Conversion Therapy
It's a scenario we see all too often: the website is beautiful - the content is optimized, the meta information is carefully crafted, the XML sitemap is submitted, and the pay-per-click campaign is turning a healthy number of visitors. Traffic is great. In all, the site has moved from the vast, dusty corners of the cyber world into the vaunted halls of the highest traffic mall in the world - page one on the top search engines. Life looks great - traffic is pouring through, potential buyers are clicking through your site, viewing multiple products, reading your articles, filling carts. And yet something is missing: purchases.
The problem? Increased traffic is not yielding a commensurate increase in sales. If traffic is coming in on PPC, advertising, or other paid methods, but not showing results, website owners can end up losing money quickly.
The solution? Get back to fundamentals and reevaluate the purpose of your website. An ecommerce site is a sales tool and should be used as effectively as possible. If your site is experiencing this type of problem, it's time to rethink your design and content in light of the purpose of your site. If the purpose of your site is to make sales or generate leads, then you need to be sure that your site does everything possible to make a potential customer convert. Here are five of our favorite ways to get a site converting.
1. Know What Makes Your Site Special
Every seller is different and offers unique motivations to purchase. Perhaps your site wins on price or quality, perhaps you are a family owned business, or go out of your way to stock U.S. manufactured products. Once you know what makes your site special, make sure your customers know too. Internet shoppers are comparison shoppers. Give them a memorable reason to choose you.
2. Make It Easy to Shop
Your traffic is looking to buy a product, not navigate a maze. Make it easy for your viewers to find what they want, and to buy it. Every click loses viewers so a quick, clear path to purchase with as few clicks as possible is the goal. Another important factor to consider is to make sure your site and all controls are accessible with different browsers. Microsoft Internet Explorer dominates the space, but is quickly losing ground to Firefox, Safari and others.
3. Make it Easy to Pay
Offer your users as many payment options as possible. Be clear about your accepted payment types as early in the process as you can. There is nothing worse to a shopper than going through the entire product selection and account registration process only to find that the store does not accept his or her preferred payment method.
4. Be Clear About Shipping and Returns
Tell your users upfront what they can expect to pay for shipping and what your terms are for returns and exchanges. Shoppers really dislike having to go through the checkout process in order to determine shipping costs - a set-up that is one of the top causes of abandoned carts. Online shoppers are also often concerned about what it will take to return items. It will benefit you and your shoppers to be upfront about it.
5. Be Trustworthy
Many users remain very cautious about online purchases. Since you're asking users to give you financial and personal information, trustworthiness is key to raising your conversion rate. Build trust by making clear just who you are. Give users a physical address, a phone number, and a way to get in touch with you. Post a clear privacy policy, stressing your commitment to maintaining the privacy of customer information. Prominently post your SSL badge. Finally, be professional in everything that you do: have a professional site design, be prompt and courteous in responding to visitor questions, comments, and other communications, and be responsive to customer service inquiries.
Important Terms
Conversion - A desirable action taken by a site visitor, such as a purchase, a request for information, or a newsletter sign-up.
A sale transaction is the typical conversion definition used in E-commerce, but conversion definitions should be tailored to the specifics of each site. In defining conversions, care should be taken to ensure trackability.
Conversion rate - The percentage of visitors to your site who take an action you deem to be a conversion. Conversion rates are often segmented by type of visitor, such as organic, pay-per-click, and direct address/bookmark.
Tying conversion rates to specific types of traffic helps to determine the value of various paid traffic generation methods.
Cost per Conversion - In the case of paid traffic generation methods, the cost of traffic generation for a period divided by the number of transactions for the same period.
Comparing the average cost of traffic required to achieve a conversion with the average income generated by a transaction provides a baseline for evaluation of the investment in traffic generation. The resulting numbers do not take into account additional benefits of paid traffic generation ? such as the lifetime value of new customers, word of mouth references from people who came to a site via paid methods, or conversions resulting from paid traffic that cannot be properly associated with the paid traffic method.
Optimizing the conversion rate of your site will be an ongoing process of implementation, testing, and revision. For more information on improving your conversions, or assistance in implementing conversion enhancement strategies, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or click on the logo below to go to our website.
Until next time,
The TNI Team
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