If you’re running any kind of enterprise that depends on internet traffic, then you know that conversion rate optimization can be the difference between getting by and getting ahead. Whether your website traffic comes exclusively from search engines or from radio and television ads, websites that are optimized for conversion can turn clicks into sales. Even if you only improve your conversion rate by one half of one percent, you can increase your sales exponentially based on the volume of traffic that comes to your site. In fact, an optimal scenario for conversion rate optimization involves cutting back on your online advertising spend while your sales increase.
Here are a few fast tips for conversion optimization, starting with the most basic.
- Look at the site. This may sound unusual, but in many cases executives and online store owners who aren’t aware of how their current websites look. If you plan on pushing a significant volume of traffic toward the site, ask yourself if you would buy a product from the site. Next, try to buy a product or finish a transaction on the site itself, and ask yourself if the process was easy enough for an average person.
- Test the site on an average person. Get someone who hasn’t used the site to perform an action, or follow the shopping process up to the checkout section. Watch how they are using the site without offering suggestions on how to find something. Note that if you have to personally point out the required steps to making a transaction, your site may need a redesign.
- Copy your competitors. If you know that one or two of your rivals are making a lot of sales online, you may want to emulate the shopping process. (Note that you should never copy site content or trademarked terms.) Ideally, you should have looked at 10 or more of your competitors in the sponsored and natural search engine results, and made notes on what aspects of the site a customer may find appealing. It may feel like cheating, but a window shopper in your field will develop a certain expectation about the look and feel of a site selling your product or service. If your site is significantly different from ones that sell similar wares, you may have a problem.
- Land paid traffic on relevant pages. The closer you can match a keyword to a page that matches the search query, the more likely you are to make a conversion. In the world of sponsored traffic, “landing pages” are specific to their search terms, and some of the top ecommerce sites have multiple landing pages designed to closely match the end user’s search query. Even if you don’t want to create new pages, dropping PPC on more relevant site pages can result in improved sales.
- Learn about conversion enhancers. There are a lot of landing page optimization tricks for getting better results. Many different factors go into improved conversions, from clear calls to action, to trust indicators, to reduced friction in the buying process. Sometimes a single change can double a conversion rate, but usually it takes a lot of little changes to make your site work the way you want it to. There are even sites like MarketingExperiments.com which have case studies related to various conversion enhancement techniques.
- Fix your Pay-Per-Click advertising. In some cases, a website is already adequate for conversion optimization, but the traffic being sent to the site is no good. If you’re managing PPC in-house, it always pays to get a second opinion, either from a consultant or an outside agency. If you pay an agency to manage your online marketing, ask to see the list of keywords and average conversion rate for each keyword. While there are a lot of factors in pay-per-click marketing, the average conversion rate should be at least 2.5% on a search-matching campaign.
One of the best ways to instill the need for higher conversions is to impress the cost of web traffic on your employees and outside agencies. Depending on the size of your operation, you may be spending a few thousand dollars a month or several million, whether this money goes to online sources or traditional media. If you can identify the value of a single customer, you can quickly calculate the potential ROI improvement that comes from optimizing your conversion rate. In some cases, a new customer or lead may only be worth a few dollars, but there are some companies (particularly those with longer sales cycles) that can make millions of dollars of a single client. In a high value case, a cost per conversion of ten thousand dollars may be a bargain, but most online stores would like to keep their CPA below a certain percentage (like 15%) of an actual sale.
Finally, it cannot be stressed enough that conversion rate optimization is a never ending process. Testing and improvement should be continuous, since your online rivals will be periodically updating their own sites, adding new features, and keeping up with general trends in ecommerce and site design. At Web.com Search Agency, we have taken on new clients who previously had a great conversion rate, but lost market share over time because they did not keep up with advanced conversion practices. Having a fresh, easy to follow site that presents limited obstacles in the sales process is a fantastic way to increase sales, even if the amount of traffic to your site stays the same or goes down.
Tags: conversion optimization, conversion rate optimization, increase conversions
