Top Ways To Skyrocket Website Conversion
So your website has massive traffic, keyword domination and SEO; so what! If that traffic doesn’t convert into buyers it is just traffic. Would Wal-Mart still be in business if only 10 out of 1000 customers made a purchase? The answer is no, the overhead costs would kill them. That is why 95% of online businesses fail. In e-commerce a 1% conversion rate is considered acceptable. Too much emphasis is given to getting traffic and not enough in converting that traffic into buyers.
It’s important to drive traffic to your website but it’s even more important to convert that traffic into buyers. The average e-commerce website achieves a 1 to 3% conversion rate. That means that for every 100 visitors, 3 will complete a transaction. Retail electronic stores typically have a 0.5% conversion rate that is 200 visitors just to make a single sale. On the other side of the spectrum, we have stores like Amazon.com with conversions between 12 and 14% and Proflowers.com at 40%.
Who are these visitors that are not buying? Suppose there are those who landed there by mistake and are not interested in your service assume 15 to 25%. Take another 25% percent who are window or comparison shoppers. That leaves you with 50%; how do you convert them?
There are some quick common sense techniques you can implement for immediate results. You can correct website headlines, images and design but with such techniques will only attain a 5 to 10% improvement. For those who wish to see double digit rates a systematic approach is required.
Conversion Optimization
Conversion optimization is a term used by marketing experts who specialize in increasing online business conversion rates. First and foremost most marketing gurus press on that you must understand your visitor you must know your target gender, geographics, age and income but that’s not enough. How does having that information affect website design and the ad copy?
1. Optimization begins with a typical market research. The data is translated into persona’s, a concept used by software marketers for over 20 years. This concept when applied to online businesses has a significant impact. Instead of talking about a target market of 50%, now you can talk about John Smith who went to the University of Arizona who earns $85,000 per year. The average e-commerce store has about 4 to 8 persona’s it is generally better to work with 4. Other markets have more complex processes different sectors that might consist of second persona’s.
2. Now that we have these persona’s we want to understand how they interact with the website. How do you sell to John who is very aggressive? He wants to know how your service is going to help him right away and why he should buy from you. How about someone who is very patient and caring? Their interaction will be different. Then are those credit-card-in-hand buyers. Give me the price, give a discount and I’m out of here. They don’t want to be sold by a long ad copy they just want place the order.
3. Visitors that come from search engine typically converts better than PPC (pay-per-click). They come from various interest, personalities, demographics, and psychographics. The trick is how do you convert that traffic with a single website. That is the work of conversion optimization there are other factors but it is the framework of common sense steps to implement in a structured approach.
4. People will not buy from websites they don’t trust. The design must a give certain image. A professional looking website may not appeal to certain target markets. To convert traffic you must understand the customer and what the customer is looking for. A good example is the check process. Once visitors select items and are ready to place the order they will bounce back between step 1 and step 2. The second step is asking for credit card information but they are not sure how much they are being charged. By merely showing the exact charges will increase conversion rates. Another example is shipping charges are not disclosed until the last stage of the process.
Case Studies
PayPal published results from a study on shopping cart desertion, and here are the reasons that were cited:
• High shipping charges: 46 %
• Wanted to comparison shop: 37 %
• Lack of money: 36 %
• Wanted to look for a coupon: 27 %
• Wanted to shop offline: 26 %
• Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24 %
• Item was unavailable at checkout: 23 %
• Couldn’t find customer support: 22 %
• Concerned about security of credit card data: 21 %
A study published by McAfee revealed that conversions increased by 11% when online shoppers are prompted by security cues. Just adding a security seal, like Verisign, gives shoppers more confidence. Asking for personal information upfront is certain to deter some visitors.
When operating an online business for success conversion optimization is one element that must not be ignored. Your business choices online are vast; just decide what really interests you, and put your full efforts into becoming successful at it.