10 Quick Fixes to Increase Website Conversions

Getting people onto your website is one thing. Getting them to actually do something once they’re there? That’s a whole different kettle of fish.

You could have thousands of visitors coming through the digital doors every month, but if nobody’s buying, enquiring or getting in touch, there’s a good chance your website isn’t pulling its weight.

That’s where website conversions come in.

What is a website conversion rate?

Your website conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a particular action, whether that’s making a purchase, submitting an enquiry or booking a consultation.

For example, if 1,000 people visit your website and 30 make an enquiry, that’s a 3% conversion rate, assuming each enquiry comes from a different visitor.

Not exactly the most complicated maths in the world, but it’s a pretty useful number to keep an eye on.

1. Give people a reason to click

You could have the most beautiful website in the world, but if nobody knows what they’re supposed to do next, all that polished design is going to waste.

That’s where your calls to action (CTAs) earn their keep.

Whether it’s booking a consultation, making a purchase or getting in touch, your buttons should make the next step pretty obvious. And ideally a little more enticing than the world’s most uninspiring ‘Submit’ button.

There’s a bit of science behind a good button, too. Colour contrast helps it stand out from the surrounding design, while clear, specific wording tells visitors exactly what they’re signing up for. 

Placement matters just as much. If people have to scroll halfway to the moon to find the next step, there’s a good chance they’ll never get there.

When we worked with Chickpea Group, we brought their playful personality into the website experience with bold, colourful buttons and inviting copy like ‘What’s going on at the boozer…’

It’s a nice reminder that your CTAs can be functional without sounding like they’ve been written by an overly serious robot.

• Give it a go: Pick one of your most visited pages. Is the next step obvious? Does the button stand out? And does the wording tell people what they’ll get when they click? Make one improvement and measure what happens.

2. Make finding things a breeze

Nobody enjoys a digital treasure hunt when all they’re trying to do is find a phone number or work out what a business actually offers.

If your navigation is packed with endless options, confusing labels and pages hidden three menus deep, you’re making visitors work way harder than they need to.

When we teamed up with The Future Forest Company, we helped bring a little more clarity to their website. Making their projects easier to explore, their mission easier to understand and the whole experience a lot less like a game of hide and seek.

And if you can’t put your finger on where visitors are getting stuck, tools like Microsoft Clarity can give you a helping hand. Heatmaps show which parts of a page attract clicks, while session recordings can reveal where people are struggling to find their way around. It’s a lot more useful than deciding what to move around based on whoever shouts loudest in the office.

• Give it a go: Ask someone unfamiliar with your website to find your services, a relevant case study and your contact details. If they’re still scrambling around after a couple of minutes, your navigation might need a bit of attention.

3. Don’t leave visitors waiting around

We’ve all been there. You click on a website, stare at a loading screen for what feels like an eternity and eventually give up and go somewhere else.

Not exactly the first impression you’re hoping to make.

Website speed matters because people expect things to work without having to sit around twiddling their thumbs. And the slower your pages load, the more opportunities you’re giving visitors to lose interest before they’ve even seen what you’ve got to offer.

The usual suspects? Oversized images, unnecessary scripts, too many redirects and pages trying to load everything at once. Compressing images, loading off-screen content only when it’s needed and making better use of browser caching can all help take some of the strain off.

When we worked with The Wool Library, we knew their lovely product imagery needed to do the talking. But with an image-heavy website, there’s always the risk of things getting a little sluggish. By focusing on image optimisation, we could help keep everything looking its best without making visitors wait around for pages to load.

And while it might sound like a job for the technically minded, a good website team should be able to explain what’s slowing things down without making you feel like you’ve accidentally wandered into an IT exam.

• Give it a go: Run your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights and see what’s slowing it down. Oversized images are a sensible place to start, but the results will help you identify where the biggest improvements could be made.

4. Give people a reason to trust you

You might know your business is brilliant, but the person visiting your website for the first time hasn’t necessarily got the faintest idea who you are.

And before they hand over their money or get in touch, they’re probably going to want to know you are the real deal.

There’s only so much you can say about how wonderful your business is. Sometimes it’s far more convincing to let your happy customers sing your praises.

But don’t just hide everything away on a testimonials page that nobody visits. Put the evidence where people are actually making decisions.

• Give it a go: Look at your most important service or product page. Have you given visitors a genuine reason to trust you, or are you expecting them to take your word for it?

5. Give mobile visitors a little love

There’s a good chance somebody’s going to visit your website while waiting for a train, sitting on the sofa or pretending they’re not looking at their phone during the adverts.

So, if your website only works beautifully on a big desktop screen, you’ve got a big issue.

Buttons shouldn’t require the precision of a brain surgeon. Text shouldn’t need a magnifying glass. And filling in a simple enquiry form shouldn’t feel like a punishment.

A good mobile experience means making it easy for visitors to find what they need and take action, regardless of the size of the screen they’re using.

Start with the basics. Responsive layouts should adapt properly to different screen sizes, buttons need enough room for people to tap them comfortably and forms should only ask for the information you actually need.

Give visitors the right keyboard for the job, too. Nobody wants to switch between letters and numbers while trying to enter a phone number.

And don’t forget about loading times. A beautiful desktop experience isn’t much consolation if the mobile version takes an age to appear.

• Give it a go: Open your website on your phone and try completing your most important customer journey. Can you find the right information, fill in the forms and click the buttons without getting frustrated? If not, you’ve found somewhere worth improving.

6. Get inside your customers’ heads

It’s easy to get carried away with what you want people to do on your website. Buy this, click that, fill in this form and preferably do it all before lunchtime.

But what about what your customers actually want?

Good user experience (UX) starts with understanding the people using your website. What have they come looking for? What questions do they need answering? And what’s likely to make them give up and look elsewhere?

Because your customers probably aren’t spending their evenings admiring your carefully considered website architecture. They just want to find what they need without any unnecessary fuss.

The good news is, you don’t have to be a mind reader. Between customer interviews, sales conversations and website analytics, there’s plenty of information to help you work out what’s confusing people. And if the same question keeps cropping up, it might be time to give your website a little talking-to.

• Give it a go: Think about the questions customers regularly ask before buying or enquiring. Are the answers easy to find on your website? If not, there’s a good place to start.

7. Make forms and checkout less of a chore

Imagine walking into a shop, choosing exactly what you want and then being handed a four-page questionnaire before you’re allowed to pay.

You’d probably have a few questions of your own. Yet plenty of websites do the digital equivalent.

Whether somebody’s booking a consultation, requesting a quote or buying something online, every unnecessary step gives them another opportunity to change their mind.

Make sure people can tell which fields are required, explain what went wrong if they make a mistake and avoid wiping out everything they’ve entered when something needs correcting. It’s a small thing, but nobody enjoys filling in the same form twice.

For online shops, that might mean offering guest checkout, making payment options clear and avoiding unexpected surprises when customers reach the final step.

• Give it a go: Complete your own enquiry form or checkout process from beginning to end. Count how many fields and clicks it takes. Are they all necessary, or are you making customers jump through a few too many hoops?

8. Stop guessing and start testing

There’s no need to throw a few ideas at the wall and hope something sticks. You can test different headlines, layouts and calls to action to find out what actually encourages people to get in touch, make a purchase or take that all-important next step.

Before you start giving everything a shake-up, make sure you’re actually tracking the actions that matter. Google Analytics 4 can help measure enquiries, purchases and other important actions, while Microsoft Clarity gives you a closer look at how people interact with individual pages.

Once you’ve got a starting point, you can test changes and see what happens. Just remember that a few extra clicks don’t necessarily mean more customers. It’s the meaningful conversions you want to keep an eye on.

• Give it a go: Choose one important page and one thing you want to improve, whether that’s enquiries, purchases or bookings. Check how it’s performing now, make a considered change and track the results.

Is your website earning its keep?

You’ve probably put a fair bit of time, money and effort into getting people to visit your website. It’d be a shame if they all came for a look around and promptly disappeared without so much as a hello.

Improving your website’s conversion rate doesn’t always call for a complete overhaul. Sometimes all it takes is a clearer route to the right information, a few more reasons to trust your business and one or two frustrating little hurdles taken out of the equation.

Other times, the problem runs a little deeper, and that’s where having the right people in your corner can make a world of difference.

At Giant Peach, we bring together strategy, website design, development, UX and SEO to create websites that do an awful lot more than sit there looking pretty.

So if people are flocking to your website but disappearing before they become customers, let’s have a chat. We’d love to get our teeth into it.

Here's that CTA we mentioned