How to boost your conversion rate

This guide is based on Mixergy’s course with Dennis van der Heijden.

Dennis van der Heijden knew that businesses with low conversion rates are forced to spend a lot of money on leads, so he co-founded a company that helps online businesses improve conversions by as much as 20% in just a few weeks. It was all done by increasing conversions, so we invited him to teach you how to do it.

Dennis is a founder of Reedge, where businesses can test personalized websites simply and inexpensively.

Here are the actionable highlights from the course.

1. Simplify your homepage so visitors will see a few clear calls to action

Dennis says the Scrubbly homepage should have displayed just one or two calls to action, but it had so many extra features like a video and a Facebook “like” button that visitors got distracted and failed to sign up.

Take Action:

Make your sign-up button the most prominent feature on your homepage, include a secondary call to action like “Learn More,” and move all other calls to action to different pages.

2. Display clients’ logos to build trust

Dennis likes that the Scrubbly site shows the logos of four clients including Google and Microsoft because everyone will recognize those logos and conclude that Scrubbly is reliable.

Take Action:

Place the logos of your most well-known clients on your homepage, or if you don’t have clients yet, display the logos of media outlets that have mentioned your business in news stories.

3. Make signing up easy so prospects won’t leave in the middle of the process

Dennis says that Magical Fruit cut its four-page checkout process down to one page, and that increased conversions by 70%.

Take Action:

Use the shortest form possible to collect prospects’ information, and don’t require people to navigate through multiple pages to sign up.

4. Divide prospects into groups so you can make changes they’ll respond well to

Dennis says one group of people from the Mixergy audience would be those who don’t have time to watch long interviews, and they might like an index to help them skip to the important parts of videos.

Take Action:

Think of different categories that describe your prospects based on feedback you’ve received from them, such as comments on your blog posts.

5. Personalize your site for prospects so they’ll see content that’s relevant to them

Dennis suggests that Impact Logos, which is a design company based in Sydney, Australia, should show different versions of its site depending on whether visitors are located in Sydney or somewhere else.

Take Action:

Show prospects personalized content based on what you know about them from browser cookies or their IP addresses.

Written by Sarah Brodsky, based on production notes by Jeremy Weisz