Are you creating hurdles preventing website visitors from taking the actions you would love to take?
I believe the answer is yes! Because I also have and need to check on this myself constantly. I have been speaking a lot about CRO, which stands for Conversion Rate Optimization, but before we get on that, a quick note.
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What is The Action You Want Web Visitors To Take?
Now onto the hurdles, shall we? I just got interviewed by Nphoto, and Eugene asked me about the hurdles preventing us from reaching our desired results with our website. As I answered, I thought to myself, wow, these are easy changes to make, so here we go.
Before chatting about the hurdles, first, you must establish what does conversion look like for you and your creative business. And how can you improve website conversions?
- Is it a web form fill?
- Is it a phone call?
- Is it a sale? The initial session booking deposit
- Is it a sign-up for a freebie?
Now take a moment to think, am I guiding my web visitor towards this goal as best as possible?
Most likely no, and you can improve some things. So let’s get to those things.
How can form conversions be improved?
The best way to improve form conversions is by avoiding super long forms. As WP Forms tells us:
The last thing you want to do is overwhelm the user. So if you can help it, never include more than 3 fields on your form. According to this infographic by Quicksprout, limiting the number of fields to just 3 can guarantee a minimum conversion rate of 25%.
3 Fields Fuse, but I have questions and need to filter out my buyers. Okay, I get it. So add a few more questions, I instead, you get that person in your inbox where you can grow and build a relationship over time. Not all leads are hot, but having leads within your sphere can be super helpful in the future.
Add your Email
Not everyone loves to fill out a form, so you must list your email on your about page. I also recommend adding it to your footer or about page. And please make this email clickable! Most users are on their phones, and when you make the email clickable, it will increase the chance that they will contact you.
Location, Location, and Location
I would have to say that 6 out of 10 website audits I do for photographers have a hard time understanding where the photographer is physically located. So an easy fix to this is to add location-specific text on your home page and about page.
Feuza Reis is a Coral Springs, FL-based business portrait photographer serving South Florida.
Call To Action Buttons For Increasing Conversions
What are the top pages you want your visitor to visit? Do you have buttons and links guiding them there? So for example, if I am a family photographer in Orlando. I decided that my top pages are:
- Home Page
- About Page
- Portfolio Page
- Session info page
- Contact
Now it is my job to go to each of these pages and review if I need calls to action to guide my user to the other pages I want them to visit.
Tip. Your users should be visiting at least 2 pages on your website. This indicates to Google that you were a great find and will help in your rankings. So go to Google Analytics and check page view sessions and comment here or DM me on Instagram.
So now you probably have some homework to do.
Check Your Links
Sometimes we have broken links. After all, websites get updated, add new pages or remove pages, and go unseen. Have someone visit your website to test out all the links.
Also, check if your links are visible as some themes I see, links are not visible, and we need to think like our audience, not like photographers.
Tip. For any external links you have so when you link to vendors and other people, make sure that link opens in a new tab so you don’t lose the visitor.
Check your phone:
Review Photography Website Google Analytics
2020 is kind of a missed year, so it may be hard to compare your stats. But it is crucial that you know your seasons. So what are your top months? Check-in Google Analytics the activity for those months. Actually, check Google Analytics once a month to see if you are up or down and see if there can be improvements to your website.
I don’t care how well you are ranking; if you are not converting visitors to leads, what is the point of SEO? Numbers don’t lie, and your goal is always to be improving these stats.
- Decrease bounce rate
- Get visitors to stay longer
- Check to see which platform sends visitors that are more engaged
Check web visitor actions
You can actually install something like Hotjar to see the actions your website visitors are taking on your photography website. I don’t recommend using this all year long as I have heard it can slow down your website, but do an experiment. After all, marketing is about testing and testing.
What is a good conversion rate?
Industry-standard suggests that a good conversion rate is between 1-3% but this will depend on your field and business category. Wordstream suggests that you try and break into the 10%.
Mobile Baby
If your phone doesn’t look good on mobile, your CRO will suck. Have at least 2 people review your website from their phones to see if there is any feedback they can give you that will help you increase those conversions.
Overall, my message is, let’s make it easy for people to find us and reach us. Do you have questions? Join my free FB group or become an Ignite Member and get access to all of my courses.
Also make sure your website loads fast. Check out the Google website speed test to make sure your website looks good on both mobile and desktop.