Company performance depends on a variety of different factors, including customer service, lead generation, web design, and many other features. However, none of these components can compare with the ultimate business goal -- lead conversion.

The same goes both for the international e-commerce giants and the small-scale local companies since they all work hard to improve conversions. However, the fact remains that only around 20% of businesses are really satisfied with their conversion rates.

This means it’s not easy for a local business to get the foot in the door by simply retaining old consumers and earning new customers. If you are also struggling to increase revenue, you need to learn and implement state-of-the-art optimization methods.

9 Steps to Stronger Conversion Rate Optimization for Local Business

Here’s how to lift up your conversion rate optimization (CRO) techniques.

1 - Goal Setting

Before you take any action, you need to analyze the current situation, set corresponding goals, and start measuring the results of your activities. Try to answer one conversion rate question as precisely as possible: What is my ultimate objective? Is it to raise conversion rate from 1% to 2%, or to take a bigger leap at 4% or higher?

A study reveals that the average conversion rate across industries is 2.35%, while only the top 25% are converting at 5% or higher. Check out your industry average and try to catch the leaders, but make sure to keep the goals realistic and take it one step at the time.

2 - Build Your Own Strategy

Now that you know the CRO objectives, it is time to build a strategy. Start by exploring the best practices in this field, learning what worked for other businesses before. Use these insights to prepare a list of corrections, tests, and features that might upgrade your conversion rate.

But there is no “one size fits all” solution here, so don’t just copy/paste the same procedures as it probably won’t work for you as well. Instead, you should follow the style of your company and respect the nature of your products or services. Each business has its own peculiarities, so you better craft a strategy that fits you best.

3 - Prioritize Ideas

As we already explained, conversion optimization is not a one-way street with clearly defined rules and practices. On the contrary, it all depends on the nature of your business, so you must come up with a special set of moves and ideas.

Once you are done with it, you should determine priorities based on the level of difficulty. The point is to test the easiest solutions first because it may turn out to be enough to enhance CRO.

For instance, it’s rather simple to try different variants of CTA (call to action) buttons. You can play with dimensions, colors, or copies to find the most effective solution. On the other hand, changing website templates requires much more work, so you definitely want to leave that as a last CRO resort.

4 - Localize Content

As a local business, you must pay attention to the needs of the local community. For this reason, it’s critical to publish content that really means a lot to your nearby followers.

Write about local events, discuss problems or good things happening in the neighborhood, and address all those small things that mean the world to the people around you. That way, you can build trust and strengthen the relationships with your target audience.

While this process is important for CRO, it confuses many entrepreneurs because they can’t find enough quality topics. If you are facing the same issue, look into content writing services, other expert agencies, or small business coaches to help you generate ideas and write the best posts about local themes.

5 - Beware of Details

There are multiple conversion factors that influence a company’s potential to increase revenue. In order to lift up your CRO, you have to work on each one of these features:

Value proposition: Write webpage copy that clearly shows the quality of the offer.

Clarity: Get visitors to notice the offer within seconds.

Relevance: Always offer content that users are looking for.

Anxiety: People don’t enjoy leaving personal information online. But if you build a credible website, you will reduce anxiety and make them feel more comfortable sharing information with you.

Distraction: Don’t add more than a couple of CTA buttons per page because it makes the choice more difficult and lowers conversions.

Urgency: Most people react to the notion of scarcity or urgency, so feel free to play with limited-time offers and limited-quantity techniques such as “only 10 pieces left.”

6 - Add Testimonials

Word of mouth plays a crucial role in modern marketing, particularly if you are running a small company relatively unknown to wider audiences. In such circumstances, you need to prove authority and professional reliability using customer testimonials.

Ask existing clients to share their opinions about your business and publish it on your website. That way, people who visit your pages can see positive testimonials from real clients.

While it doesn’t guarantee more conversions, it is another important contributor to the overall success of the CRO campaign.

7 – Improve the User Experience

User experience is a rather technical segment of website performance, but it has the power to make or break your conversion optimization efforts. Bearing in mind the growing importance of mobile devices, you need to ensure simple and intuitive website navigation.

Follow the F-Pattern to improve visibility, adding the basic features to the top of the page and down the left side. Besides that, you should highlight components that strongly influence conversion rates such as CTA or Add-to-Cart buttons.

8 - Upgrade Product Pages

Upgrading your product page is yet another way to boost conversions. You should analyze the existing pages to determine:

Text quality: Do you consider the copy to be compelling or simple and boring?

Technical issues: Are all product-related details accurate and precise?

Make sure to eliminate all errors and improve the style of writing wherever possible.

At the same time, you can go one step further and shoot video tutorials. According to the report, using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86%. If you can craft professionally looking video content, don’t hesitate to do so. Your product page will look much more beautiful and appealing.

9 - Page Load Speed

You know that feeling when webpage loading takes forever? Well, it seems to be one of the most disturbing user experience issues. Website visitors expect your pages to load within three seconds, and your job is to ensure the proper speed if you want to raise conversions.

The easiest way to do it is by running the page load speed test. It will show you the overall performance grade and load time, as well as suggestions on how to make the website faster.

Conclusion

It’s not easy for a small-sized company to keep pace with bigger and more powerful competitors, but it’s not impossible. Using state of the art sales methodology and an ongoing CRO strategy, you can stay competitive and attract new customers in the long-term.

Our post showed you nine ways to lift up your conversion rate metrics and improve the profitability of your business. Make sure to try these conversion rate optimization tips and let us know in the comments if you need additional explanations. We are glad to help.