Conversion Rates

I got started about a year ago and from a position of total ignorance have been trying to learn a little as I go. My main problem seems to be low conversion rates it is slowly increasing but have you any suggestions how I can take steps to improve matters?

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Permalink Reply by SUp.biz, COO on July 1, 2008 at 3:09pm: Here's the first ten from a good article that will help you.
http://www.terrydean.org/25-ways-to-increase-conversion/ <<See the other 15 Here

1. Study copywriting. Become a student of copywriting and persuasion. It’s a part of everything you do in your online business from writing PPC ads to writing sales letters.

2. Offer basic and deluxe options to your offers. While this may or may not increase your conversion, it will increase your income per visitor. Some will choose the basic. The ones who choose the deluxe boost your profits.

3. Use bullets whenever possible to describe your offer benefits. Very few people “read” online sales letters. They skim them so use bullets, sub-heads, graphics, etc. to keep pulling them back in.

4. Test deleting your first few paragraphs or even your first few pages of copy. Even experienced copywriters sometimes do a little warming up. Get the point as quickly as possible.

5. Make the checkout process simple with as few clicks as possible. The more pages you add in between the sales page and checkout, the more dangerous your sales process becomes.

6. Give proof for anything you say. Your visitors don’t believe you. Give them facts, samples, videos, and demos. Show checks, charts, endorsements, etc. If you can’t back it up, they don’t believe it.

7. Check your page load speed. On long sales copy sites, you may want to break up your tables with one table up top with a page or so of your text, and the rest in a second table. The top table will load up first.

8. Collect opt-in email leads and follow-up. This one should be no surprise to you if you regularly read this blog, but it’s vital to increasing your conversion rates. At least get their email address. Get their physical address and phone number for even higher response.

9. Keep the navigation very simple on your page. The more options or confusing your page is, the worse your conversion rate will be. That’s why you see many sales pages with almost no navigation at all.

10. Restate the offer and guarantee on the order forms. Shopping cart abandonment is always an issue. Do your best to curb this by making the offer again on the order form.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ar-Lena Richardson "The Sports ePublicist" on September 21, 2008 at 10:16pm: Greetings with Gratitude.
This is the best itemization of things to check for conversion improvement.
Relationship buiiding is crucial for converting the trafffic and lists to profits.
However, if you don't take care of the items that you've outlined,
an online business owner won't get the chance to establish the all important relationship.
Ar Lena The Sports ePublicist; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Bill Reinicke on November 16, 2008 at 4:54pm: This is a great article with great points we should all practice regularly. SEO and conversion rates continue to be a challenge. It becomes tempting to by conversions from adwords, I know, when I face frustration I think about and then I remind myself that is not the answer, getting better at what I am doing is the answer. It is not success in a bottle that is for sure.

Bill Reinicke
Alb N.M
www.Fat2Flat.ws
Your Own Domain and Hosting $10 Per Month; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Tony Dimmock on May 28, 2009 at 5:19am: Hi Linda,

To increase your conversion rates on your website, I would also look closely at gaining far more "Quality" in-bound links and ensuring that the copy on your website is Keyword/Keyphrase focused, which will give your website far more coverage on the search engines.

Targeted traffic from quality directories and websites will also push your website up Google Rankings as links from other "mature and respected" websites not only give your website a big "thumbs up" with Google, but also give visitors relevance - one of the most important terms to understand for online success with search engine and humans!

Hope this helps - if you have further questions, please reply.

Tony (tony@dimmockwebmarketing.co.uk); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by TheMaster on July 1, 2008 at 6:28pm: Are you buying traffic? Has your organic search engine traffic increased?

Unless you are keeping track of conversions from each ad source separate from your organic search, it can be misleading.

Overtime, most websites will pick up some search traffic for words that are indirectly related to their website. These words will not convert well. If you are not doing it already, then you need to have a specific keyword that you advertise for daily and track conversions. This will give you a baseline and allow you to see dips or increases.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Linda Sones on July 2, 2008 at 4:09am: Thanks for you replies some very useful suggestions. I am not paying for adwords at present but I do publish quite a few articles not always with my keywords and write a daily blog I had hoped to build links in this way.
Regards,
Linda; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Steve SEO UK on August 17, 2008 at 10:32am: Hi Linda,

It can be quite a complex area of debate and I do see many stats from people claiming 10% down to half of 1% conversion against total visits to a web page offering goods or services at a price.

I've personally found that not selling on the landing page but using it as a way of getting feedback by way of asking questions of the visitors.

Having a Forum with your site could entice people to give their views on your content matter and thereby help to build friendship and trust first before you subtly sell them. Good way of getting repeat visitors who keep coming back to follow a thread on a subject.

If you are optimizing your site for top search engine results, then try to get top results for "long tail keywords". The more word about a product or service a searcher types into a search field in a search engine, the more specific the result and possibly a better conversion rate.

Anyway, I wish you success,
Steve SEO UK; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Matt LaClear on August 17, 2008 at 4:17pm: Hi Linda...conversion rates vary tremendously depending on the source of traffic thats hitting your page. That's why it's so darn important you incorporate some sort of analytics software to track where everything is coming from. I recommend you start out with www.statcounter.com or Google analytics. Both of which are free. Once you get a grip on where the traffic is coming from you can then get a better idea on how to increase your conversion rates.

But until you know where your traffic is coming from you will not stand a very good chance of converting that traffic at high rates.

For example, lets say you are operating a website that sells hamster cages and you have some good traffic hitting your page organically from Google under the keyword "Hamsters" and for some reason you are not getting any conversions from the traffic. The culprit could be any number of variables such as poor copywriting, inferior healine, no opt in mechanism, no call to action, the wrong font, etc. But after doing a bit more research you find out that the people who are typing in "hamsters" on Google really are not interesting in caring for hamsters but rather in doing research on them because they do not yet own one. Now if thats the case you will stand little hope of ever converting that traffic at any significant rate.

The whole idea is to make sure the traffic hitting your page is actually your precise target audience. Say for example customers searching "cheap hamster cages". Then when you are sure you have your target audience at your site then you can start playing with all the other variables I mentioned earlier.

Good luck and happy selling Linda!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ar-Lena Richardson "The Sports ePublicist" on September 9, 2008 at 9:16pm: Hey Matt,
You absolutely are absolutely on point with the analytics.
I am always amazed by the number of site owners her don't have a clue about how crucial they are to create, refine, and execute a winning web promotion and ultimate conversion strategy.
You post included a few tips that I hadn't considered.
You've helped me.
Ar Lena The Sports ePublicist; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Bill Reinicke on November 16, 2008 at 4:58pm: Hey Matt,
You bring up some really good points that are helpful. Thank you for the links also.
Bill
www.Fat2Flat.ws; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Rossi Eason on August 25, 2008 at 7:34pm: Linda this is a common problems for most who are beginning in internet marketing. You may need to work on your ability to write pesuasively. As a marketer you most important skill is copywriting.

Copywriting simply put is your ability to sell with written words. When delivering a sales message traditionally it is done through voice whether you are trying to set an appointment over the phone talking to someone in line or at a prospects office or kitchen table.

However what if you could take that same message and and write it on paper or on a website perhaps. Now you can have those words selling for you over and over.

The best part is if you think of something you want to say or should have said you can easily change it.

Lets look at a few strategies for persuasive copywriting. The first step and the most overlooked step is market reasearch.

Copywriting isn't meant to be a guessing game or a shot in the dark. It is in fact the science of human behavior and what makes us tick.

On the internet you would do this research by doing keyword research. You can Google a tool called word tracker. This will let you know what keywords are being searched the most so this lets you know where most people's problem are.

There are however certain web hosting application such as SBI (Site Build It) that actually provide this included in the software.

After you have done your research you should create a swipe file as you should also research other pre written sales letters so you can get your creative juices flowing.

The third thing that you must do is Test! Test! Test! After writing your copy you must absolutely perform a split test!

If you are using adwords you must test your click through ratio. If you are testing your personal website then you will need to test your conversion rates or your opt-ins to see how well you are converting.

Follow these tips as this should be enough to get you to start writing some good copy!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Linda Sones on September 4, 2008 at 12:56pm: Thanks Ros for your helpful tips, can I just ask what is a split test?; ▶ Reply to This