How To Improve Web Site Conversion Rates.
by Salihu Ibrahim
Published on this site: May 3rd, 2005 - See
more articles from this month...
Do you know your conversion rates? Conversion rate is the number
of visitors to your site that take the desired action against the
total number of visitors in a particular period or time. Research
has shown that 60% of websites do not know their conversion rates.
Then how do you improve your site's performance if you do not know
your conversion rates? What do you take into consideration when
making changes to your site's design? What do you do when you have
plenty of visitors yet very few of them take the desired action?
What do you want your visitors to do? How are they going to do it?
What is the next step for your visitor after taking the desired
action? These and other questions can easily be answered if some
efforts are made towards tracking and calculating websites' conversion
rates.
Converting your visitor is the ultimate aim of any website. Making
the visitor to take the desired action is the fulfillment of a process
that started from wherever the visitor clicked to come to your site.
The desired action could be;
- Sales
- Subscribing to your newsletter or book-marking a page.
- Taking a survey.
- Downloading a software or ebook
- Clicking on a link.
- Going through the process (that is, clicking from page
to page ) before clicking on the order button.
- Etc
Most of the time we think conversion starts when the visitor
lands on our Site. But conversion actually starts from wherever
the visitor first locates our site. How the site was located.
What description the visitor sees before clicking to your
site or what recommendation or word of mouth brought the visitor
to your site. This pre-conversion state is what to a large
extent, can determine whether conversion actually takes place
or not. This is what I call the keyword-title-description-landing
page formula. This formula is explained in my free ebook "Google
Adwords Made Easy". You can download this free ebook
at home base business ideas site.
What enables conversion to take place.
A visitor landing at your site should immediately feel comfortable
with your site. First impression as they say matters a lot. For
conversion to take place you must hold the visitor's attention once
he lands on your site. Some of the points to note that make for
easy conversion are:
- Your website should load fast. The next site is a click
away. If your site loads slowly your visitor clicks away
and you have lost a potential customer. Usually, graphics,
animations, are the cause of slow loading pages. Your can
use some software, available free on the internet, to reduce
the size of your graphics so that they load fast.
- Your site should have a professional look about it. It
should at first glance portray a quality site. This adds
a little bit of credibility to the site. The site is then
seenas a serious site.
- State your case quickly. Let your visitor know what your
site is about in a few words. Don't go rambling about yourachievements.
That can come later. Give the visitor what heis looking
for.
- Arrange your content in an easy to understand way. Whether
you are using Tables or CSS for site design, make sure your
content is arranged in such a way that the visitor moves
from one section of the site to another without confusion
or frustration. If you are catering to different kinds of
visitors,demarcate your site or page clearly showing these
different sections for visitors.
- Include your Privacy Policy, Phone Numbers, About Us information
on every page of your site. This builds some element of
trust. Visitors may not click to these pages but the fact
that they are there builds some credibility.
- Do not irritate your visitors with bad grammar or typos.
Check and crosscheck your content. Ask somebody to read
through your content and point out grammatical errors and
typos. These kinds of errors portray a site as unserious
and therefore suspect.
- If you must use banners use them sparingly. Do not allow
your banners to distract your visitors from the desired
action to be taken. Banners are been clicked on less and
less these days.
Having taken care of all of the above, your site is set to present
your visitors with your carefully packaged offer. You begin by getting
to know your present conversion rates. It is only logical that before
any action is taken to improve conversion rates, the present conversion
rates are known.
What is your website's conversion rates.
There are many actions a site may desire a visitor to take once
he lands at the site. It is the conversion rates of these desired
actions that you want to calculate. Lets look at some the typical
conversion rates that need to be calculated and what can be done
to improve them.
- The SALES CONVERSION RATE. This gives you an idea of
how many visitors are buying your product out of the total number
of visitors that visit you site.
The sales conversion rate = number who bought / total number
of visitors x 100
So if you have about 10000 visitors in the month and out
of that , 350 bought your product, your conversion rate
is
350 / 10000 x 100 = 3.5%
This means that for every 200 visitor that land at your
site 7 will buy your product.
How to improve the sales conversion rate.
(a) Make navigation through your site to your order page
so simple a ten year old can find it.
(b) Make bold call to action. Example, BUY NOW, or ORDER
HERE. Put it near the top, at the middle and near the bottom of
you sales page.
(c) If you offer free shipping indicate this at your home
page and prominently on your sales page. Research has shown that
free shipping is the second most important consideration for buyers
apart from price.
(d) Your web page should load fast. Imagine a potential
customer clicking to your order page with the intention to buy
only to be frustrated by a slow loading page. The importance of
fast loading pages cannot be over-emphasized. Some of the ways
to reduce loading time are: i. Reduce the number of graphics on
your page. Apart from the number, you can also reduce the size
of the graphics. There are a number of software you can use to
reduce the size of your graphics. ii. Always specify the dimensions
of your graphics in your html coding. In your IMG tag be sure
to specify the width and height of your graphics. This makes it
easy for the web browser to load the page because it doesn't have
to figure out the dimensions of the graphics.
(e) Experiment with different colors on your pages. Measure
and track the result of any little change you make. It has been
reported that change in the color of a page layout increased conversion
rate.
(f) Do not use Pop-ups for displaying your vital information.
For example, your shipping rates. Though Pop-ups can be effective
in drawing attention to vital information, it is not worth taking
the chance. With all the free Popup blockers offered by most toolbars
and software companies it will be counter productive to display
your vital information in a Popup only to have it blocked. Displaying
information in Pop-ups could seriously reduce your conversion
rate. Instead use banners that will display a strong call to action.
(g) Include a progress indicator on each page to your order
page so that your customer knows at what stage he is. You can
number the pages or steps and clearly describe each step so that
the customer can easily move back and forth through your pages.
(h) Make it automatic so that when the shipping info is
same as the billing info, the customer doesn't have to fill the
same information twice.
(i) Because of credit card concerns, not all customers
will want to order using credit cards. Offer other forms of payment,
check, fax, phone etc
(j) Display critical information at the check out page.
Information like warranties, guarantees, shipping costs, testimonials,
return policies, after sales service, support service etc
(k) Develop a system whereby if a visitor abandons the
checkout process for whatever reason after providing an email
address, your system immediately emails the visitor offering an
incentive to tell why the process was not completed. This happened
to me. I abandoned purchase when the order page could not load
due to my unsteady internet connection. I promptly received an
email from the company. I later went back to the site to purchase
the item.
(l) If you are selling tangible product use high quality
pictures. Since the visitor cannot touch or smell the product,
it is essential to provide a top quality picture that will look
like the physical product.
(m) Include the number of days the customer will have to
wait for the order. If possible provide tracking of the order.
All these help to make the customer comfortable and close the
sale.
- THE SUBSCRIPTION CONVERSION RATE. This is simply calculated
by dividing the number of subscriptions (subscribers) by the total
number of visitors for that period and multiplying by 100. This
gives the percentage of visitors that subscribed.
Example, if the total number of visitors in the month is 9000
and 300 visitors subscribed. Your conversion rate would be 300
/ 9000 x 100 = 3.3 %
Getting visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or ezine depends
on where the visitor had seen the offer to subscribe. If you are
promoting a subscription page, then your description must be enticing
enough to lure surfers to visit your page. That is, if they are
coming from search engines,ads etc. Most times people will only
give their email address when they are sure they will get some
quality stuff from your newsletter. If they are already at your
site and it is a quality site then you may require little
persuasion to get them to subscribe.
How to improve the subscription conversion rate.
(a) Make sure your privacy policy is clearly stated.
(b) Highlight the benefits of your newsletter to the subscriber.
State plainly the high points of your newsletter. Direct your
visitor to a good issue in your archives.
(c) Provide a valuable free gift. Example a free ebook
or report.
(d) If you are providing a free ebook or report, tell the
visitor what is special about your own because there are a thousand
and one free ebooks and reports on the internet so why should
yours be different. For me I usually get a high conversion rate
from surfers seeing the articles I post at various article sites
on the internet. They become interested when they see the quality
of the articles.
(e) Change the position of your subscription form. From
upper left to upper right. Then recalculate the conversion rate.
Compare the result of the two positions. Try other positions until
you get the position where conversion is highest.
- DOWNLOAD CONVERSION RATE. This rate shows you how many
of your visitors (in percentage) are downloading your software
or ebook or whatever you have presented for download. It is obtained
by dividing the number of downloads by the number of visitors
to your download page. Example , you had 4000 visitors to your
download page for the month and 300 downloaded your software your
conversion rate is
300 / 4000 x 100 = 7.5%
you will need to install a script at your site to monitor the
download. You can get a free download monitor script at
http://www.Focalmedia.net
How to improve your download conversion rate
(a) Write a compelling copy emphasizing the benefits to
your visitors of whatever you are offering for download. Then
make a bold call to action .example, Download Now or Start Download.
(b) Download should start with the first or second click.
That is do not make the download page more than two clicks away
from the introductory page.
(c) Make it clear to the visitor that it is a free, trial
or demo download. You could list the features and benefits of
the download in a Popup window. That is the popup is activated
when a link is clicked and not by itself.
(d) Put your download button at the top of your page with
the
main menu. Alternatively, you can put it at the left hand side
navigation links
(e) If it is a free report in PDF make the download start
when the
download link is clicked. It is some times frustrating when PDF
download opens up in the browser.
- CONVERSION RATE FOR CLICKING ON A LINK. Sometimes
a web page is written where the main aim is for visitors
to click on a particular link. The link could be an affiliate
link., or a link to another page or even an email link.
You have to install a script to monitor these clicks. There
are many click trackers on the internet . You can get a
free click tracker script at http://ww.focalmedia.net
. The conversion rate is the number of clicks on the link
divided by the number of visitors to the page. Example,
if the total number of visitors are 6000 and the number
of clicks 1500. Then the conversion rate will be
1500 / 6000 x 100 = 25%
How to improve this conversion rate.
(a) One effective way to improve conversion rate
for clicking on a link is to put the link in the content.
This is called in content link. The text link flows with
your write up. Visitors are more likely to click on such
a link than one that is not in content.
(b) The text link should clearly indicate to the visitor
what to do or what to expect after clicking on the link. You are
sure to get a more favorable response this way.
(c) If the link is an affiliate link do not use the long
affiliate links provided by affiliate merchants. They are often
long and too obvious get clicked less times. Get a script that
will shorten the affiliate link you can download a script at home
business ideas. Make your links bold.
- CONVERSION RATE FOR AFFILIATE SITES.Affiliate sites need
two conversion rates to succeed. One on the affiliate's site,
the other on the merchant's site. The first is within the affiliate's
control while the second is not. So to succeed in affiliate marketing
the affiliate has to choose a merchant with good conversion rates.
The merchant should show proof of conversion rates. Or you can
calculate how many visitors you sent to the merchant's site and
how many converted (that is, resulted into sales).
Conversion on affiliate sites largely depends on traffic.
As a matter of fact, you need a lot of traffic to succeed
as an affiliate. With little traffic your conversion will
be almost nonexistent and there will not be enough data
to show a consistent conversion rate. For example you might
make a sale after 10 visitors to your site and make the
next sale after 2000 visitors. This is not consistent. The
first sale after 10 visitors might have been a motivated
buyer. Which means you were lucky. You need more than luck
to succeed in affiliate business.
How to improve conversion rates on affiliate sites.
(a) Build traffic to your site.
(b) Effective pre-selling. An affiliate tries to
persuade a visitor to click on an affiliate link. He has
to pre-sell the product properly. Emphasizing the benefits
of the product to the visitor. Building on the emotions
of the visitor and leading him to click. Research has shown
that most buying decisions are influenced by emotions.
(c) Get your visitor to subscribe to your newsletter. With
the traffic you are generating you do not want to miss out on
the other visitors who do not buy. Provide an opportunity for
them to subscribe so that you can still pre-sell again and again
through your ezine or newsletter
(d) Provide very few choices for your visitor. Do no clutter
your page with all kinds of offers. This makes the visitor to
be undecided and may lead to frustration. Promote one or two product
per page. Write your best review of the product.
(e) Own the product you promote. This way you are able
to give real life experiences about the product or service. It
more believable when writing reviews from experience and this
increases conversion rates.
CONCLUSION: Calculating your conversion rates would be meaningless
if you cannot determine whether you are improving or not. Stick
to a period of test and be consistent. Example, one month, two weeks
etc. Whichever is suitable for you. Calculate for that period. Compare
with the previous period or the next period. Make changes to your
pages and test again. By testing you will know what works.
Also if there is any industry standard conversion rate (especially
for the sales conversion rate), compare your rate to the industry
standard. By comparing you will know whether you are doing well
or not. Or you can set objectives for yourself. Set a reasonable
conversion rate that you want to attain within a certain period
and go for it.
Salihu Ibrahim, has been earning his living online since
2000. One of his sites at http://www.autoresponders4all.com
offers completely free autoresponder service for webmasters to put
their businesses
on autopilot. He can be reached at mailto:
[email protected]
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