CRO - Ignite Search

By Lydia Barley

Do you want to boost conversions on your website? Maybe you’re just starting out and you want everything to be perfect from the start. Or perhaps, your website has been live for a few years, you’re bringing in a lot of organic traffic from your SEO efforts but have little to no leads. Whatever the reason you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post we are going to outline 3 website ‘must haves’ that can assist in boosting your conversion rate.

1. CTA Buttons

Now this one may seem obvious, but a lack of CTA buttons is actually quite a common issue. You may have spent a considerable amount of time setting up a beautiful website that showcases your business. After spending months debating over and perfecting different web design elements it’s easy to forget about CTA buttons. So, while you have the most beautiful website ever seen, you have no CTA buttons that encourage your website visitors to convert and generate a sale or lead for your business.

Now for the newbies who are reading this, a call to action button is a button on your website that guides users towards your goal conversion. In simple terms, it’s a button that directs visitors to the action you want them to make, whether that be; making a purchase, filling out a quote form or contacting you.

Pictured: A CTA button on the Ignite Search website which directs users to a contact form.

2. Social proof

We’ve discussed social proof in one of our previous blog posts: Social Proof: The Ultimate Tool For Increasing Conversion Rates so we’ll leave all the nitty gritty details to that blog post. But just know that social proof is important to have on your website as it builds trust, adds credibility and helps validate the buying decision – thus encouraging people to act – pushing your conversion rate higher.

You can put social proof on your website in the form of case studies, testimonials, reviews or data. If it’s relevant to do so you can also combine multiple different types of social proof, further enhancing its effectiveness in increasing your conversion rate.

Pictured: Social proof on the Ignite Search website in the form of data. The data outlines how many years of experience the team has, how many top 3 Google rankings have been achieved and the number of successful projects Ignite has had.

Pictured: Social proof on the Ignite Search website in the form of testimonials. Presented are numerous positive testimonials from current and previous clients.

3. Unique Selling Proposition

Okay so, you’ve managed to get someone onto your site (fantastic) and you’ve managed to peak their interest (brilliant), but have you outlined why the visitor should choose your business? Why the visitor should buy your product and not your competitors? Why the visitor should contact you and schedule a booking with you rather than your competitor? Not yet? Well, this is where your unique selling proposition comes in.

Your unique selling proposition (USP), also known as your unique selling point, is your point of difference, or your unique benefit that makes you different from your competitors. So, what is your USP? Do you offer a three-month service guarantee? Do you use the highest quality ingredients? Do you offer full product customisation? Make sure to outline your unique selling proposition clearly throughout your website.

Pictured: Diagram from Germany Startup Jobs that outlines your unique selling proposition.

Now that you’re aware of these 3 website must haves take the time to flick through your website. You likely know your website off by heart but put yourself in the mind of your visitors and imagine how your visitors would see and navigate through your website. As you go through your website ask yourself the following questions:

Do you have CTA buttons on your homepage and across all of your landing pages?
Are your CTA buttons prominent?
Do you have social proof on your homepage and across all of your landing pages?
Is your social proof highly visible?
Is your unique selling proposition clear throughout your website?

If you’re still looking to improve your website conversion rate after implementing those 3 website must haves contact the CRO experts at Ignite Search. Ignite Search’s conversion rate optimisation process identifies and unlocks the additional revenue streams that conversion rate optimisation can bring by ensuring that your site is working with and not against your traffic generation channels.

By Lydia Barley

Online reviews have become a go-to for all consumers. With consumers checking online reviews before making a purchasing decision. Even when not actively seeking for a review, if one pops up it guides our purchasing decision; whether we are put off by a review that publicly shames the business or are enticed to buy a product by a glowing review of it. Online reviews make or break a business. Therefore, no matter the size or industry your business is in, generating online reviews is crucial for the success and longevity of your business.

What are Online Reviews?

An online review is a written statement left directly by a client on a website/platform. These online reviews provide potential clients with information about the product, service or company based on the experiences of other consumers.
Reviews can be left on a number of different platforms such as the business’ own website, on social media, on the business’ Google local listing or on a specific review platform, like Yelp.

Why are Reviews Important?

One of our previous blog posts, Online Reviews And What They Mean For Local SEO discussed the primary benefits of online reviews. These benefits included: unique content generation, a boost in click through rates and finding what long tail keywords to optimize and rank for.

Getting Positive Reviews

1. The first step to getting online reviews is to ensure that clients are actually able to leave reviews for your business, by ensuring you are available on and have an account for review platforms. Set up a Yelp account, enable reviews on your Facebook page, set up your Google account. Whatever channel it is, make sure you’ve created an account and are able to receive reviews.

2. What’s next is to simply ask clients for reviews. While it may seem intimidating Bright Local found that 68% of consumers left a local business review when asked. So, reach out to your customers, private message them, email them or leave a note with their delivery. Choose whichever method of asking is most appropriate for you and get asking!

3. Follow up with your request. After a couple of days, if the customer has not yet left a review follow up with them and ask again. It may be that they have been busy and simply forgot!

4. Respond to the reviews that you have. Thank your customers for leaving them. Doing so not only shows that you are attentive and care about your customers’ opinions but shows that you genuinely want reviews.

Tips for asking for online reviews

Don’t waste any time, ask straight away! It’s better to ask a customer for a review when you’re fresh in their mind. The longer you leave it, the less likely the customer will leave a review.
When asking experiment with what language you use and find out which generates more reviews. For example, set up an A/B test for an email campaign where one takes on a formal approach and the other takes on a more casual approach. Find out which works for you.

Ensure that the process of leaving a review is easy; if the process it too difficult most people won’t bother. For example, you can try make it so that the customer leaves a review from the channel they came, that way you know the consumer can access that channel easily and does not have to create any additional accounts.
Don’t offer incentives for leaving reviews. We cannot stress this one enough. There are a number of different rules around offering incentives for reviews which will vary depending on your location and the review platform that you are using. Check your local laws and the rules outlined by the review platform to ensure that you are complying with them, otherwise you could be left with a hefty fine and/or you could lose all your reviews (like this one business did with their Google reviews!).

Managing negative reviews

No matter how intimidating and upsetting they can be, consider negative reviews as an opportunity to improve.

1. Firstly, don’t ignore the review or block the reviewer! Every negative review needs to be responded to.

2. Remain professional and objective. Take some time out to calm yourself down and plan your response rationally. Being driven by your emotions and being unpleasant or rude will not only annoy the reviewer more but will put off any potential customers who see your response.

3. In your response thank the reviewer, offer a solution to their problem and adopt change. Doing so will show that you are open to reviews, that you care about what your customers think and that you are willing to fix any issues. Attached below is an example written by the team at the Stamford Plaza in Brisbane, this example thanks the reviewer, sincerely apologises and shows that they have adopted change.

Managing fake reviews

While we hope and want to believe that all reviews online are genuine, the truth is that there are reviews from individuals that are false and/or is inaccurate to the actual turn of events.
Although we recommend customising your responses to each review according to the nature of the review, here are some general tips to help deal with false or inaccurate reviews:

1. Attempt to get them removed by the relevant platform.

2. Again take some time to calm yourself down before responding. Take a deep breath and don’t let your emotions drive your response.

3.Respond positively to them, exactly as you would a normal negative review.

a. Point out that you do not know them or do not have anyone within your client base under their name then state that if they are a customer then you are happy to work towards fixing the issue.

b. If the real story behind the review was twisted by the individual be polite but you can mention this in the review. However we recommend that you always end in a supportive note e.g. “We will take your feedback on board” or “We are happy and willing to continue discussing this, so please provide your email to us”.

c. Think about how your future prospects will read this response, don’t act out and get aggressive, remain positive, light-hearted and willing to help.

Conclusion

Online reviews are crucial for your business success and therefore it’s important to understand how to generate them, how to respond to negative reviews and how to manage fake reviews. Building reviews is an ongoing process, and after this article you should be one step closer to a platform full of glowing reviews.

By Lydia Barley

What is structured data?

Here’s how Google defines structured data:
‘Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content.’

So, basically, the term structured data refers to information or code that has been formatted in a specific way so that search engines can understand it.

You can see structured data whenever you do a search in Google. For example, when searching for a recipe for a lemon meringue pie you can see that some of the results show more information than others. Some of them have ratings attached to them, photos attached to them, preparation time attached to them and calories attached to them, while others don’t. This is the result of structured data that has been added to those sites.

How Do Search Engines Use Structured Data?

Search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo use structured data to:
• More accurately index your site
• Refine search results
• Filter with greater accuracy
• Enhance the way that results are displayed

The Benefits of Structured Data

The primary benefits of structured data include an increased likelihood of your page receiving search result enhancements, such as:

1. Rich search results, where the search engine provides more information about your actual page as opposed to just displaying the site title, URL and meta description.

2. Knowledge graph card, where the search engine displays a small box on the right that is full of information. This information is based on relevant facts, images and related searches.

3. Breadcrumbs, where the search engine displays the breadcrumb trail to the specific page that has shown up in the SERPS.

These features can improve your click through rate simply because they are more visually appealing and provide additional information to searchers. The use of structured data mark-up on its own is not a direct ranking signal, however it can help search engines better understand what your content is about and therefore contribute to a stronger relevancy signal.

General Tips for Structured Data

Below are some general tips to follow when implementing structured data on your site.
1) Most search structured data uses schema.org vocabulary, but don’t rely on it. For Google rely on the documentation on developers.google.com rather than the schema.org documentation.
2) Don’t create blank or empty pages just to hold structured data.
3) Don’t add structured data about information that is not visible to the user.
4) Don’t use structured data everywhere in your mark-up. It’s best suited for highlighting specific pieces of information such as the subject of the page or an important piece of content that needs to be indexed accurately.
5) Include all the required properties for an object so it is eligible for appearance in Google Search with enhanced display.
6) Test your structured data using the Structured Data Testing tool during development.
7) Check the Search Console Structured Data report to monitor the health of your pages.

For more information on what to do and what not to do when implementing structured data on your website, check out Google’s structured data general guidelines.

Conclusion

Structured data is not often included within SEO strategies as it does not directly influence ranking. However, by taking advantage of structured data you can create sites that are more meaningful, that have greater relevance to search engines and that are more likely to have a higher click through rate.