How to Effectively Convert Viewers into Consumers

The success of any business is defined by its ability to lure customers, convince them about the service to confirm a purchase, and in the long term, retain them for future business. This three-step cycle ensures that the organization effectively brings aboard customers and consequently drives sales. However, achieving the desired goal may not be as simple as it looks. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have mathematics or psychology brought into the digital marketing sector.

Visualizing conversions

“Purchase Funnel,” an e-commerce model illustrating the consumer journey towards buying the product or service, outlines the processes a customer undergoes before their final choice. The “conversion sales funnel” highlights some key stages or phases of the business process and depicts the likelihood of customers proceeding to the next stage via its shape. This theoretical model was chosen mainly to demonstrate the struggle of the conversion process and optimize business marketing strategy.

Understanding conversions

Business owners operating through web-based platforms often implement psychology to evaluate the correlation of the scientific subject with that of their business strategy. This is particularly useful to UX designers of a website who need to “connect” with the users to persuade them to make a successful purchase or subscription. Thus, these “six principles of persuasion” by psychologist and marketer Robert Cialdini are closely related to the marketing principles and how some aspects should be prioritized over others to meet users’ expectations and retain them long enough on the website to drive a successful conversion.

Implementing conversions

No matter which external field you delve into outside the marketing world to better understand the digital landscape, you return with the same results and critical principles that will lead you to optimize your conversions. These shared values overlap and serve as comprehensive fundamentals for devising a perfect strategy to derive reasonable modifications.

Brand awareness

The first step, as always, is to draw the user in by redirecting them to the business platform via any channel or source in the online environment. Social media channels are the goldmine of digital marketing, especially with giants like Facebook, which houses 2.2 billion active users. Around 95% of the surveyed millennials (aged 18-34) agreed that they started pursuing a brand’s service after becoming aware of its presence on social networking sites. Moreover, ads and marketing attempts can be devised according to the demographics. Services like the Facebook Audience Insight Tool allow you to segment more significant audiences into smaller pools of individuals to target your product. On such platforms, users who made a purchase considered two factors, above any else, for their decision. Almost 48% of consumers opted for the purchase because the brand was responsive on social media, while 46% of the customers valued the brand’s ability to communicate; promotions and special vouchers were incentives for trying out their service.

For many brands, especially those dealing with original content frequently, targeting specific keywords can improve the chances of being prominent and visible on the higher spots in the organic search results. Google Trends and Analytics can help you focus on keywords most searched for, while Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush also grant access to functions, including keywords used by the competitors within a specific niche.

Lastly, embedding links called backlinks that redirect back to your platform allows you to increase your Domain Authority to get on Google’s radar of useful websites and create brand awareness among different sources, including blogs that bring traffic. Again, the tools above include integrated tools for link building to help with your brand’s outreach.

User experience

Once you’ve caught the user’s attention, it’s time to present the aspects your brand and its website are honored to house. These include a good UX design, a fluid and robust navigation system, and a streamlined surfing experience. An abundance of attractive, prominent, and interactive Call-to-Actions (CTAs) will ensure that the user is never confused about what action to take next, so these buttons create a sense of satisfaction.

All the intricacies involved in increasing the customer base matter. This is exemplified by looking at Offer Factor, an e-commerce fashion retailer that incorporates the navigation bar at the top. It tracks the user’s movement and progresses at the same pace as the user. This means that no matter where you are on a particular page, you wouldn’t need to scroll up to redirect to a different web section.

Keeping aside the design and accessibility of the website, the technical aspects or, simply speaking, the platform’s functionality matters a lot to keep bounce rates to a minimum. This is especially true when the page load times are considered where the optimum benchmark lies at 3 seconds, and any further delay can lead to the loss of 53% of website visitors from the inbound traffic.

Mobile usage statistics have escalated, with over 3.5 billion active operators as of late. Smartphone consumers have spent over trillion in online and offline purchases. It is, therefore, imperative to ensure that mobile-based variation of the web platform remains consistent by using an intuitive and accessible user interface. Concerning eliminating hurdles and striving towards user convenience, incorporating tools like Google’s Lighthouse and Analytics tool or Adobe Analytics will ensure that users’ heatmap and behavioral patterns are analyzed while providing valuable insights into the elements associated with server load, error handling, and navigation.

User engagement and satisfaction

The first two steps often cited as the toughest, are now in the rear. After luring the user in and giving him enough reason to stay and browse through the services helmed at the particular website, now comes the delicate part, where you finalize the deal by ensuring authenticity and originality of the content, such that it relates to the audience and helps you gain their trust. Here, presenting unique, concise, relevant content will be your key to achieving the customer’s confidence and encouraging him toward the subscription page.

Recently, visual content, including infographics and video content, has seen growth regarding user engagement rate. The former is reported to boost the appeal among visitors by 40% by presenting complex data in a simplified, organized, and shareable format. Video content is also on the rise.

As for video content, its format is an attractive way of selling your products and services as it holds a user-retention rate of 88%. These could range from live streams on popular social networking sites like Facebook or Instagram to informative or instructive videos on the product page that tells the user more about the product from a non-binary perspective. For a good example, there’s yet another e-retailer with a UK-based brand, ASOS, where every piece of apparel accompanies a video of 10 seconds.

High-quality product photography goes a long way as it builds the trust and credibility of a business toward its customers. The image of a product is the easiest way to grab customers’ attention and testify to the quality of the product you’re selling.

Lastly, sponsors associated with the brand, celebrity endorsements, customer reviews & feedback, and frankly any display of expertise and knowledge within the field is sure to secure visitors and direct them towards the final goal, the last step at the end of the conversion funnel: becoming a new consumer.

Understanding how conversions work and the complexities involved are essential for reaching out and securing potential customers. Therefore, the emphasis is on following consumer satisfaction, engagement, and retention principles. By effectively utilizing digital marketing platforms to garner traffic and then subsequently captivating the audience via engaging visual content, smooth UX and UI of the website design, and a deep respect for their expectations, the journey for both the consumer and the business end on satisfying terms, as the company works towards the reiteration of the same venture for a different customer.