Your website is usually one of the first places that engaged couples will go to so they can find out more about your business. So think about it. What sort of an impression does your website give potential clients?
If you’re not thrilled with the answer you gave, then the chances are that your website isn’t converting at the rate that it should be.
Website conversation rate optimisation is important to make sure that you are getting as many enquiries as you possibly can from your website. Poor conversion can kill businesses. Remember, it’s not just the products that you are selling to couples, it’s yourself as a business as well. You want to make sure that you are coming across professional, crisp, as well as making sure that you’ve made it as easy as possible for potential couples to enquire with your business.
Think about it like this. If your website currently converts at 10% and you can increase that to a 20% conversation rate, then your website is lifting your sales rate by a whopping 800%.
Your conversion rate comes down to many factors; your marketing, advertisements, website, enquiry process and sales all play a part in how you convert business and how your website converts. So think about which areas you’re performing in best, and where you can start improving. If you’re converting at 20% with your sales but just 2% with your website, then it’s time to start at the lowest percentage first and see what you can improve about your website CRO.
Of course, whenever you’re looking at your website CRO you should also be looking at how you track your site. Without tracking how your page is doing, you won’t know what you can improve on.
Set up your website to be mobile friendly
The current target market is millennials, and 65% of your potential couples will be viewing your site on a mobile device. The number of people viewing your site on mobile has plateaued for the last few years, but they still outweigh those viewing your site on desktops.
Google has changed the way that they rank sites as of 2018 and are now valuing your mobile site over your desktop site as well. Which means that making sure your website is friendly in all mobile devices is even more important to ensure that you’re keeping a high search ranking and also not losing anyone due to usability.
It’s easy to check whether your website is appearing properly in each device. You could catch up with a group of friends and have everyone check your site on their different devices. Or, if you’re using the Chrome browser you can select F12 to view your site in different devices.
While mobile is the most important, remember to also make your site compatible with all of the different platforms that users could be viewing your device on. These include tablets, iPads, and even more smart TV searching down the track.
Optimise your website speed
There’s nothing worse than being motivated to plan your wedding, jumping onto a website to enquire with a supplier, and then losing that motivation because you have to wait forever for the page to load.
Millennials are impatient. They don’t have time to wait around for your website to get its act together. So if any of your site pages take more than three seconds to load, you’ve lost a potential sale.
There is one easy way to check whether your website is loading quickly enough for desktop and mobile users, and that is the Google PageSpeed Insights tool. This will rank your desktop and mobile site on fast, average or slow loading times and let you know what percentage of your page is loading at what speed.
If you find that your website is loading at a medium or slow speed, it’s time to chat with your web developer.
Make it easy to contact you
It can happen a lot in the wedding industry where we start getting a bit too eager for information about the wedding right off the bat. But having too much information to fill out in a contact form can be daunting for some brides or grooms-to-be. They might not know what time they want their hair or makeup artist to arrive, or they might still be unsure how many cars they need to hire. This is all information that you can chat about once you’ve started a conversation, rather than finding it out to start off with.
Like your site, your contact form should also be optimised for mobile first. It should also only have five fields, with seven being the absolute maximum. We recommend asking:
- Couples name
- Wedding Date
- Wedding location
- Phone
And if you would like to know a bit more information:
- Comments
This should give you enough information to know whether you are available for the wedding, and also make it easier for you to get back to potential couples even quicker. One big no-no for contact forms is drop-down menus. Not only can this format incorrectly, but they also give too many options for couples to have to choose from. Keep it simple and they’re more likely to complete the form.
Third-party reviews can be a great addition to your contact page. Adding these mean that if couples haven’t already seen reviews on what a good job you’ve done, they’ll see them when they are actually interested in enquiring with your business. Making them more likely to fill out the form.
Potential couples also want to make sure that you’re operating a legitimate business. If you work from home then you might not feel comfortable putting this on your contact form, but it’s actually more likely to help you convert an enquiry. If couples can see where your business is based it makes your business more real. Having your phone number and email address on every page, rather than just having the contact form, will also make it more likely for couples to choose to go with you. It makes you look more accessible as well as makes it easy for people to get in touch with you if they do have any additional questions.
Get a new website design
If your website is four or more years old then it’s time for a redesign. Investment in a new website could triple your business overnight. We’ve redesigned websites and seen them go from converting at 6% to converting at 14% overnight, just because of the age of the site and the way it’s designed. Which is why we say that you should get a new website every four years or less.
See the average conversion rates of the following aged sites:
- 1-year-old website – converts at 12%
- 2-year-old website – converts at 10%
- 3-year-old website – converts at 6%
- 4+ year-old website – converts at 4%
With technology changing, making sure that your website is up-to-date and fresh is not only good for your CRO, but it’s also good for your branding and makes you look like an up-to-date business. One page websites, in particular, are very popular at the moment, with smartphones and tablet devices making it easier than ever for users to scroll down through content.
