[For SMBs and creators looking to increase leads, every conversion is valuable. Each conversion can help them gain loyal customers, thereby ensuring long-term success. Here are the ultimate CRO tweaks to close more leads on the portfolio website in 2023.]
For portfolio website success, making tweaks to refine its key elements is crucial. When done smartly, it can help improve website performance, boost traffic, and impact conversions.
So, businesses and creators should prioritize conversion rate optimization (CRO) while preparing marketing strategies.
In this post, we will discuss the concept of conversion rate optimization and why it makes sense for portfolio websites. Besides, we will share five tweaks for portfolio websites to achieve high conversions in 2023.
Let’s get started.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) means optimizing website elements, including landing pages, UX design, content, and more, to attract and enhance leads performing the desired action. Desired actions may comprise buying a product, contacting for a service, downloading a form, clicking on a page, and others.
Mathematically –
Conversion rate = (Number of conversions / total number of website visitors) X 100
If you have a photography portfolio website with 1000 visitors and 100 conversions. Its conversion rate will be – (100/1000) X 100 = 10%
Why Does CRO Make Sense for Portfolio Websites?
CRO can help improve website conversion rates, thereby building lasting customer relationships. This can be a massive advantage for SMBs and creators with portfolio websites. With effective CRO techniques, they can enhance their marketing return on investment.
If the portfolio website converts more leads into paying customers, every penny spent on marketing will be worth it. Not to mention, a single customer can bring the business millions of dollars. CRO can thus help ensure more lead conversion, thereby increasing profitability.
Besides, CRO can help enhance the user experience of the portfolio website. Reports state that 56% of customers expect businesses to offer personalized experiences. By streamlining the site’s navigation and personalizing experiences for the target audience, SMBs, photographers, and creators can boost target audience engagement. This can increase the chances of conversions.
5 CRO Tweaks to Close More Leads on Portfolio Website
#1: Collect Customer Feedback via Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys
According to reports, 88% of customers won’t return to a website after a bad experience. So, it’s pivotal for SMBs to focus on collecting and implementing customer feedback.
Here’s how –
The Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT) score reflects customer perception of a business. With CSAT surveys, brands can uncover customer satisfaction and the reasons for churn. They can understand and fix the pain points on portfolio websites to deliver the best customer experiences.
Pro Tip: Count customer support tools like Hiver to conduct CSAT surveys. This is an excellent tool for measuring customer satisfaction levels at specific touchpoints.
Analyze customer feedback to understand their sentiment and experience with your portfolio website. Identify and work on improvement areas for high CRO.
#2: Stand Out With Modern, Responsive Templates
Recent statistics depict that over 50% of internet consumers use mobile devices. Desktops follow behind with 39% of total internet activity.
If your website template has a non-responsive design, you won’t be able to cater to a massive number of users.
What’s more? Google, the leading search engine platform, penalizes non-responsive websites. Hence, a non-responsive website can make your business miss out on valuable traffic and leads and impact the ROI.
Besides, your templates should grab users’ eyeballs. Substandard template designs can be the reason for users leaving your website. So, implement high-quality, modern templates to stand out from the crowd.
Pro Tip: Opt for Pixpa, the all-in-one website builder platform for businesses, creators, and photographers. Count on this no-code tool to create stunning professional portfolio websites.
Notice the array of responsive and beautiful templates that Pixpa offers.
Here’s what Howard Steele, owner, SuperbWebsiteBuilders, says –
“Pixpa is a powerful platform that allows the creation of impressive online portfolio websites. It suits both newbies and professionals. It has an easy-to-use and intuitive interface that takes only a few hours to build a stunning portfolio website.”
#3: Highlight Your USP and Eliminate Distractions
As a businessperson or solopreneur, you should showcase your best attributes. However, adding too many visual elements to the website may backfire and reduce conversions.
This is especially true if your website is hard to navigate.
The key here is highlighting your unique selling proposition (USP) on the website. Your USP can communicate your professional strength and goals straightforwardly.
Here are a few tips to convince prospects to choose your business over competitors.
- Simplify the Navigation on Landing Pages: Don’t let your users wonder what step to take next. Remove unnecessary forms, CTAs, content, images, and more.
- Improve Your Forms: Minimize or remove the number of unnecessary fields on your forms.
- Avoid Jargon: Write in simple and easy-to-understand language. Be specific about what action you want your users to take while creating the content.
HostingAdvice is an excellent example. Observe their simplified navigation, content, and other visual elements.
#4: Place Your Contact Details Strategically
Leads, especially those considering a significant deal or partnership, may need guidance from you or someone from your team.
An easy way to let the customers connect to your business is by sharing contact details. So, include a business phone number, email address, and address on your website.
The question is – where?
Not all prospects will land on your homepage. So, besides placing the details on the homepage, add them on pages with maximum traffic. This will make it easier for the customers to reach your team, thereby simplifying decision-making.
#5: Perform A/B Tests for Sure Shot Success
Guessing the customer’s expectations can’t help your business grow.
You should implement practices like A/B testing or bucket testing to get a clear picture. With A/B tests, you can share two variables of your website, landing pages, and more.
For instance, you can create and share two layouts for your portfolio website.
Direct half of the audience to the first version, while others to the second website version.
Next, decide a timeframe for the experiment and analyze the number of conversions. Check the number of conversions on both pages. The page with the maximum conversion wins.
This strategy can help you understand what works for your business, thereby boosting conversions.
Conclusion
Increasing conversions can be a game-changer for businesses, especially SMBs. This is the best possible way to increase the ROI. The key to doing that is attracting and converting prospects into leads. Put the shared CRO tweaks into practice, and you’ll be able to close more leads on your portfolio website in 2023.
Author bio: Steven Macdonald is a digital marketer based in Tallinn, Estonia. In the last 10 years, he’s helped e-commerce and B2B SaaS brands generate more than $100 million in new revenue through SEO, content and conversion optimization.
Twitter – https://twitter.com/stevenmacd0nald
Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenlmacdonald/
