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Improving your "Conversion Ratio"
Tips, information and resources for improving your Conversion Rate & making more profit from your current traffic.
If you could double your sales with your current website traffic, you'd do it, right? This section has tips, information and resources that can help you do just that.
You will see how easy it is to turn casual visitors into repeat visitors. Repeat visitors become customers, they tell their friends, they subscribe to your newsletter ~ in other words, they are your best friends.
The following list will help to turn "visitors" into friends and customers... and that can only help improve your conversion rate.
The first five tips will apply to 99.5% of all websites. Ignore them at your own risk. As for the other tips - not everything will apply to every type of website. Read through the stuff below and use what you can.
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Improve your website design and navigation. This is your first priority! More sales are lost on websites that have poor design or confusing navigation than you can imagine. I've read reports where they claim that over 70% of people who are ready, willing and able to buy online - don't complete the sale. Simply because they can't figure out how to use the website!
I have personally been to websites, ready and eager to buy, and been unable to find any real information about what I knew they were selling.
Don't let this happen to you. Check out the Website Design Tips section for ways to improve your your customer's experience.
Test everything in real-world conditions. Have a friend sit down and go through the entire process from start to finish. Surfing in from the web, finding a product, making a purchase.
Watch - but don't speak. Let them figure it out. Take notes about any step or process that seemed difficult or confusing to your friend. Then go make it better.
Do that with different people, on different computers. You may be amazed at what you learn about how people actually use their computers and the internet. You may also see some surprising differences in how your website looks on different systems.
Give your visitors the information they want. I know, that sounds really vague. What I'm getting at is simply this: Most people online are looking for information. That's all. Just information. Most online purchases are made on impulse. The remainder are made by people who have done the research and learned all that they can about the item they want to buy. If they learned from you - they are more likely to return to buy later.
Use an Autoresponder Service An autoresponder is simply an 'automatic response' email that sends out your pre-written message(s), 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Get this working for you as soon as possible - it's easy to set up and all it takes is a series of emails and prospects to send them to. You can set up a whole sequence of autoresponder messages going out on any day you choose.
For example, message 1 might go out immediately, then message #2 goes out 2 days afterwards, message #3 goes out on day 5, then day 8 comes another message, etc, etc.Do you see the beauty of this whole thing? It's a simple way to put your sales message on auto-pilot.
If you need help writing compelling and powerful autoresponder messages - this ebook, with it's massive collection of winning autoresponder messages to model, copy and swipe, is yours for only $19 $17 (plus you'll get the rights to sell this new resource and you keep all the profit!)
You must get to know who is visiting your website, and why. I don't mean who exactly, I mean who, demographically. If you are serving ads for the wrong products to your visitors they won't buy any.
Find out where they came from, what they were looking for when they found your website, what pages they looked at, how long they stayed, etc.
How? Your host should provide a method of tracking visitor statistics, and an access log that will give you tons of information.
You can provide your visitors with a site-search feature and you get a regular report of what words people are searching for. Use that data to give them what they want.
Ask them. You can set up a poll on your site and ask all kinds of stuff. Find out gender, age group, education, kids, pets, etc... use that data to narrow the focus of your ad space.
Note: To get that kind of info from a poll you'll need to re-assure them that you are not collecting any personally-identifiable data, and you may need to offer some sort of incentive as well - to pay for their time.
Mask your affiliate URLs Believe it or not, some people won't click on a link if it looks like an affiliate link. But we have to use the link to get paid. Dilemma. So what you can do is 'mask' the link code with a small code 'snippet'.
Put your mouse cursor over this example and look down at the browser statusbar. (works in most browsers)
You can make it say whatever you want, and it works for both text and image links.
Copy the code below, change the URL and the text you want to show on bottom and paste it to your pages.
Use a URL redirection service for your affiliate links. Like the tip above, the idea is to use a small, seemingly innocuous URL in place of the affiliate code. I don't think it's such a good idea anymore, except in a newsletter where the affiliate code will be too long.
The reason I don't use them is only that it takes a measurable amount of time - sometimes a long time - for the re-direction to take place. Plus - people aren't dumb. After a few times of seeing a URL like http://snipurl.com/jhdy4 in the statusbar they know it's just some scamlink that the webmaster is using to try to fool them.
At least by using the code snippet in the box above you can make it look like a real website URL when the user mouses over it, even if the statusbar fleetingly shows the affiliate code after the link is clicked on.
Get directly to the point. Especially on your homepage - tell your visitors exactly what they will find at your website. Use plain, common words and phrases. Tell them "What's in it for them" right away, they will know that they are at the right place and won't leave right away.
Add a good Site Search feature A good site search will improve your sales by making it easier for customers to find what they want. Look for a search service that 1) will re-index all of your pages automatically. 2) will give you regular reports about what people are searching for... and 3) will show the search results accurately and in an easy-to-use format.
You can use the Google service like I have here, or you can hook up with a service like FreeFind or SiteLevel.
Get an 800-number Having a toll free number is a great way to boost your sales. I doubt if it even matters what you are selling. It shows that you are committed to your customers - and that increases your credibility and the customer's feeling of security.
You have to be careful, though, and not add the toll free number until your business is doing well enough to pay for it.
Sell the Sizzle, not the steak. I know it's cliché - but it's true. People buy what they want, not what they need, unless the need is immediate. Write your ad copy to sell the emotional benefits, not the features of the product.
For example - a sweater that "makes you look Great" and "Keeps you toasty warm" will sell a lot faster than a sweater that "was made in Tibet by monks" and "is tan with a design of llamas". But it's the same sweater.
Increase your credibility This is one of the simplest, but most overlooked factors in the success of any company selling products online. All you do is place a company (or personal) biography on your website. You don't have to get really personal about it, but give enough information that any potential customer will feel more comfortable buying from you.
It also helps a lot to have a small photo or two - and I don't mean some actor, use a real photo of yourself or the building where your business is located.
You can get a lot more information about that here - Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.
Publish a newsletter This is not the place for all that needs to be said about publishing a newsletter, but take my word for this much: If you don't have a newsletter subscriber list, it is very likely that your website will fail.
There is no excuse for any webmaster not to have a newsletter. Daily, weekly, monthly - doesn't matter. Just make one.
Make it personal, but professional in tone. Keep to a maximum of 20% advertising and a minimum of 80% content.
If you can't write articles, there are hundreds of thousands of free articles available for you to reprint.
Use your 'real estate' wisely. The most important part of your website is the top of the page. Or maybe I should say - the part that shows before the visitor ever touches a scrollbar. Use that 'above the fold' area for your premium advertisers.
I've read reports / statistics that show that top-right placement of an ad can increase clicks by nearly 100%.... and I've read that placing an ad on the right side, just above the fold can increase click-through over 200%!
Use your 'Sig' file for back-end sales. A 'Sig' file is a signature file. It's a few lines of text that can be placed at the end of email you send. Most email programs will let you set up a variety of automatic Sig files. Use one for first contacts, another for sales follow-up emails.
On the follow-up email, you can use the Sig file as a non-intrusive way to generate more sales.
Use Testimonials Simply contact your customers and ask if they would write a short note about how they liked your product/service. A few good testimonials are worth their weight in gold. If you are selling a good product they aren't hard to get, either.
Give a Personal Testimonial If you're promoting a product or service that you use then you can share your opinions and experience with your visitors. Be honest about it, people can spot a phony pretty quick. Once you loose credibility with someone they're gone forever.
Promote your products with a PPC service. (PPC = Pay per Click) It's not a free service, but for a high return on your investment, PPC is hard to beat. (That's why there are so many popping up everywhere.)
Text Links generate more clicks than banners or buttons It's just a fact that many people (including some advertisers) seem to ignore. But if you watch your traffic stats for a while, you'll notice that the text links get at least twice as many clicks as the same advertiser's banner ads.
Place Text Links within your paragraphs. A well-placed, integrated text link will generate ten times more clicks than the world's greatest banner ad. You can also add text links to the end of a paragraph, like: "More Info about .... Here" or "Learn More About ..... "
Try to avoid the moldy-oldie "click here" link text, it often breaks up the flow of a sentence. Also, I suspect that veteran surfers are able to pretend that those words are 'invisible' while they're reading.
Other Information:
Affiliate Networks
In-House Affiliate Programs
Tips for finding the right affiliate programs for your website
AffiliateMatch Directory
Track & protect your affiliate data with Affiliate Manager!