7 best practices to improve conversions

Summary

Conversion: This is the phase in which the consumer takes an action directed by the company, and it’s one of the most important aspects of any marketing strategy. In order to create content that can actually generate conversions, you’ll need to follow some best practices that are essential when it comes to digital marketing: data, user experience, the choice of formats, and above all the centrality of the user and their characteristics.

Why does a company or a brand care about creating digital content of interest to be distributed on social networks or on the internet in general?

There are many reasons: because in this way they can attract the attention of users; because through this type of content they can position themselves and make known an aspect that is perhaps less known to most, changing the perception that customers have of the company and building a deeper relationship with consumers, which is not limited to the simple purchase of a product or service.

Surely these are all positive answers, but perhaps the most correct answer is only one: to push people to take an action, whatever it is.

In fact, if you look closely, every piece of content is always built with this purpose or, in any case, it should always be part of a strategy that aims to naturally lead each user towards the action or decision you want.

For this reason, regardless of the type of content you want to create, it is always necessary to think of it in terms of conversion.

In the end, you have to think about conversion

With “conversion,” we mean “the specific action that the user performs in response to the stimuli transmitted by a direct marketing initiative and that represents the objective of the campaign itself,” as it is from classic definition.

Obviously, there is not just one type of action that the user (or the consumer) can be pushed to do. It goes from visits to a certain landing page, to the purchase of a product or a service, up to the subscription to a newsletter or to the download of a document, leaving their own data for the access.

In all of these cases, it is necessary to identify precise strategies and implement some specific behaviors in order to improve their level of conversion, thus making their content and their presence on social networks (or on the internet) effective and functional for growing the business.

A premise

Before starting with the main tips for improving your conversion rate online, we want to clarify one aspect, namely that each of these best practices is intended as an indication, an inspiration to improve your performance on social networks. However, this doesn’t mean that simply implementing best practices will ensure results.

Often, in fact, it takes a combination of best practices, which varies depending on your situation and, above all, on the objectives you have established.

Even the results can be different than what you imagined – this is because each of the tips may have a different level of effectiveness depending on the context in which it is applied.

That said, let’s take a look at the 7 “best practices” for increasing the conversion of your content.

Best practice #1: let the data drive you

The first thing to do to increase your conversion rate is to study the traffic and navigation data on your channels and sites.

You’ll need to understand which aspects are functional for your conversion objectives. For this reason, it is necessary to trace the behaviors and actions of users in order to understand where they start from, where they arrive, and what discourages them to continue on the path.

In this sense, other types of data are also important, because the more you know, the better you can react.

On the other hand, knowing the behavior of your audience but not knowing its characteristics and composition can be counterproductive or lead to wrong conclusions and, consequently, to ineffective strategic choices.

In addition, you will need to understand which data you need to take into consideration, identifying the most relevant components of a campaign aimed at conversion, such as:

• the creativity and the message, so you know which approach was most effective in reaching and stimulating users;
• the channel, considering that message optimization also passes through a suitable channel and must be adapted to the audience that you want to reach;
• time, both in the sense of timing of reception and in terms of the duration of the campaign in its entirety;
• and finally the history, understood as a general view of the relationships and dynamics of past interactions with users, as well as all previous campaigns.

Also because it’s only by analyzing the data that you can make the right considerations about what you’ve done, what you’ve done wrong, and then optimize your strategy later.

Best practice #2: improve the browsing experience

This second best practice applies mostly to sites and landing pages, but it’s also true for some native social formats that allow for deeper navigation of the platform.

Average users are increasingly distracted, demanding, and impatient as they now have a more than daily relationship with technology and digital tools.

This means that they have increased their expectations and expect to have a perfect, fluid, and top-notch customer experience.

Customer experience on the internet necessarily becomes a user experience.

And it’s clear that there is a link between user experience and conversion: improving the former also optimizes the funnel in all its phases, conversion included.

The navigation model must be designed so that the user has the perception of acting without being pushed, or better, must be led to act as if it were a natural consequence of their navigation.

This means that, in general, it is necessary to think “mobile first” since mobile devices are most used by users to do anything, so it is unthinkable to have pages or, even worse, a site that is not perfectly optimized for smartphones.

In addition, loading delays must be reduced to a minimum: responsiveness is fundamental at every stage so as not to discourage users from reaching the end of the funnel and completing the action.

After all, the “push” approach in marketing, especially in the digital dimension, is becoming less effective since it is perceived as invasive and therefore annoying by users.

Best practice #3: choose the right content

Obviously, another aspect that should not be ignored when increasing conversion on your channels is the type of content to be used.

Although there are no absolute best formats, and also because the evaluation depends largely on the objectives that have been set, there are some formats that inherently bring many advantages.

We’re talking, in particular, about the video format, the use of which has many benefits.

First of all, videos are the most popular format on the internet and on social networks. Suffice it to say that a large amount of time is spent by users watching videos both on dedicated platforms and on social networks in general.

From this point of view, it is not surprising that the engagement rate for video has been found to have increased by one percent during the Covid period.

Together with these advantages, there is also an advantage related to conversion. It has been found that inserting a video in a landing page increases the conversion rate by 80%. It’s no coincidence that all e-commerce sites that provide video demonstrations of the items for sale guarantee a purchase rate that is 1.8 times that of sites that do not use them.

This means that you need to include the use of videos in your strategy, regardless of whether you choose to include them in a newsletter email or post them on your social profiles or website.

However, you can add another element, as not all videos are the same.

Best practice #4: personalize your communication

There are videos and videos, and some can be more effective in pushing conversion: they are the personalized ones.

Among their many positive aspects, videos have a downside that can be counterproductive on social media: they are content that forces the user into an essentially passive role.

This, in the long run, can decrease attention, leaving viewers to scroll and not complete the action.

To overcome this, you’ll want to customize the content you create as much as possible: with personalized content, viewers are much more likely to follow through with interest and reach the end of the funnel.

On the surface, creating personalized videos may seem like an impossible task, or one that requires a great deal of effort in terms of human and technical resources.

In fact, video automation platforms that allow you to create personalized videos in a simple way, without the need to involve the IT department or develop an in-house graphics and design department do exist.

An example of this type of platform is Babelee, which guarantees the creation and delivery of personalized videos thanks to the exploitation of machine learning and the cross-referencing of data stored in company databases from which you can obtain the most relevant information about customers.

However, even a personalized video, whose components can be modified to fit the recipient, may have different effects than we expect.

And from here we move on to another best practice.

Best practice #5: A/B testing for Conversion

We started off by saying that you should always take data into account when you want to boost your conversion. An obvious consequence of this is that every action, every choice, every piece of content should be tracked and evaluated to see if it’s working, or not.

To accomplish this, it is necessary to think in terms of A/B testing, conceiving numerous pieces of content that are similar, to be submitted to audiences with very precise characteristics in order to evaluate their effectiveness according to the reactions obtained.

However, it must be stressed that A/B testing cannot be limited to this: it is not enough to detect what works best, but you also need to ask why one piece of content performs better than another.

Combining quantitative and qualitative aspects will help you optimize your content and processes.

Best practice #6: what you write also counts

This aspect is often underestimated, but in reality, words play a fundamental role when it comes to conversion.

Whenever you imagine content aimed at conversion, it is important to make sure the message is simple, clear, and direct.

In fact, it is essential that the CTA is expressed effectively and that it is modified according to the result to be obtained and the people to whom it is addressed (and here we return to the personalization mentioned above).

This does not mean that it is necessary to be direct, on the contrary it can be interesting to insert it in a storytelling context where the user is led to act as a natural and conclusive part of a path.

In this way, the user’s perception is that of not being pushed or forced, but of doing something freely, wanting to act because he has rationally and consciously chosen to do so.

Best practice #7: simplify

Whatever action needs to be performed, each user must be able to do so with a limited number of clicks.

Similarly, if the user needs to fill out forms to perform the action, they should be able to do so with as little typing as possible.

This is because the more intermediate steps, the less likely it is that they will all be completed, since we tend to have little patience or willingness to perform complex operations online.

In this sense, the construction of the site or the page, as well as the graphic component, plays a fundamental role.

All of these parts, as well as the text, must be perfectly coordinated in order to effectively direct the user towards action, while not being perceived as pushy or invasive.

To accomplish this, we must once again put the user, the person, at the center remembering that only by talking to the individual, by taking into account his needs and leveraging his preferences or characteristics, it is possible to create relevant content of interest that encourages him to take action, the one we want.