Improve Website Conversions!
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Improving your web site conversion rate is the most important thing you can focus on this holiday season if you want to increase revenue. Almost every website loses potential customers due to lackluster sales funnels and poorly designed websites. Now is the time to review your site to see why it might fail to convert interested prospects.
Have you ever listened to a group of online marketing professionals discuss their websites or landing pages? Their conversation more often than not focuses around traffic - misguided and partially irrelevant. Bragging about traffic alone is missing the most important point of a website or online asset which is simply to convert prospects into buying customers.
Savvy marketers talk about what happens to their traffic. We all know that generating traffic is relatively easy compared to conversions. I mean, you can buy traffic but you can't buy conversions (unless you consider a click a conversion but personally I do not)! The hard part is increasing the percentage or rate at which you convert traffic to qualified leads or sales.
Here are some basic tactics you can use to increase conversion rates on your website or promotional web pages:
1. Understand the intent of your traffic. Site visitors at different stages of the sales cycle will need different content and landing pages with different offers and information. For example, deep in the sales funnel, a qualified prospect may be looking for a quote or a demo. Creating engaging offers are appropriate at this point because the prospects are willing to invest the time to make their purchase decision.
2. Google analytics. Make sure you are tracking the on site behavior of your audiences. I can't tell you how many executive board rooms I've sat in where everyone had an opinion but no one had data. Don't assume you know how your web site traffic behaves. Use data to clearly understand the behavior of your web browsers and prospects.
3. You'll need a different process and different offers for less qualified prospects that are still in the research stages. Business to business buyers for example may require months of nurturing. Sub-offers such as mini conversion tactics and opt-in forms are appropriate for these leads.
4. Align traffic source with landing page messaging. Users need a consistent and seamless user experience. By making sure that the source of your traffic is tied to the landing page, you stand a much better chance of keeping browsers engaged and moving through the purchase decision funnel.
5. Spend time developing and testing your landing pages. A/B split tests, multi-variate testing and so on can be the difference between break even and generating large profits. Begin with a well designed landing page and start testing.
6. Vary your rate of follow up with prospects. Don't shove prospects down a rabbit hole and make each of them buy in the same time frame. Some prospects need to compare and evaluate similar offers. Perhaps you can help them with appropriate follow up campaigns and special offers that differentiate you from the competition. Not everyone is looking to buy on the spot. Give them an opportunity to buy at their own pace.
These are just a few of the tactics you should think about when focusing on landing page and webs site conversions. Over time, your testing will give you a significant edge over the competition and take the guess work out of converting your prospects into paying customers.
Marketing Blog founder and top-selling author Michael Fleischner has been featured on The TODAY Show, ABC World News, and Bloomerg Radio. 
11 comments :
A lot of boardrooms would benefit from this information. This is where split-testing becomes very valuable. When you can test, not only does the best opinion win, but the weaker and self-serving opinions don't even come up because the speaker knows his idea will be tested.
Nice post. It gives an additional knowledge. I can’t wait for the upcoming topics.
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Yes these tactics can help me really... Thanks you for sharing.
I agree that an increase in conversations on company web site would be very beneficial. I think that if some companies would use these steps and increase their conversations their web sites will become more productive.
Understanding the intent of your traffic is one thing many small business owners completely overlook. Great tip to create content and landing pages specific to those stages. Personalized follow-up (time or content) is also a great way to connect to with a potential client.
Good tactics up there. Managing traffic has never been easy. Great methods given there.
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Owning a PR agency I found this article very interesting for me and for my clients' strategies.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
This is very incredible fantastic blogs I’ve seen. Many websites concentrate solely on increasing the number of visitors they have, when often they have fairly simple problems with their site that, if solved, would have a huge effect on their conversion rate and improve their site’s bottom line at minimal expense. The percentage of visitors that completes the transaction signifies the conversion rate for the website. In a lead-generating application, multiple visitors will follow a path that you desire for them to follow (at first), but will not complete the form, download, etc. The percentage that does signifies the conversion rate.
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