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By James Rosenquist
High traffic counts are worthless statistics unless it adds to
your bottom line.
Thousands of unique visitors a day to your website may seem like
an achievement, but you can't pay your mortgage with it. You must
learn to convert those visitors into buyers.
Increasing your website conversion rate (the percentage of people
that come to your website and then make a desired action – like
buying something), is the latest buzz among Internet marketers
and a highly sought after skill.
You could hire a conversion expert for thousands of dollars, buy
a course that promises miracle conversion increases, or you can
keep reading and learn 9 powerful principles that will increase
your conversion rate.
1. Attract the Right Visitors
You must embrace the shocking reality that not everybody wants
what you have to offer. If you are selling spoilers for Honda
cars, I don't want your product, even though I own a car, a Honda
even.
If you are selling very expensive shoes for women, my wife
doesn't want your product, even though she is a woman who wears
shoes. She isn't interested in the expensive part.
Do you see how you might possibly be attracting the wrong people
to your site?
Unless you really know why people buy your product, you can't
know who you are looking for. Market research, understanding
product benefits, and surveying your buyers all provide
laser-tight focus on who your target audience is, saving you
precious advertising dollars and increasing your conversion rate.
2. Develop a U.S.P.
So you have decided to sell Fantasy Fiction Books online and have
started attracting the right audience. But ask yourself, "Why
should they buy from you instead of Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble,
or all the other booksellers on the Internet?"
Enter the Unique Selling Proposition, a simple statement that
communicates why buying from you is more advantageous than buying
from Competitor X.
Low price can be a USP, although not the only one. Walmart uses
it to devastate their competition. "Always low prices. Always."
Other USPs could focus on convenience, selection, quality,
reliability, better service…whatever need not being filled in the
industry or any benefit that you offer better than the
competition.
Developing a strong USP provides potential buyers an initial
incentive and a reason to come back again and again. 3. Write
Good Sales Copy
Sales copy is simply words that attempt to persuade towards
action.
Good sales copy communicates the most powerful and compelling
reasons why someone should buy your product. It is geared toward
the benefit of the visitor, not your company. It includes an
attention grabbing headline that compels people to actually read
your copy. Reasons to buy are clearly listed and easily
recognized when scanning the page.
Sales copy is incredibly neglected yet one of the most powerful
leverage points in selling on the web. You will get many more
people to buy your products when you form a powerful argument
full of great reasons why they would benefit by buying from you.
4. Inspire Trust
People naturally don't trust businesses, especially online
businesses. If they haven't bought from you before, you have a
hurdle to overcome.
You can inspire trust by presenting testimonials of users that
have bought, used, and benefited from your product. If you are in
the B2B market, give case studies how your product or service
benefited another business. Include specific numbers for greater
credibility.
You can offer a powerful guarantee that shifts the burden of risk
off of the buyer and back on to your company.
You need a solid and comprehensive privacy policy that tells
people what you will do with their information. They probably
won't read it, but they need to see it there.
You need your business contact information in a place people can
find it.
You can tell people about what kind of security your shopping
cart uses.
You can include seals from the Better Business Bureau or TrustE
if you belong to those services.
Bottom line - fear can keep people from buying. You must overcome
that fear with facts that inspire trust.
5. Create a Powerful Offer
Begging your visitors to buy from you rather than your
competition is pointless. You must give better value, offer
stronger guarantees, and have more convenient payment options
than your competition.
For examples of powerful offers, watch infomercials that have
been on the air awhile. TV time isn't cheap and infomercials that
run for longer than a couple of weeks are probably making good
money. Even if you are turned off by the approach, examine the
offers and learn why people are buying those products.
Infomercial marketers help create offers so good sometimes you
feel foolish to pass them up.
6. Eliminate Annoyances
You can't get people to buy if they are turned off by your
website and leave.
According to a 2002 study by Retail Forward, the top 5 website
annoyances were: pop up ads, banner ads, congested web pages,
slow page loading times, and difficulty finding a product.
Let your competition annoy its visitors and let them come to you.
Make your site easy to use and get rid of the most common
annoyances to give your visitors every reason to keep coming back
to your website.
7. Find Out Why People are Buying
As already mentioned, you must attract the right visitors to your
site to increase conversion rate. To do that, you must find out
why your customers are buying from you. It may not be the reasons
you think.
Interview enough customers and you will see several powerful
reasons why they chose to do business with you. That information
can help you refine your USP and sales copy to further dominate
your competition. Always let the market tell you why they are
buying, never assume.
8. Capture Emails
Not everyone will buy from you the first time they come to your
web site. If you can collect their email address by giving them
something of value for free, you earn the right to market to them
again and again.
Say 100 people come to your site in 1 day. 2 buy from you. 25
give you their email. 2 buy later from email offers you send
them. You just doubled your conversion rate. Email can be a
powerful conversion rate increaser if used wisely.
9. Test, Refine, Re-Test
Rarely does anyone start with a killer conversion rate. There are
many ways to apply the principles we have talked about. Only by
testing one offer against another, one headline against another,
one USP against another, will you find out which option your
market connects with the most.
Testing and refining helps you constantly improve based on
knowledge gained from factual data. Nothing can be left to
chance, assumption or whim if you are really going to make your
website into the powerful sales force it could be.
Start implementing, testing, and improving these 9 powerful sales
leverage points and you will see your sales rate steadily
increase to the benefit of your bottom line.
And that is something you can take to the bank.
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