Conversion Rate Optimization Best Practices for 2021

You offer outstanding products or services, a good website, and good traffic. So, why isn’t your site making as much money as it should be? It might be time you re-examined conversion rate optimization best practices — especially when it comes to mobile conversion optimization. As a business owner, you already know that having a great website and high traffic numbers are just two pieces of the sales puzzle.

The way you communicate with customers and the experience your website offers play a significant role in making sales. Conversion rate optimization focuses on enhancing your website to increase the number of sales or other desired actions from a visitor. In a world inseparable from smartphones — 79% of consumers have made a purchase on their phones within the last six months — it’s especially important to make your website mobile-friendly to avoid losing conversion opportunities.

Here are a few conversion rate optimization best practices to follow in 2021 and beyond:

Your Site’s UX Matters

Does your site offer its visitors a positive experience throughout their customer journey? Your site’s user experience could make or break your conversion rates. In 2020, Google even decided to add Core Web Vitals to measure user experience into its site ranking factors. This means that anything undermining UX has to go.

Site pop-ups are one obvious culprit. If you can’t do without them, make them more user-friendly. You should also declutter your site. Reduce the number of design elements you use, like CTA buttons, and take a minimalist approach wherever possible. Creating seamless user experiences is one of the most important conversion rate optimization best practices.

Increase Site Speeds

Fast-loading mobile experiences are no longer considered a luxury; consumers demand them. 53% of site visitors will leave a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Anything that slows down your site could be increasing bounce rates and leading to lower conversions. 

For instance, if your images take a long time to load, customers will either have to wait, or they may choose to get information from the competition. Smartphones don’t have the same processing power as desktops, which means you need to craft your site to accommodate them. Want to embrace conversion rate optimization best practices for 2021? Start by assessing your site’s page speeds on Google PageSpeed Insights. Among the best ways to improve site speed are:

• Minimize site code
• Reduce redirects
• Leverage server caching
• Optimize images
• Use content distribution networks

Get Serious with Mobile-Friendliness

For anyone focused on mobile conversion optimization, making their site mobile-friendly should be the top priority. The fact that Google made mobile-first indexing a default in 2019 makes mobile-friendliness a necessity rather than a luxury. Your site rankings will suffer if you ignore it. Your users need to enjoy your site on their mobile phones without feeling like there are inconsistencies or inconveniences in the experience. 

This means that you need to make it easy to use your site while swiping and scrolling. It should also be easy for visitors to find different things on the site and press your CTA buttons. Here are a few ways to embrace mobile conversion rate optimization best practices for 2021:

• Keep everything simple — users don’t want to consume a lot of unnecessary information on their small screens. Reduce excessive design elements to keep it as simple as possible.
• Test your website on different mobile devices — your website may load well on one type of smartphone and poorly on another. Test the site on multiple mobile devices to ensure consistent experiences. You should check how responsive the site is on different screen sizes and orientations, too.
• Simplify mobile payments — unreliable checkout processes can lead to high cart abandonment rates. Ensure your site can accommodate multiple mobile payment methods in a seamless way.

Personalize Your Site

Add site personalization to your list if you are serious about implementing conversion rate optimization best practices. 80% of consumers are drawn to brands that offer personalized experiences. That’s how sites like Netflix thrive; they ensure each customer has a personalized journey. The question is, how do you translate personalization to your site?

You can start by segmenting your audience by demographics like age and location. Next, you can use the data to send site visitors to pages with content and messages that target them. Feel free to use different images and CTAs for different customer demographics. 

This segmentation could also be useful in sending subscribed customers personalized emails with relation to their current stage in the sale funnel. Delivering personalized consumer journeys will make it easier to convert and use other conversion rate optimization best practices to your advantage. 

Design Your Site Around Transparency and Trust

Trust is a huge mobile conversion optimization factor; people won’t buy into your business if they don’t trust it. With data breaches becoming an even more formidable threat in 2020, consumers are increasingly careful about who they trust their data. Phishing scams rose by more than 350% in 2020 alone.

If you want to get conversions from this skeptical client base, you need to prove that they can trust you. All other conversion rate optimization best practices will be worthless if you can’t get consumers to trust your business. To improve trust levels, you should: 

• Disclose data usage information — don’t hide this information deep in your site privacy guidelines. If you ever make a change to the policies, be sure to alert customers. 
• Review current data usage setting — most security-conscious customers are frustrated whenever they learn that a site is tracking their data without their consent. Review default data policies and give customers opt-in options.
• Work with secure vendors — your business’s security is only as strong as its weakest link, which is why you need to partner with secure vendors. 

Focus on What’s Best for the Consumer

Consumers want to believe you designed your site with their convenience in mind. Site personalization, seamless UX, and data transparency are all conversion rate optimization best practices designed to win them over. The trick is to keep testing and making changes to your site. If a mobile c onversion optimization measure seems to work, keep embracing it, and look for ways to further improve upon it.