I may be jumping ahead of myself, but this is a really important concept to understand before you invest in your online marketing or new web site. I should be introducing you to Search Engine Optimization before Conversion Ratios but I know that you have heard of SEO but you may not know about converting that traffic into new business. The stated goal of SEO is to drive more qualified traffic to your site. From the site owners perspective the expectation is "more traffic, more sales!" Seems logically right? What if I were to tell you that the volume of traffic is a contributor but is not the major factor when it comes to making sales online?
One of the best keep secrets of online marketing and web sales is that it is your Conversion Ratio is more important the the total number of “hits”. Your conversion ratio is the percentage of visitors who become customers, so if you sell one widget for every 120 visitors to your site. Your conversion ratio will be 100 divided by 120 or 0.83, which means that you are converting 0.83% of your visitors into customers. Unless you are making hundreds of dollars per sale it extremely difficult to make money at a 1% conversion ratio. The web average is about 1% or one sale per every one hundred visitors but if you could improve this to 5% then all of a sudden you are making real money with the same volume of traffic.
These averages are not very reassuring, but there are meaningful techniques to increase conversions. Most of them are focused around creating a compelling reason for someone to buy from you versus your competition. If you have a qualified buyer at your site (remember SEO is about qualified leads not volume of traffic) then you should be able to successfully convert this traffic
1. Have a trustworthy and credible website: People choose to buy from websites that they trust. Have your contact details displayed on your Contact Us pages.
2. Make sure that your visitor knows what your business does: The instant they land on your website. Create benefit rich headlines that start the sales process.
3. Don’t use copy of your offline promotions:Don’t use copy on your website that you have used in your offline promotions it does not work. Your sales literature will generally not have a call to action and compelling copy for the web.
4. You have 10 seconds to make an impression: Make sure that you have short paragraphs so that people can scan the content, grab their attention by stressing the benefits. What can your product or service do for me right now? Will it make me rich? Will it make me thin? Yes, it really needs to be this simple and quick.
5. Don’t mix technical jargon into your sales efforts: People buy with their hearts and afterwards justify their choice with specifications. Sell to emotions and then provide references to the technical information.
6. Use testimonials: To add credibility to your services. Try scanning the letters and posting links to the actual scans so people know that testimonials are valid.
7. Make it easy to pay: By offering your customers two or three payment options. The credit card is the standard but consider adding PayPal or wire-transfer for larger orders.
These are the basic steps to increase your chances of converting viewers into customers without increasing your traffic. More traffic is good; you just need to know what to do with it when it does arrive.
Next time I will discuss free web site statistics software that will let you track your visitors so that you can track your Current Conversion Ratio. If next week seems too far away, and you want more information let me know.