Optimizing your marketing campaigns and website elements for conversions is an important and tedious task. Whether you are a small-time blogger or a large business, there are plenty of reasons why you need to optimize your website and efforts in such a way. Depending on your niche and focus, there are dozens of different conversion optimization strategies available for you to employ, but not all suggested tactics are ideal. If you have recently performed some conversion optimization or are planning to in the short-term, then continue reading to find out which conversion optimization errors you should avoid.

Incorrect Placement of Call to Action

Many people fail to understand the significance of proper CTA placement. While there are some instances in which the precise placement may not matter, in many cases it is crucial to place such an element where people are most likely to engage. For instance, a long description of a product – complete with benefits, uses and testimonials – should not have the CTA placed at the very beginning. Rather, placing the CTA toward the end of the landing page or pitch will ensure you’re pinging users who are most likely to convert – and at exactly the right time. This placement strategy dramatically increases conversions.

Failing to Test Your Efforts

Every conversion optimization effort should be tested and measured before settling on the strategy. Failure to test the optimization strategy in question may result in lacklustre performance that becomes the norm instead of a mere deviation. The best way in which to test new strategies is to perform comprehensive A/B testing on the affected elements. You can create two variations in the form of landing pages, emails or whatever format you’re using – one with the changes, and one without – to see which one performs better. You can also create multiple variations or changes to test two or more changes against a control. The more testing you can do, the better your long-term results will be.

Driving Untargeted Traffic

Many people consider increased traffic to be a good thing. They will even expand the scope of their marketing and optimization efforts to ensure that more people are initially attracted to their websites and landing pages. Unfortunately, such a strategy can be devastating for conversion optimization success. Why? Because in order to initially pique the interests of a larger group of people, you must start pinging users with a broader pitch that may or may not be in their direct and relevant interests. While you may ultimately drive more traffic, your conversions will suffer from the untargeted traffic. Always be sure to forgo quantity for quality: highly-targeted traffic is always going to be the best route.

If you are driving untargeted traffic to your website, failing to test changes made to your optimization strategy and placing your CTAs in inappropriate places, then you could be shooting yourself in the foot. Eliminate these bad strategies so that your conversion optimization efforts pay off.