Website Conversion Explained and 14 Strategies To Boost Your Conversion Rate

Have you heard about getting more sales and profits but receiving the same amount of website traffic? That's true and how this can happen is how well your site converts ie from visitors to sales. Your website conversion is one of the most fundamental aspects of your Internet business after getting the initial traffic because what's the use of driving traffic if you can't generate business with it. Many marketers are in constant need for more and more traffic but what if they concentrate their efforts on their sales letters, their ad copy and their product reviews for instance. This can have a dramatic effect on future website conversion results. Getting more traffic is nice but if you can convert much better, you'll get much more. So instead of focusing most of your efforts in driving more web traffic, try to improve your conversion rate as well. Now let's take a look at website conversion in more details. I will take an example from a sales page.

When we talk about website conversion, we use % to determine how well a site does. A 1% conversion rate is considered acceptable. This means out of 100 visitors, 1 will buy. If you get 2 sales out of 100 visitors, this means for every 50 visitors, 1 will buy and that's a 2% conversion rate which is quite good. If you get 3 sales out of 100 visitors, this means for every 33 visitors, you get 1 sale and that's a 3% conversion rate. Now if you get 4 sales out of 100 visitors, for every 25 visitors, you get a sale and that's a 4% conversion ratio. The last two are very good as far as conversion rates are concerned. So a 2-4% conversion rate is nice to have. 1% is still ok but you need to consider the product price as well, a 1% conversion on a $97 product is very good, this means if you can get 100 visitors everyday, you can make 1 sale everyday and a nice profit.

On the other hand, if you are selling much cheaper items say at $20, you can get say 3-5 sales for every 100 visitors, what I mean is you might get more or less the same order amount. 1% conversion rate is the usual norm on the Internet because it's not easy to sell online generally due to the fact that people don't know you and trust is important when doing business on the Internet. So your job is to make them comfortable to make a purchase. Eg saying that purchases are done securely on website, there is an iron clad money back guarantee and also a photo of you on the site for instance help to build trust because people like to know they are dealing with a real person and not a machine.

Also note that not all visitors will be targeted, hence affecting the conversion rate. Eg say you have 200 visitors, and you get 1 sale, you will say your conversion rate is very bad but what if in the 200 visitors, you have only 100 who are targeted and have an interest in what you have to offer. So sometimes, it's not obvious to calculate the conversion rate exactly.

Now let's take a look at some of the strategies that can improve your conversion rate. Here are 14 of them.

(1) A powerful headline which catches attention and entices the visitors to read more, meaning more chances in making sales. Use quotes in your headline. They have been proven to make it more effective.

A headline like "Discover 3 Hidden Steps That You can Quickly & Easily Use to Start A Profitable Internet Business In Less Than 48 Hours" is an example of a catchy headline which can make the visitor stop dead in their tracks.

(2) Bullets to emphasize benefits of your product not features. Benefits sell. People want to know how your product can benefit them.

(3) Real testimonials from other satisfied customers. Sometimes you can get unsolicited testimonials which is good but when you don't, a good way to get testimonials is to offer your product for FREE to experts so that they can review it and send you their feedback.

(4) A professional banner which reflects your product and any benefit that your product conveys.

(5) The use of other colors apart black. The color red catches attention, green makes you think of money, blue soothes the mind.

(6) Use sub headlines to break your mini-site sales copy into chunks of information to make it well organized and more readable.

(7) Use power words to make your sales copy more effective. Words like discover, exclusive, proven, secrets, guaranteed, limited-time, results-fast, quickly, easily etc...are simple little words that can have a dramatic influence on your sales.

(8) Give bonuses or discounts for a limited-time. Put the price of the bonuses and offer genuine discounts.

(9) Use a Post Scriptum(P.S) - This is used at the end of your sales letter to re-state the product benefits and what will happen if these people don't order today or how your product will make their lives better.

(10) Be brave and put your own picture on your site. This seems to be rather banal but putting your photo on your site makes you more credible. Remember trust is important when doing business on the Internet. People like to know they are dealing with a real person instead of a machine.

(11) Use a clear call-to-action eg "Click here now", "Click here now to take advantage of this limited-time offer" or "Click here now to get your discounted copy". This is very important. Don't expect your visitors to take action by themselves. If you have done everything right and forget about including a strong call-to-action, don't be surprised if you see your conversion drop.

The AIDA principle

(i) Attention
(ii) Interest
(iii) Desire
(iv) Action

should be implemented in any sales copy.

(12) State that all purchases are done securely on your site, hence inspiring trust. Include a picture of credit cards.

(13) Offer a guarantee and use a guarantee icon.

(14) Allow people to contact you by providing your personal details.

Having a high converting website really makes a big difference to your bottom line. Just consider this. You have a website selling a $50 product and it's generating 1 sale out of 100 visitors per day. Per month, your total orders amount to$50 * 30 = $1,500. Now after you revamp your sales copy, you get 3 sales out of 100 visitors per day meaning $150 per day($50 * 3). Per month, your total orders amount to $4,500. How is that? Instead of getting more traffic which is much harder, you focus your efforts on your conversion which is more easier to do and now you have triple your earnings just by doing a few important tweakings.

So as you can see, working on your website conversion is crucial to the success of your Internet business. Traffic without any type of action is worthless and when your conversion improves, you'll probably get more results with the same number of traffic numbers simply because you know how to convert better. You just need to test, test and test to see what is working for you. Now go and improve your website to get more positive results with your traffic. You'll be glad you did.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Written by Jean Lam, Author of Top Search Engine Ranking Secrets in Google Revealed, discover the secret strategies used to generate 164,313 unique targeted visitors in just 11 months from the major search engines. See it now.