The world of internet marketing is highly competitive and forever evolving. The art of turning website visitors into paying customers however does not require the use of a crystal ball or some tea leaves.
Many of the features which make a site a success are common sense. You do not require advanced knowledge of programming or years of experience in search engine optimisation. Converting website visitors into paying customers depends almost entirely on good sales copy. What is that?
Simply put a good sales copy is the content and presentation of your website constructed in such a way that it increases your visitor to sale conversion rate on a consistent basis. Finding a system which works optimally for your niche category is a never ending tale of website development. It's an ongoing process in which you will always try to beat your previous best and as a result is a constantly evolving process of improvement in order to beat your last highest visitor to sale conversion rate. This may sound hard work but the bottom line is:
The higher your conversion rate the more money you will make!
This article provides 5 quick and proven tactics to get you started in developing your site to increase conversion rates which in turn will put you on the road to higher sales conversion and more money in your pocket.
Tactic #1 - Know your site
As CEO of an established internet marketing company and leading expired domain traffic supplier I view hundreds of new domains every day. We work with small personal homepages right up to promoting large internet based companies and networks. What always surprises me when I speak to webmasters large or small is their lack of knowledge regarding their sites stats. They can always tell me about their niche category and a cool design feature but when it comes to how many visitors they are getting per month, how many sales per visitor, average unit of sale, etc they don't know. Ever since my first ecommerce site (many moons ago) I have always kept varying degrees of stats to chart the growth and success of a site. You must be able to measure results for your online business and that begins with knowing where you are at currently. Below are the most important factors you need to be tracking ...
How many unique visitors do you get per month? This is not the same as "hits". A "hit" is actually a "successful request to your web server from a visitor's browser for any type of file, whether an image, HTML page, an MP3 file, or any other type. A single web page can cause many Hits -- one for each image included on the page, etc and as such for the most part is an unreliable guide to a site’s popularity. Unique visitors are the key to your online business. Without visitors your site will not make sales. Most hosting companies provide a stats package that you can log into and see how many unique visitors you get each month. There are also numerous free stat counters available on the internet which will supply you with similar data. Our preferred choice which also seems to work well with our expired domain traffic service is statcounter.com.
The next question is: How many sales do you get per 100 visitors. This gives you your conversion rate as a percentage. The average internet conversion rate is around 1.8-2% or roughly 2 sales for each 100 visitors but depending on your market and your level of targeted traffic this can vary widely. I have worked on sites with a whopping 20% conversion rate before. I have also found that for the vast majority of websites conversion rates can be dramatically improved by making even the smallest changes to website content and or layout.
What is your average sale price? Take all your online sales each month add them up then divide by the number of sales. It’s simple and yet webmasters big and small fail to keep even the simplest of stats about their online business.
Tactic #2 – Get a visitors attention.
Statistics show that you have about 10 seconds to entice a website visitor to go deeper into your site before they click the back button and forget you ever existed. The internet is a wealth of information and there is no need for anybody to waste time trawling through your site for the information they require. Remember that your online prospects are looking for information to solve their problem and if they don't see anything on your homepage immediately upon arriving that leads them to believe that you understand their problem you lose.
You must greet your visitors with a large headline or graphic that shows exactly what your site is about. It needs to hit a visitor square in the face and say "we know what your problem is and we can fix it better than anyone else - here's why...". Then in your content give them as many reasons as possible as to why your company can supply them with the required products / services. Give them testimonials, and other kinds of proof that you or your product gets results. On Newswriter our testimonials work for those that posted them also.
Tactic #3 - Use simple language.
Speaking to your online prospects in a conversational tone increases conversion rates. In other walks of life professionalism may be the key to grabbing a sale. More often on the web it is best to avoid any technical gibberish and explain exactly what you are offering in the simplest terms possible. Remember your visitors are real people and they respond to real language being spoken by a real person. In the case of newswriter only 50% of our sites traffic comes from visitors whose first language is English. As a result if we did not explain ourselves simply and succinctly we would be losing out on a large portion of our market.
Be authentic and forget about what your competitors are doing. Find your own voice and provide something fresh in a market otherwise cluttered and I guarantee that more of your prospects will respond to that than to the same old tired content and promises.
Tactic #4 – Emphasise what you can offer
Many webmasters make the mistake of thinking that visitors care how long they have been in business or care how much value is placed on customer service. More than likely a potential customer has heard it all before and is looking for something to differentiate your site from the horde. Avoid platitudes like the plague - consumers are immune to them now. Your content needs to be written in terms of not how special you think your company is but how good you are at solving problem x or supplying product y for the visitor and then back it up with all the proof you can find. Try using the word "You" more often than the word "We".
Tactic #5 – Point your visitors in the right direction.
You have succeeded in providing compelling; fresh, informative and yet simple content for your website visitors. Your layout smacks professionalism but at the same time offers a personal touch. If you have done a great job at enticing the prospect to keep clicking deeper into your site from the homepage with a compelling headline and content that speaks to the prospects problem and the rest of your website content does a good job of convincing the visitor that you are the obvious choice to do business with your job is still not done. You need to ask for the sale or lead the prospect to the call to action. At the end of any page of copy or maybe even within the main body of your content you need to tell them to buy your product or contact you today! Again how simple is this?; but amazingly many webmasters hide their “call to action” deep within a site. In a recent case we worked with an SEO company which provided link building. Their content was great but any contact or order information was some 3-4 clicks deep in the site. The result was a very poor conversion rate. If it's not a high priced item or service you are providing stick it on your homepage. If you are selling something over $100 you might need to break your sales process into small steps by offering the visitor a free report or free trial or sample of your product or service just to get them into your sales cycle. Make it easy for them to build a relationship with you and give them a good incentive to do so.
The content on your website sells your product or service. The website itself and the graphics are there to support the content. The content needs to be easy to read (break it up with headers, short paragraphs and bulleted lists) use conversational language, give the visitor substantial reasons to do business with you as soon as possible on the homepage.
Try different headlines and offers. Keep track of your conversions and see what's working and what doesn't. There is always a better formula that will make you more money and by beginning the process of searching for that formula you will be gaining a significant advantage over your competition. This form of internet marketing can be hard work but the results speak for themselves. How would you like to double your conversion rate or increase your average sale by 10%?. It is possible. Start tracking stats today and chart your way to a successful internet venture.
Quick Link
Traffic Booster Ebook