Improving Your Conversion Rate - Convert more visitors into clients...
Why pay for visitors to your web site if your site does a poor job of converting them to customers. How many customers come to your homepage and turn around and immediately leave? How many click through and become a paying customer or hot lead?
Most sites are poorly designed and do a bad job of showing
off the products and services on offer. With
"entrance bounce rates" of 50% or more, most
site owners need to make a change before they start
spending real money to send traffic to their "front
door."
You need to understand your customer buying process, and match your marketing effort to the prospects timetable. Communicate quickly that you can deliver what the customer wants and interact often enough with the customer for them to take action. You have to demonstrate that you can deliver on your promises, fulfill or exceed their expectations and support their needs.
Some important tactics driving sales conversion:
Copy and presentation, Define the end result you want your customer to experience. It's not your product or service, it's how your product or service makes the customer feel. Define benfits before featrures. It must be all about the customer, not you. Focus on the emotion you want them to have in the end.
Credibility and trust, Build confidence by
satisfying and passing the emotional "security"
checklist that all people have. Put a phone number on your
site, so you can help people with their purchase decision.
Put credit card logos, shipping company logos, secure
server logos, other credibility builders like BBB or
chambers of commerce you belong to.
Include web pages for warranty, guarantee and return
merchandise information. Be sure to state how long
you've been in business if it's been more than a
couple of years. Finally be sure to include your dirt
world mailing address. It will help with local searches.
Calls to action, use several "calls to action." The customer may have been presold by other advertising methods, word of mouth, a review, whatever... these people want a order link at the very top of the page. Some people won't decide until the end of the page.
Free shipping, consider Free shipping. It can be for orders over a certain dollar amount, certain geographical areas, or very basic shipping like ground only. Then if the customer wants premium or express shipping, it's extra. Like it or not, it's part of the mental checklist customers make... if the other guys have free shipping and you don't... guess where they are gonna shop.
Testimonials, Solicit satisfied customers for testimonials. More and more it's what "third parties" say rather than what "you" say. Amazon lets its customers rate every single product by writing reviews. More and more, people are basing their buying decisions based on those reviews. Why not let your customers do the same thing?
Price Promotions give customers an incentive to buy. They can be in many forms and can be tailored to your product mix and your customers' preferences. Types of promotions include specials, online outlets, coupons, gift with purchase, buy more save more, etc. Note that not all shopping carts will be able to handle every type of promotion or more than one type at a time.
Established Merchandising tactics include What's New, Best Sellers, and Seasonal Selections that are featured in a special way on the site. Cross-sells and up-sells are especially popular because of their ability to increase the average order size.
Navigation/Search is important because "if you can't find it, you can't buy it." Navigation should be optimized so that categories make sense and are not too deep. Some advanced searches include size finders, keyword search, etc.
Order Process/ Shopping Cart features must be simple and efficient. Five clicks or less to check-out is optimal.
E-mail continues to be a strong revenue generator
for online stores. Personalization and segmentation can
increase conversion greatly. E-mail is also used in
conjuction with promotions and sales, and is very
effective when the email links directly with a promotional
landing page.
Online Marketing:
Online marketing can be divided into three primary activities:
• Acquisition - Getting people to your website
• Conversion - Getting them to do what you want on your website
• Retention – Deepening the relationship and increasing its lifetime value
Because of the large amounts of money spent on acquisition and retention, sophisticated systems have been created to maximize the ROI of these activities. But the efficiency of the website or landing page has been largely neglected.
