Improving Conversion Rates
Table of Contents What Is a Conversion Rate? ............................................................................ - 3 Have One Purpose Per Page .......................................................................... - 5 Being Different Is Good.................................................................................... - 6 Know Exactly What Your Market Wants .......................................................... - 8 Get inside Your Visitor’s Subconscious ......................................................... - 10 Display Trust .................................................................................................. - 12 Testing and More Testing .............................................................................. - 14 Bring the Right Visitors to your Site ............................................................... - 16 Give the Customer Payment Choices ............................................................ - 18 Add Urgency .................................................................................................. - 19 Recommended Conversion Tools .................................................................. - 20 -
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What Is a Conversion Rate? There is a great deal of confusion concerning conversion rates among those who are newer to Internet Marketing. Some marketers who teach new marketers make it all very confusing, when it is actually quite simple. A conversion rate is simply the ratio or percentage of web site visitors that take the action that you wanted them to take. When you improve your conversion rate, you are essentially getting a higher percentage of your overall site visitors to take the action that you wanted them to take. Some people think that the conversion rate is limited to the number of sales made, and this is absolutely wrong. Your call to action could be any number of things. In the online world, however, your all to action is usually limited to a sale, to a sign up, or to a download. All of these things must be measured, so that you not only know how you are doing, but also know whether you need improvement or not. The conversion rate is really very easy to figure out. You first need to look at your web site statistics, or your web log. What you need to know is your number of unique visitors. You also need to know the number of actions (sales or sign ups) that have been taken. With those two numbers, your conversion rate is figured using the following formula: Sales/visitors x 100 = Conversion Rate
Or Number of sales divided by Number of Visitors multiplied by 100 = Conversion Rate
This formula works for figuring out any type of conversion that you want to figure. For example, if you wanted to figure the conversion for sign ups, you would replace the number of sales, with the number of signups. If you wanted to determine the conversion rate for your newsletter, you would replace the number of visitors with the number of subscribers. Along with conversion rates, however, there is other important information that you need to know. This includes the cost per visitor and the cost per customer. If you don’t know how much it is costing you to attract new visitors, and how much it is costing you to convert those visitors to customers, you don’t know how much you can afford to spend to attract new visitors and convert them to customers.
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To determine the cost per visitor, or CPV, use this formula: Marketing cost/number of visitors x 100 = cost per visitor
To determine the cost per customer, or CPC, use this formula: Marketing cost/number of sales x 100 = cost per customer
Simply put, you absolutely must know what your conversion rate is, and what it is costing you. Without this information, you cannot expect to succeed, and any success that you have will most likely be short lived. Building a business is like anything else, it is an ongoing learning process, full of continual changes in an effort to always improve. Now that you have your current information, how can you improve your conversion rate? Again, there are many things that you can do to improve your conversion rate, but before we get started with that, we need to touch on one other thing. If you make changes, and don’t document or remember what those changes were, you will resemble a chicken running around with its head cut off. It will eventually become mass confusion, and you won’t have any idea as to where you should turn next. Tracking conversions and costs is important. Tracking changes is also important. As you work through this publication, make sure that you pay special attention to the section on testing, and make sure that you are using the tools needed to track how well your changes are doing. Changing one small thing at a time is one way of improving conversions, but it will improve conversions slowly, when you may prefer for conversions to be improved quickly. With proper tracking, you can change multiple things, and still see how much each change has improved your conversion rate, improving the conversion rate much quicker in the process. In most cases, no matter how successful you are, or how high your conversion rate is, if it isn’t 100%, there is room for improvement. There are numerous ways that one can improve their conversion rate, and expert marketers around the world spend most of their working hours doing this very thing. Are you ready to improve your conversion rate? If so, read on!
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Have One Purpose per Page The first way to improve conversions is to have just one purpose per page. This limits the action that your customers can take, and gives you a better idea of what is and is not working. Each page should have one purpose, or one call to action. Throughout this publication, you will be asked to look at things from your visitor’s point of view. There is a good reason for doing this. Let’s say that you think a blue outfit would look great on your mother. Unfortunately, your mother hates the color blue with a passion. Do you think that you will convince her to buy that blue outfit? You need to see things from her point of view, just as you need to see things from your visitor’s point of view. This is important to your conversion rate. With that said, look at your sales page from your visitor’s point of view for just a moment. You arrive at the page, and are confronted with numerous directions to go. You look at the page for just a moment, and click a link. You are whisked away to another page – or another site – and you will never find your way back to the original site. One action per page – let’s take a look at that. You want to build a list and have your visitors’ signup for your newsletter. You want to sell a product. You want your visitors to watch a video. You want your visitors to register for a teleseminar. You want too much from your visitors at one time! If you present all of this to your visitor, on one page, they won’t know which direction to go. A better way to present this to your visitors would be with a navigation process. Note that the process begins with the right advertising, targeting the right visitors to your site, which is discussed later. For now, let’s assume that you have brought the right visitor to your site. The best thing to do is to bring them to an opt-in page, where you collect their name and email address. In exchange for this, you are going to give them access to an informational video. They fill in their name and email address, and are instantly taken to the page that loads the video. Below the video, there should be a link that takes them to the signup page for your teleseminar, where they can get more in depth information, which of course relates to your newsletter and the video that they’ve just seen. Once they’ve registered, you may present them with your sales page…or you may reserve that until the teleseminar. The key here is that you have a navigation process, often referred to as a sales process, which you lead your visitor through, with only one action available on each page that they have seen. The only other option that they have is to leave your site, and if you’ve attracted the right visitors, you really don’t have to worry about them taking that option.
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Being Different Is Good Have you ever shopped online? If so, the chances are good that you had more than one choice when it came to your purchase. What made you decide to purchase from one site over another? The chances are also very good that the site that you purchased from had something to offer that the other site did not. It was, in some way, different, even if the product was exactly the same. Most of us spent our whole lives trying to fit in. We didn’t want to stand out from the crowd. We wanted to look like our friends, to dress like our friends, to do the things that our friends did, and of course to be just like our friends. Being called ‘different’ was a horrible thing, and the most feared nightmare of teenagers everywhere. Unfortunately, we carried that desire to be just like everyone else with us into our adult lives. We strive to have homes and yards that are comparable with our friends and neighbors. We buy the latest fashions, so that we look like everyone else. We get our hair styled like our friends. The list goes on and on. We are programmed, from young ages, to be just like everyone else, and when we carry that notion into our adult lives, we also carry it right into business with us. When you are trying to improve your conversions however, you’d best dare to be different. This also relates to the USP, or Unique Selling Position that you will hear so much about in Internet Marketing circles. Your USP is what sets you apart from the competition. What is it that makes your service or product different from someone else’s? If you are selling the same product as someone else, why should a customer purchase the product from you, instead of from someone else selling the same product? You absolutely must be different if you want to have success, and you want to improve your conversion rate. So, what are some ways that you can be different? You might think that changing the appearance of your site makes you different…and in a sense it does, but it won’t make enough of a difference to improve conversions. Many marketers set themselves apart by offering bonus gifts for customers who make purchases, with additional bonus gifts available to those who make purchases in a certain period of time. Some people think bonus gifts have become over rated, but they really haven’t. When you are selling a product that is identical to a product that someone else is selling, bonus gifts is one of the easiest, fastest, and in some cases, the only way
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to set yourself apart from your competitors. Offering these bonus gifts can be the difference between making the sale, and losing the sale. Furthermore, the way that you present those bonus gifts makes a difference as well. If two sites offer the same product, and the same bonus gifts, but one site uses graphical ecovers to present the bonus gifts, while the other site just uses text, without ecovers to depict those gifts, the site that used the ecovers will most likely get the sale. If both sites went with the text only option, and one site described the bonus products, and the other site simply put the names of the products, without any description, the one with the descriptions will most likely get the sale. If your product is identical to the product that others are selling, as is often the case with product launches that Internet Marketers are so famous for, your bonus gifts should absolutely be unique. Bonus gifts don’t even have to be downloads. It could be something like free admission to a teleseminar that you are hosting, an hour or two of consultation with you, or a free subscription to a subscription based website that you own. As mentioned earlier, the look of your site also matters. While it doesn’t always make a great deal of difference in your conversion rate, there are instances where the look and feel of your site actually can mean the difference between making a sale and losing a sale. In most cases, if you have anything on your site that may be construed as irritating to visitors, they may surf away. This includes blinding or blinking text, graphics that load too slowly, and audio or video that cannot be stopped by the user. Music is never appreciated on business sites. So, while you note that most sites do not do these things, these are not areas where you want to be different. In this instance, not being different at all is a better thing. Being different – in a good way - means adding value to the original product that nobody else is adding, and even better, value that nobody else is even capable of adding. It could also mean offering outstanding or superior customer service, faster delivery times, offering payment options that others don’t offer, and of course offering bonuses that others cannot offer. So, you must put your fears of being different behind you, and learn to embrace being different. If you want to improve your conversions, take a look at your site, and then go look at your competitor’s sites. How can you set yourself apart from those competitors?
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Know Exactly What Your Market Wants The worst mistake an Internet Marketer can make is to assume that they know what their market wants. Many run out and spend loads of money developing products, based on their assumption, without doing any real research to determine what their market truly wants or needs. When marketers do this, they often find themselves with a product that nobody is buying. The product may be fabulous. It may be of the highest quality. The sales copy may be out of this world. Everything seems perfect, but that one little problem persists…this is not the product that the market wanted or needed, and this, of course, will result in a low or non-existent conversion rate. So, how can you avoid this costly mistake? The answer is quite simple. Ask your market what they want or need, and then give them the product that they have asked for. Start visiting forums where your target market can be found. Read those posts, pay attention to the questions, the concerns, and the complaints that are associated with your topic. Make lists. Create a free gift or two, such as ebooks or videos, which pertain to your market, and then set up a survey. Ask questions, based on the information that you have received, collect names and email addresses, and offer the free gift in exchange for people filling out the survey. You can usually invite people from the forums to fill out the survey, and you can promote it with a short pay-per-click campaign as well. Don’t just do one survey. Do several survey’s to really narrow down what your target market wants, needs, expects, and even find out what they are willing to pay for a product that can address their wants or needs. Make sure that you are building your list as you continue to conduct these surveys. When you create the product, allow a certain number of people to try it out for you, to ensure that you have really created what they want or need. Accept feedback, and make changes to the product as necessary. Ask those people for testimonials once you’ve tweaked and tuned the product to their satisfaction. What you have at the end of this process is an outstanding product that your market truly wants, at a price that they are willing to pay, and a list of customers who will most likely purchase the product. You will also have testimonials for your sales page from customers who have actually used the product.
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If you were one of those marketers that created the product without really finding out what your customers wanted or needed, don’t despair. There is still hope, and if you’ve created a digital product, you can make changes. Again, go to the forums, and see what people want and need, and determine how it pertains to the product that you have. Set up surveys. Ask people to try your product. Get their feedback and make changes. Tweak and tune that product that you created until it finally meets the standards and requirements of your customers. Once that is done, re-launch the product. You may want to rename it as well. Knowing exactly what your customers want does more than just help you to create a great product that will sell. This information will also help you to write the most effective sales copy possible. Through the sales copy, you can let your visitors know that you’ve heard them, and that your product addresses all of those problems, concerns, complaints, needs, and/or desires that they have in this area. Your sales copy can go on to tell them exactly how the product meets their requirements – what it will do for them. Once again, look at your sales page from your visitor’s point of view. You want to find sales copy that addresses your needs or desires – not sales copy that addresses needs and desires that the writer of that copy just thinks that you have. There was a time when consumers watched or listened to commercials, or read sales copy that introduced products that would supposedly make their lives better. In many cases, the consumer didn’t even know the product existed, much less that they needed it, and in reality, they really didn’t need it, but good copy could convince them that they did. Consumers would actually buy things that they did not need, and in many cases would never use – or they bought products in an attempt to be just like their family, friends, and neighbors. We have become an informed society. The days of manufacturers and such telling the consumers what they want are over. Now, the consumers have the ability to tell manufacturers what they want, and the manufacturers must listen. If they fail to listen, there are other manufacturers out there that will listen, and will give the consumers what they want. You need to be that type of product creator. You need to find out what your market wants, create a product that gives them what they want – or redesign your current product – and then write sales copy that lets them know that you have a product that gives them what they want.
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Get inside Your Visitor’s Subconscious You must know more than what your visitors really want; you must also have the ability to get inside of their heads, and even into their subconscious minds. This is done in a variety of ways on a sales page. It all matters – from the colors used on the page, to how the page is laid out, to the actual words used in the sales letter, and even to the use of graphics and bold, colored, and italicized type. What your visitor visually sees on the page has a profound effect on what is going on in their subconscious mind. First, let’s take a look at color. The question has been asked over and over again, and while some have tried to answer, the truth is that there is no clear cut answer. ‘Which colors are best for my sales page?’ Well, the answer to that is which colors raise your conversion rates the most? Color does have an effect on ones subconscious mind, but there are other factors there as well. For example, the color green makes people think of money, subconsciously, and if you have a sales page for a business opportunity, you might assume that you need to use a lot of green. Unfortunately for you, there are other factors that also have an effect on ones subconscious, and if using the color green always resulted in a sale, all sales pages of this nature would be green…wouldn’t they? There are no right or wrong color schemes. There are colors schemes that work best for you particular product, and your particular market, but with that said, you do need to find that color scheme that is the best for your product and market. Go look at someone else’s sales page – not your own. Pick a sales page for something that you are honestly in the market to buy if possible. Now, looking at that page, as a visitor and potential customer, how did you read that sales page? Really think about that for just a second. What did your eyes jump to first? What information did you actively seek out on the page? The chances are good that you didn’t read the whole page through the first time….you probably scanned it…and while you scanned it, certain words jumped out at you. Why did those words jump out? In most cases, it will be because they looked different from the other text on the page. They may have been bold, italicized, highlighted, or colored differently. They got your attention. How does your visitor feel? Write down emotions that your potential customers may be feeling when they arrive at your site. For example, if you were selling a weight loss product, you would assume that your customer doesn’t feel attractive. They are suffering from ill health, due to being overweight. They are fatigued
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often. They can’t do the things that they want to do, because their weight prevents it. They hate to shop for clothing. Do you get the idea? Based on the product that your visitors are looking at, how are they likely to be feeling from an emotional standpoint? You want to address those emotions, and then you want to bring them up, and get them excited because you have the solution. You can make them look better and feel better. You can put more money in their pockets. You can make their lives easier. Just be sure that you bring them up in a realistic fashion, without using any hype. You have to determine how your visitor feels now, and how they want to feel, as well as how your product is going to make them feel. You must address these things in your sales letter if you want to raise conversion rates. You need to learn about triggers. Triggers are words that hit the visitor right in the subconscious, and make them want to buy. Copywriting experts say that there are 30 triggers that make people subconsciously want to make a purchase. The most powerful triggers, however, are:
1. People want more time. 2. People want to look better. 3. People want more money, or to save more money. 4. People want to learn something new. 5. People want to improve their quality of life. 6. People want to live longer.
If you can include any (or all) of these most powerful sales triggers in your sales copy, you will vastly improve your conversion rates. Remember, use realistic copy – don’t use hype, or you will make sales, and issue lots of refunds following those sales. If you want to write your own sales copy, or you already write your own copy, make sure that you invest in a good copywriting course, where you can learn more about triggers, and how to put things in a way that makes your visitors want to purchase from you.
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Display Trust If your visitors have no reason to trust you, they probably won’t purchase anything from you. It is as simple as that. There are a variety of things that you can do, on your sales page, to generate trust, even if your visitor has never even heard of you before. First, make absolutely sure that you offer a 100% money back guarantee. Furthermore, make sure that your guarantee is a ‘no questions asked’ guarantee, and of course, you should put a time limit on it. Normal guarantee time limits are 30, 60, or 90 days, but some people give one year or life time guarantees, depending on the product. Don’t just offer a guarantee. Make sure that you are prepared to follow through with it! In the case of digital products, many people don’t want to offer the guarantee, but if you don’t, you will lose sales, and in reality, few people take advantage of a guarantee in an attempt to steal a product. Some will, but most won’t. In the case of products that are physically shipped, you may need to stipulate that the product must be returned to you before a refund is issued. Digital products, unfortunately, cannot be returned. Instead, you should request that the customer remove the product from their hard drive. Make sure that you honor all refund requests in a timely and professional manner. Next, make use of testimonials. If you don’t have any testimonials, get some. You need between three and five testimonials on your sales page, and the best testimonials are honest ones. You don’t want false testimonials. Instead, ask customers to submit feedback to you, in exchange for a free gift. Many marketers will send the product to a select few, before it is actually launched, free of charge, and ask them to submit a testimonial for the product in exchange…and most of these people will do that. Great testimonials include a picture of the person, their first name – and in some case, their last name, if they are willing to share it – and where they are from. Join associations that provide seals of trust for your website. Some associations such as this include the Better Business Bureau Online, Scam Free Zone, Truste, and Trust Build. Put those seals on your website, as they instill confidence in your visitors. These should be placed down near the order button, and on the order page, if possible. Include a link on your sales page that opens up a new window, which will display your privacy notice. Use a professional privacy notice that explains how privacy issues are handled, and make sure that you adhere to your own privacy policy.
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Provide your contact information either on the site, or in the privacy policy, and use your real name or business name, and a physical address. People are more likely to buy from an individual than they are to buy from a big corporation these days. You also need a link that will open up a new page and display your guarantee and return policy. Make sure that you uphold that guarantee! Most people just put text on their sales page stating that there is a guarantee, without telling the visitor more about that. You will improve conversions if people can actually look at your written guarantee and your return policy. Use a secure server for your order page. People have become very web savvy, and they do know how to check to see if the website that they are on is secure. If you aren’t using a secure server, make that change now! Provide customer service. If possible, use the live operator chat that has become so popular. You can also use a support ticket system, or a combination of the two. This not only instills trust, but it will also give you the opportunity to go ahead and get a sale from a visitor that has doubts. Build some trust and credibility in your sales copy. Tell your visitors a little bit about yourself, why you created the product, and information such as this. Let them know who you are, and what you stand for. You will be amazed at how much trust this builds. Try to get your product reviewed on other websites, in newspapers, or in magazines, and then take positive quotes from those reviews, and put them on your sales page. When products are endorsed by the media, it becomes trusted very quickly. As you can see, there are many elements of trust on a sales page that you may not have thought of…but if you’ve purchased from a website recently, if you go back and look now, there is a good possibility that all of these trust elements are present, and you just didn’t consciously realize it at the time. Trust is important, and in marketing circles you will hear a great deal about building trust and credibility. While this is important, and does do wonders for your business, it is equally important to realize that trust doesn’t always have to be built. Sometimes, it can simply be presented and displayed, making that trust instantaneous, instead of something that you have to work for years to build. If your sales page contains all of these trust elements, you won’t have to worry about your visitors trusting you, and if you don’t get a sale, you can be sure that it wasn’t because you weren’t trusted.
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Testing and More Testing Earlier, we mentioned testing. Note that testing is not really the same as research. Research is done to determine what your target market wants. Testing is done to determine how your visitors are responding to your sales copy, and to determine what you can change in an effort to improve conversions. The really successful marketers never stop testing – ever. They understand that their business is an ongoing process, and if they don’t have a 100% conversion rate, they will most likely continue testing their sales pages, until the product is simply no longer being sold – usually because it has become out dated. Here are the various things that you will want to test: •
Headlines – Headlines are huge, and must be tested. Marketers test everything from the actual words used, to the size of the text, to the color of the text, and even the font face that is used.
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Sub-headlines – This is the second hugest thing in the marketing world. Some people make the mistake of not using sub headlines at all, and generally pay for it in the long run. The golden rule is that if you have a headline, you need a sub headline – and like a headline, that sub headline must be tested.
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Actual sales copy – From the words you use to the arrangement of paragraphs, everything about your sales copy matters. This includes words that are bolded, colored, or italicized, as well as scanability.
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Testimonials – Some testimonials can actually turn customers off. Just because you have a testimonial, this doesn’t mean that it is one that you want to use. Hopefully, you have at least ten, of which only three to five will appear on the sales page. Change them out, and see if it boosts your conversion rate.
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Colors – Earlier, we discussed how colors affect your visitors buying decisions. This doesn’t mean that there is a definite right color scheme and a definite wrong color scheme. It means that you need to find the best color scheme for your product and your target market. Test the colors!
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Layout – This is more than just rearranging paragraphs. You may need to add colored boxes on the page. You may need a border. You may need a different background image. Try different layouts to see what kind of results you get.
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Graphics – There has been extensive testing done concerning graphics, and if you use graphics on your page, you must do your own testing. This includes graphics that are used to depict the product and the bonuses. Overall, however, you don’t want to load up a sales page with too many graphics. People are not patient enough to wait on them to load.
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Navigation – With most sales pages, there shouldn’t be much navigation, other than the order button. However, some people place just one order button, at the bottom of the page, while others have tested and found that by placing multiple order buttons throughout the sales letter raised conversions. Test your navigation, even if the only navigation is the order button.
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Bonuses – From the pictures used to depict bonuses, to bonus descriptions, to the actual bonus products, you must test your bonuses to see if they raise or lower conversion rates. You may find that your product sells better with more bonuses, fewer bonuses, or even different bonuses.
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Video and Audio – If you use video and audio on your sales page, you need to test without the video and audio, and test different video and audio.
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Price – Although price is at the bottom of this list, it is a huge deal. You need to test numerous different prices, but the prices that you test don’t have to go to extremes. In other words, if your product is valued at $97, you might try using just $97, or $96.99, or $97.99, etc.
Some changes can be made and tested along with other changes; however it is in your best interest to make one change at a time, or to test multiples of the same elements at one time. This is easily done with the use of a script. For example, you create three pages with three different headlines. You upload all of those sales pages on your site (each must have a different file name). You can use a rotation re-direct script on the domain page that your advertising is sending visitors to. When they click the link, they are taken to the main page, but in a split second – often without them even realizing it – they are whisked away to one of the three sales pages. You run the test for a while – usually at least a week or two – and then measure the results. Which headline pulled in the most sales? Remember that in order to determine this, all other elements of the page must be the same, with only the headline being different. If you want to truly improve conversions, start testing, test more, and never stop testing…unless you hit a 100% conversion rate!
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Bring the Right Visitors to your Site Through research, you probably learned who the right visitors for your site are, but are you actually using advertising methods to bring those particular visitors to your site? Bringing the wrong visitors to your site not only costs you money, but it really screws up your conversion rate. So, how do you bring the right visitors to your site? You target the right people, of course. This is often done in the search engines, but really thinking about the keywords that you will target, and then ensuring that when a person uses that specific keyword to search, and they find you in the search results and click your link, they are brought to a page that gives them the specific information that they were looking for, or the specific product that they were looking for. Looking at it from a visitor’s point of view, let’s say that you are a diabetic woman looking for recipes. You type ‘diabetic recipes for women’ into the search engine, and get a list of results. You click on a link in the results, and arrive at a page that gives diabetic medical information. That isn’t what you were looking for. You were looking for recipes, particularly recipes for diabetic women. You click on a different link in the search results, and arrive at a page that is selling snack ideas or recipes that will satisfy diabetic children. This is closer, but it still isn’t what you were looking for. Finally, you click a link in the search results, and bingo, you find what you are looking for….a site selling a recipe book, full of recipes designed specifically for diabetic women, ensuring that they are not only eating right, but getting enough calcium and iron and more. You whip out your wallet and make a purchase. When you purchase advertising, you want that advertising to match the content of your site, or the product that you are selling – explicitly. You aren’t going to fool anyone into ‘accidentally’ buying a product that they were not looking for. If anything, you are only going to aggravate them and give them an immediate bad experience with you. Did you assume again? Did you assume that the woman who was looking for diabetic recipes, specifically designed for women, would purchase any product or information that pertains to diabetes? If so, you just screwed up your conversion rate. Remember that bringing visitors to your site costs you money, in the form of advertising. You want those advertising dollars to pay off, and if you aren’t
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bringing the people who will take the action that you want them to take, you are wasting your money, your bandwidth, your time, and their time. When you think about your conversion rate, you need to realize that the number is only beneficial to you if it is completely accurate. If you failed in your advertising to target the right visitors, your conversion rate won’t really be very accurate. It will be right, but it won’t be accurate. Let me explain that. You are trying to improve conversions. This means that you need to know how many actions are being taken by the right visitors. You don’t need to know how many actions are being taken by right and wrong visitors, because in reality, that information is useless to you. Therefore, you don’t want to attract the wrong visitors, so that you get a more accurate conversion rate for the right visitors. The right visitor is primed to take the action that you want them to take. If they arrive at your site, and don’t take that action, you know that there is something on your page that is preventing them from doing so – because they want to take the action. On the other hand, if you aren’t explicitly targeting the people who will take the action that you desire, and your visitors are a mixture of the right people and the wrong people, you won’t have any idea what is going on, or what to change, and you’ve wasted your advertising dollars on the wrong people in the bargain. Targeting the right people means using the right keywords – those that are specifically in tune with your site or product. It also means using the right words in your ads, so that people understand what they are going to see, before they click that link, costing you advertising dollars. Yes, this does result in fewer visitors. But, in the grand scheme of things, do you want a lot of visitors who will suck up your advertising budget, without buying a thing, or would you prefer a smaller number of visitors, the majority of which will make purchases? Hopefully, you want that smaller number of visitors who arrive at your site, ready and willing to take the action that you want them to take. Hopefully, you’ve designed your advertising and your website in a way that brings that smaller number of visitors, and results in a higher conversion rate as well. A large number of visitors who are not necessarily the right visitors do not mean success. It is funny how people think that the number of site visitors measures ones success, when it doesn’t. The number of sales compared to the number of visitors – the conversion rate – is what measures the success of your advertising, your sales page, and even your product.
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Give the Customer Payment Choices You’ve done research and found out what your market wants or needs. You either found or created the product that they need. You’ve got your sales page up, and you’ve tweaked and tuned it to no end. You are bringing the right visitors to your site, but the conversion rate isn’t rising. What’s going on? The chances are good that you aren’t making it possible for all of your visitors to purchase from you. What payment options are you offering? You’d better believe that if you don’t offer the payment method that your visitor wants to use, someone else is, and they will go find that other persons site. You would be amazed at how limited payment options can really cause your conversion rates to not only be low, but to stagnate as well. You need to offer as many payment options as you possibly can, and in this day and age, there isn’t any reason not to do so. Ideally, your visitors will be able to pay you by check, credit card, through an online account, such as PayPal, and yes, even by snail mail, with a money order, if that is what they want to do. Getting set up to provide all of these payment options is not hard, and not expensive, and again, there is absolutely no reason not to accept all possible forms of payment. Some merchants even accept wire transfers. If you have a high ticket item, and the product is your own, you might even consider offering a payment plan, where the customer can make smaller, periodic payments, until the item is paid for, at which time they will receive access. This is becoming more and more common. Many marketers that teach others how to become super marketers and such, selling their consultation or courses for thousands of dollars, have really taken advantage of payment plans. They realize that for the most part, people really are honest, and will go ahead and offer their services, on a limited basis, while the service is being paid for with a payment plan. Not everyone has credit cards. Not everyone has a PayPal account. Not everyone even has a checking account. Some people simply don’t want to share their payment details, and would be more comfortable using a money order or a cashier’s check. Furthermore, not all marketers offer multiple payment options, and this, in itself, will put you way ahead of those marketers who don’t, vastly improving your conversion rate along the way.
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Add Urgency People hate to miss out on anything. This is why adding a sense of urgency to your sales page will increase conversions. You can add urgency in a variety of ways, but there are methods that are more effective than others. First, be honest. We’ve all seen those ‘count downs’ that really don’t mean a thing. The page says that this offer is only available at this price for this length of time…but it isn’t true. Next week, if you visit the same page, the same counter will be there – along with the same price. Don’t try to use urgency in this way to make sales…it only serves to make you look dishonest. Always mean what you say, and say what you mean. That should be a golden rule. If you say that the price will change at midnight tonight, it better change. If you say that the doors will be closed after so many people purchase, close the doors after that many purchases. Be honest. With that said, you need to give your visitors a sense of urgency, as this does greatly improve conversion rates. You might associate this with high pressure sales tactics, but it really isn’t, and there is a good reason for doing it. Let’s say that you sell a weight loss product. A visitor arrives at your website because you’ve done everything right, and this visitor is the ‘right’ kind of visitor – one who is interested in what you are selling. This visitor reads through your information, looks at your price, and says ‘well, I can afford that, but I think I’ll wait until next month.’ The visitor may have a wide variety of reasons for waiting until next month, and while you may not see this as a problem, it really is. This person is thinking about losing weight right now. Right now, they are interested in your product. Next month, they won’t remember your product or your site. If that same visitor sees that your special price is only available for a certain amount of time, and they are interested, they will go ahead and make that purchase right now. This not only works with sales prices, it also works with limited space, or limited product. If the person sees that you are only going to sell your product or service to a certain number of people, and you have a script that is counting down those sales on your page, they will most likely go ahead and buy, just to keep from missing out on something. Learn to use urgency in your sales copy…just make sure that you are using it in the most honest way possible.
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Recommended Conversion Tools Index Tools http://indextools.com/ Omniture http://www.omniture.com Site Stats http://www.sitestats.com/home/home.php Site Meter http://www.sitemeter.com/ Weblog http://awsd.com/scripts/weblog/ AXS Visitor Tracking System http://www.xav.com/ Web Trends http://www.webtrends.com/ Analog http://www.analog.cx/ AssocTrac http://www.marketingtips.com/assoctrac/index.html Hexatrac http://www.hexatrack.com/ ClickTracks http://www.clicktracks.com Keyword Max http://www.keywordmax.com/ Conversion Ruler http://www.conversionruler.com/ Atlas Search http://www.conversionruler.com/
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