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit the Code Snippets » Header & Footer page. Now you can paste the Twitter pixel code into the Header section.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
After you have successfully installed the pixel code, you can track conversions on your Twitter Ads account.
Optimizing Conversion Rates to Boost Sales
Once you start tracking conversions on your website, the next step is to improve those conversion rates.
You’d be surprised how little things can make a huge impact on your business.
The best way to improve your conversions is by using OptinMonster. It is the best conversion optimization software on the market and helps you convert more visitors into customers.
It integrates with any email marketing service and works with all popular eCommerce platforms.
OptinMonster’s display rules allow you to show targeted messages to your customers at the precise time and nudge them into making a buying decision.
For instance, if you notice that customers are leaving a product page without taking any action, then you can offer them a discount when they are about to exit.
Similarly, you can run time-sensitive campaigns to trigger the FOMO effect and give customers a nudge in the right direction.
You know how to design product pages and a checkout funnel for eCommerce sites. But are you actually designing sites that will increase conversions and help boost sales?
Today, I want to move away from the latter half of the customer journey and focus solely on the first part of their visit. In this post, I’ll talk about the five ways to design the first page of an eCommerce site to increase sales.
How to Design the First Page of Your eCommerce Site To Boost Sales
With smaller websites that serve a less direct salesy purpose, the formula for increasing conversions is usually quite simple: your goal is to inform, appeal to the visitors’ needs, and gain a lead or client. Because they have fewer layers of navigation to get through, and typically only one call-to-action to consider, it’s easy to design a clear path that takes the visitor from their point of entry to conversion.
But with eCommerce sites, this can get complicated. Inventory can be quite extensive and the target audience varied… which means that getting visitors to conversion isn’t as easy.
Your best bet is to systematically design eCommerce sites so that you tackle each part of the user journey separately.
If you think about it, eCommerce sites don’t typically follow the same patterns as traditional business websites. They don’t rely on large hero images and abundant white space to frame their brand messages. Ecommerce sites focus on selling an inventory of products or services, so the design has to rely less on engaging words and more on engaging visuals.
Below, I’ve broken out 5 tips to more effectively design the first page of an eCommerce site and, consequently, increase sales.
1. Show the Value Proposition (Don’t Tell)
Typically, a value proposition is a brief statement that goes atop the hero image on the home page. Usually, a descriptive headline, a sentence or two, and a strong CTA button are all that’s needed to communicate to visitors “This is what we do and what you’re going to get from us”.
This snippet from a QuickSprout infographic shows the elements you’ll usually find in a well-composed value proposition:
A snippet from QuickSprout’s infographic on value propositions.
When it comes to eCommerce websites, however, less is more. Let’s use this example from IT’s Watch:
Very few words are needed to explain IT’s Watch’s value proposition.
The home page header is a rotating banner that includes various shots of its watch line. The internal product pages do the same thing, minus the overlaid text (which is a sign of consistent web design) :
Another example of IT’S Watch’s wordless value proposition.
On the home page header, the only text that appears is “Orologi” (watches) and “Cinturini” (bands). Users hover over the one they want and are given a choice for “Women,” “Men,” or season (since they design watches to go with the time of year).
Clearly, there’s no need for IT’s Watch to intrude on the sharp visuals of this product line with an explanation of their watches and wristbands. The images speak for themselves. For eCommerce sites whose value proposition is clear, use this as inspiration in communicating your message to visitors with few or even no words at all.
2. Add Shortcuts to the Header
With many websites, it makes sense that you’d want to design a header and navigation that’s simple and to the point, as WPMU DEV does:
WPMU DEV has a very simple navigation bar.
In so doing, visitors get a quick sense for what kind of information they’ll find on the site before scrolling down to learn more from the value proposition and other home page sections.
With eCommerce, I look at that top bar the same way I look at my own browser’s bookmarks bar. There are certain things I aim to do every time I step inside of Chrome. To save myself time in digging them up, I have all my commonly used pages saved on my bookmarks bar, each is well-labeled, and I have them logically organized.
A bookmarks bar–like eCommerce navigation–is meant to streamline our actions.
They also serve as a great reminder to check in on my business or other writing work since the visual reminder is constantly there.
The eCommerce header bar needs to accomplish the same thing for visitors. Your goal with this site is to enable them to take swift action, not learn about your company and fill out a contact form for more information. This means that all those actions you want them to take need to be easily accessible in that bar.
Take Nordstrom’s website, for example:
Nordstrom’s navigational header includes all the shortcuts its customers need.
Of course, there’s the well-organized navigation bar front and center. There’s nothing overly simplified here. If someone wants to find women’s handbags, kids’ blankets, makeup, men’s shoes, or clearance items, there’s really no guesswork involved. As the Baymard Institute’s research shows:
“… our large-scale usability testing on Homepage & Category navigation shows that not displaying product categories directly in the main site navigation causes multiple and severe navigational issues for users.”
There are also these additional elements found in Nordstrom’s header:
Search bar
Sign-in portal
Shopping cart
Each of these elements are ever-present on the site, beckoning visitors to take a shortcut and get right down to business. If you’re hoping to increase sales on an eCommerce site, give your visitors a quick way to get to that part of the journey.
3. Give Your Images a Lot of Love
To start, you should only use custom photography and videography on eCommerce websites. Customers don’t have the luxury of seeing your goods in person, so the more visuals, angles, variations, and contexts you can give them, the better.
Custom photography and compressed image files are only just the start, however. Ecommerce images must also make a huge impact on visitors right away.
To do this, it’s going to take a little experimentation. What works for one website won’t always work for another, so that means being open to playing with factors and elements like color, quantity, variation, text placement, etc. A lot of this comes down to the content within your images, but it does also depend on what kind of store you’re building. Let’s look at a few examples.
Gather is a website that offers a simple organizational solution for users. This means that the “shopping” process revolves more around the customization of one’s own organizational solution rather than perusing a number of products. As such, the website isn’t cluttered with a bunch of products for sale.
Gather uses strong, singular images to show off the versatility of its product.
It uses full-width images like the one above to show off various models customers could build for themselves using the Gather System.
Then, let’s take the example of Lanbelle, a purveyor of skincare solutions.
Lanbelle’s home page product images ooze sophistication.
Because the brand’s image is synonymous with providing customers with top results, images need to give off a sense of cleanliness, sophistication, and indulgence. As such, each image is perfectly shot and well-framed.
And, of course, we should look at a massive marketplace like Amazon. These days, Amazon is such a hodgepodge of products that customers really can’t have any great expectations for the display of images on the home page or in search results.
Amazon is just too large of a marketplace to be able to effectively consolidate all these products in an organized fashion.
That said, Amazon does do a relatively good job of showing off only high-quality visuals. Organizationally, though, it’s a bit of a mess. Because it’s such a well-known and trusted brand, it can get away with this sort of image overload.
For your own purposes, even though Amazon converts visitors into more customers really well, I’d strongly advise not designing eCommerce stores with this sort of haphazard and overwhelming layout of products and ads. Images should convey the message you want your brand to send to customers; not just be a vehicle to increase the potential amount of products bought from the store.
4. Use Color to Convey Urgency and Scarcity
Color is a very powerful tool for web designers. When designing a website, use color psychology to ensure that you’re appealing to your audience while conveying the right style and message to them about your brand.
With eCommerce sites that have a main focus on selling a product, color can be an unwanted distraction. That is, unless you use color to call attention to messages that will greatly benefit your customers.
This pop-up offer, in and of itself, is pretty eye-catching. However, take note of the ticking timer in the top part of it in red. With the bright usage of color and the movement of the timer letting customers know that this deal is available for a limited time, Leesa effectively uses these elements to convey urgency.
Amazon is a brand that often uses both urgency and scarcity to compel users to hurry up and make a purchase.
Right now, Amazon’s “Prime Day” is being heavily advertised. It’s a day-and-a-half when Amazon offers a bunch of super-attractive deals to Prime customers only. So, not only are they hoping to increase the number of sales made during that time frame, but they’re likely hoping to get a bunch more Prime customers in the lead-up to it as well.
It’s promotional banners like these that will net them those customers and sales this month:
Amazon’s sales days and on-site promotions are highly effective in capturing more sales.
As you can see, it doesn’t take much for Amazon to pull this off. Just a simple banner with an image of a product in high-demand and a price so severely slashed that customers won’t be able to help themselves from returning to Amazon to shop that day.
5. Motivate with Pop-ups
Shopify reports that eCommerce websites that publish coupon codes tend to generate more sales. Specifically:
Coupon codes increase the likelihood of a sale by 8%.
Of all sales that took place on Shopify websites in a year’s time, 17% of them used a coupon code.
(Yes, I realize these are Shopify-specific statistics, but I believe them to be relevant regardless of eCommerce CMS.)
What’s great about this is that it’s really easy to implement coupon codes on websites using pop-ups and sticky bars. My preferred plugin for this? Hustle.
Use Hustle to improve the design of your promotional offers.
Not only does it help you display beautifully designed coupon codes on your site, but you can collect email addresses in exchange for them (win-win). And you can create as many offers as you want. That way, if someone clicks out of the pop-up because they assume it’s irrelevant, you can nab them with another one stuck to the top or bottom of the website.
Buffy uses this pop-up to give new customers a discount on their first purchase:
Simple in execution, but effective in calling attention to the special offer.
It’s brightly colored, straight to the point, and even has a fun little mascot attached to it.
Polaroid Originals is another one that uses the pop-up to grab attention, but it’s an interesting approach:
It’s an interesting choice of color, but I think it works well on top of the super colorful site.
The website itself is absolutely stunning with a monochrome background transitioning into a much more colorful one. But then you have this pop-up offer that’s all black. It definitely stands in stark contrast from the rest of the website and is sure to get a lot of attention for doing so.
Promo banners have become very popular thanks to mobile-first indexing.
Aside from logos for templates and themes sold on the site, ThemeForest generally has a pretty muted design. But with this small touch of color in the sticky bar, customers will instantly be drawn to the special offer.
Want To Boost Your Sales Conversions? Then Do This…
The bottom line is this: To boost your conversions online, your site needs to make a strong impression right from the very start. And it needs to be unwavering. This means presenting customers with a secure place to shop from, a fast website to peruse inventory on, and giving them the right amount and kind of information they need.
Obviously, this list isn’t the end-all, be-all of design tips for eCommerce. But with the product page design guide, payment gateway suggestions, and now these tips on how to design the first page of an eCommerce site, you have a more comprehensive end-to-end overview of how to increase sales throughout the entire user journey.
