Do you want a website that sells?! If you’re not using Conversion Rate Optimization to make you sell, or make you sell better, you might as well shutter your (online) shop. When it comes to your website converting at its peak, Conversion Rate Optimization is the answer.

Welcome to the fourth part in our series on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), a multi-part course on conversion rate optimization best practices by an award winning conversion rate optimization agency. If you are new to the series, you might ask, “what is conversion rate optimization?” In short, CRO is a way to use customer behavior data to better understand customers in doing so to provide them with the most appropriate product offering while increasing profits.

Conversion rate optimization best practices are strategies that have been used successfully by other businesses to facilitate an increase in number and quality of conversions. These are examples that should be used to kick-start the development of conversion optimization solutions, and because each business is unique, it should not be seen as solutions themselves.

This multi-part course on CRO best practices is designed to help guide you through this process.

Part 3 looked at ecommerce conversion optimisation, including how e-commerce category pages can be used to speed up the conversion process, how to optimize your site’s shopping cart and checkout page to move customers along the sales funnel quicker, and how e-commerce sign-ups can influence the final call-to-action.

In this, the fourth part of the course, we will look at the importance of optimizing price points and tracking phone leads, as well as the difference between home pages and landing pages, and how they should be optimized.

PART 4:

Pricing & Pricing Pages
Determining the price of goods and services is one of the most important, and complicated, things any business has to do. There is a fine line between charging too much (pushing customers away) and too little (losing out on revenue). The role of CRO is not to set prices, but to help ease the anxiety customers experience when faced with a price, as well as steer customers towards selecting the best, most appropriate price for them.

Here are a couple of actions you can take to ease price-related anxiety.

1. The higher the price, the more info you need

The more expensive the product, the more you need to explain what justifies the price, but not always, because “expensive” and “affordable” are different for different types of customers.

2. Name the prices, don’t ask

When faced with an ‘open-ended’ choice, like choosing the price of a product, people tend to be indecisive.

While there have been instances where this has worked, it’s been extremely rare and should be avoided. Name your price, then let the customer decide whether they’re willing to pay it.

3. Price strategies worth experimenting with

Some strategies have been shown to work. Experiment with these to see which (if any) works for your business:

Multiple prices vs. one price:
When faced with one price, it’s a decision of whether to purchase or not, however, when faced with multiple prices, the decision is which to choose — one step closer to conversion.

Decoy pricing:
Propose two or three prices within a similar range, one with a clear advantage. People tend to choose the price with the advantage or, in the case of three prices, the one that’s easier to compare.

Price Anchoring or Contrast pricing:
Start with the highest price, then add a much higher price. The first, high, price now looks cheap in comparison.

Decoy and Contrast:
A combination of decoy and contrast pricing/price anchoring whereby customers are presented three different prices — same price, lower value; ideal price, discounted from higher price; contrast price. People tend to choose the middle price point (ie the price you want them to pay).

Ending on a 9:
Extensive research has shown that goods and services with prices ending on 9 (whether it be dollars or cents) tend to sell more.

4. Price testing

Testing prices (often called ‘split testing’) is somewhat controversial, but when done right (and ethically), it can help a great deal to optimize price points.

5. To reveal or not to reveal prices

The short answer is “yes”. People immediately want to know how much goods or services cost, if the price is not displayed, they might go to a competitor who does show the price. If your goods/services don’t have fixed prices, give ballpark figures.

6. Assessing your pricing plan

It’s important to assess pricing plans. Here are a couple of questions to ask:

• Is it easy to know what you’re getting?
• Is it easy for people to choose the right plan for their needs?
• How do you address doubts, fears, and uncertainties?
• Do you incentivize long-term pricing plans?
• When selling to international markets, does your price display in different currencies?
• Is your call to action clearly displayed?

Incoming phone leads & Call tracking
In an age of emails and text messages, many businesses still rely on phone calls to generate leads and close sales, both incoming and outgoing. If your business depends on conversions via phone calls, tracking incoming leads and outgoing sales calls is crucial to optimize conversion.

Two of the great things about phone calls is that calls are instant leads, and calls from customers are intentional, opening up great conversion opportunities. However, to take full advantage of optimization, it needs to be understood that the ideas that people who want to call you, will, and that putting a phone number and “call us” on a page is enough, are both very wrong. Once this hurdle has been crossed, optimization can begin.

Here’s a look at ways to optimize phone calls (both incoming and outgoing).

• Right offer, right place, right time
• Add phone numbers in advertising (both online and offline)
• Give people a reason to call
• Ensure the offer appears in the right place in advertising
• Set up Google Analytics to track calls

Hybrid Home Pages
A home page is a site’s main point of entry and it serves two functions — to provide information, as well as links for visitors to navigate to more information on the site.

Here’s a brief overview of the function of a home page and what can be done to optimize it.

People often get confused between a home page and a landing page, so before we can delve into optimizing home pages, it’s important to know the difference between the two:

In short, landing pages usually link from paid online advertising aimed at a specific audience, and have one purpose, to convert. Home pages, on the other hand, are most often linked to via online search, and while it has a conversion element, its main purpose is to inform.

However, a new kind of home page is starting to emerge — hybrid home pages. These home pages serve the same role as traditional home pages, but with a much stronger call-to-action/conversion element. It both informs and sells.

When optimizing a home page, it’s important to look at the following elements:
1. Does it have a clear value proposition?
How is this better than that of competitors?

2. Are there links to more information?
Is the information relevant and how does it add to aid in the conversion process?

3. Does it have a single, obvious call-to-action?
What is the most desired call-to-action, and is it communicated clearly enough?

Ad-Specific Landing Pages
Landing Pages play a significant role in conversion rate optimization, as they are often the first point of entry into your website, a role traditionally reserved for home pages. While home pages still serve this function, landing pages are very specific in their purpose — quick conversion. Because a well designed landing page is so crucial to generating leads, we believe hiring a high quality landing page agency is one of the best investments a business could make.

A good landing page has the following features:

• It’s designed to receive traffic from specific sources, such as advertising
• The focus is on a single offer
• The design is simple and to the point
• It features minimal navigation
• It’s not a permanent part of a main website (although it can be)
• Visitors are encouraged to take one, clear call-to-action

With this in mind, here’s a look at a few ways to optimize landing pages:

• Make the offer scarce
• Keep important information above the fold
• Ensure the call-to-action is big and contrasting to the rest of the page
• Clear headings and sub-headings
• Keep copy concise and to the point
• Do lots of A/B testing

Pricing pages are important in encouraging visitors to your site to make a choice and thus should be considered carefully while tracking both incoming and outgoing phone calls might reveal crucial information that will help to optimize your online presence. When potential customers arrive at your site, whether it’s the home page or on a landing page, ensure that these pages are optimized to facilitate quick and decisive conversions.

In the next part of this Fundamentals course on Best Practices, we will look at how to optimize your site to be faster to give visitors a better experience, how to handle FAQs on your site, as well as optimizing internal search to make finding and purchasing products easier.

Take the short cut to digital marketing success. Contact JMarketing and discuss your options to increase your conversion rates, and immediately skyrocket your results. Click this link and complete the enquiry form, we will contact you back right away.

Please also remember to subscribe to our blog & share on social media.