subject: How to improve your website conversion rate [print this page] Your website conversion rate is critical to your website's success. It also provides you with an amazing amount of leverage and makes every visitor you drive to your website more likely to buy. Yet in my experience this is one of the most poorly executed parts of websites and no-one seems to be explaining how to do it properly.
Fun with maths
Here's a quick example of what a small increase in your website conversion rate can achieve:
100 visitors per day x 1% conversion = 1 sale or say $47 per day
100 visitors per day x 2% conversion = 2 sales or $94 per day
So over a year you'd have the following results:
1% conversion = 365 sales or $17,155
2% conversion = 730 sales or $34,310
And that's comes from making some one-off changes to your website. To look at it the other way you'd have to attract 200 visitors to your website per day to get the same sales figures. I don't know about you but that sounds like a lot of hard work to me!
What website conversion actually means
Website conversion is the experience your visitor receives that might make them want to become a purchase. Website visitors are very fickle creatures and if we don't capture and hold their attention then we're going to lose them to the next website. So you have to make your website captivating and worth hanging around on.
Most websites are boring and offer little value to the visitor. They talk all about the company without giving any compelling reasons to choose them over a competitor. If someone walked into your physical store would you start by saying to them "Our company was founded in 1957 and is the leading provider of blah blah blah?"
Then why do you do that with your website?
How to improve your website conversion rate
There are two main factors to get someone to buy online:
1. Desire
2. Trust
Increasing someone's desire
Many marketers and sales people think there job is to convince, cajole, persuade and harass people to buy from them. This is why selling has such a bad reputation and why many of us hate doing it. However I believe selling is all about giving the visitor what they want.
But first you have to figure out what exactly that is. What benefits you're offering your clients. Then you can clearly and succinctly explain to the visitor why buying from you will give them what they want.
Gaining your visitors' trust
The second big factor is trust and this is especially important when selling online. After all you're just a faceless website floating out there in cyberspace. How does the visitor know your business isn't being run by some Nigerian while he waits for a kind soul to help him unlock his uncle's $23 million fortune?
Ok so that may be a little extreme but most of the human race lives in fear of being ripped off. It's bad enough wondering if a product will live up to the promises when you buy face-to-face let alone over the internet. Therefore you have to do everything in your power to earn the visitors trust.
Why improving your website conversion rate is worth the effort
We've already done the math to show just how powerful this concept is but let's take it a step further. You probably have a website that's already receiving at least some traffic. So what if you could simply change the way your website communicates with those visitors and increase your sales overnight?
By making changes to the way your website converts visitors into clients you can get dramatic results in a very short space of time. When I work with clients we notice a decent bump in sales as soon as the new webpage is uploaded. And that's not even including all the other components of a successful website marketing system.
What you do next
So if you like money I suggest you look at your website with new eyes. Ask yourself if you can stir up more desire and create more trust with your visitors. Your website sales will thank you for it.
