10 simple rules to boost your site from a measly 1% conversion ratio to as high as 8%. FirstWebSearch took a site, tore it apart, and made it happen.
Lets face it… anyone can throw money at pay per click search engines and get a whole whack of traffic to their sites. But if it doesn’t convert into sales, what good is the traffic? Remember, every time you double your conversion, you double your sales. So if you are making 100K per year at 1% conversion, then doubling the conversion to 2% gives you 200K per year… and who doesn’t want to make more money? I had the opportunity to do a website review the other day. It broke all the rules and hovered around a typical 1% conversion. A 30 minute conversation with the website designer changed all that.
Rather than give you the before and after… I’m going to give you the after. Reason being, that a I want you to look at your own site and apply some of these techniques to your pages. Doing so could double or triple your sales over the next month and forever after that.
The Rules:
- Repeat after me, ” Google is not an ATM (automated teller machine like the banks use).” It doesn’t have to be a cold, hard, technological place. The most missing element on the web is the human element. Show people on your web site and write as if you were you were talking to a friend. Get rid of the hype and the corporate jargon… you wouldn’t talk that way to a friend.
- Define the end result you want your customer to experience. No, it’s not your product or service, it’s how your product or service makes the customer feel. It must be all about them, not you. Focus on the emotion you want them to have in the end.
- Build confidence by satisfying and passing the emotional “security” checklist that all people have. Put a phone number on your site, so you can help people with their purchase decision. Put credit card logos, shipping company logos, secure server logos, other credibility builders like chambers of commerce you belong to.
- Show and tell always works better than just tell. If your product requires, assembly, a manual, or several processes… tell them how to do it, then show them how to do it. You can do this with freeze frames, screen captures, slide shows or even videos. Show step 1, step 2, step 3, etc, and do it in a very simple, easy to understand manner.
- Guide the eye with headlines, that’s what they’re designed to do. Look at any newspaper. The headlines tell you what the following paragraphs are about. Your website should do the same thing. After the opening headline, help the user skim your page, and let them decide when and where they want to start reading your page. Do that with headlines that carry clear benefits of owning and using your product, followed by a detailed paragraph.
- Use several “calls to action.” The customer may have been presold by other advertising methods, word of mouth, a review, whatever… these people want a order link at the very top of the page. Some people won’t decide until the end of the page. Moral of the story… pepper order links every few paragraphs. And if you want to know which call to action triggered the sale, give each “buy now” link a separate tracking code.
- Point out unique features like patents - if you have them - then explain the benefits. But don’t do it right away. If there is something unique about your product, the usual desire is to shove it in the face of the customer. Oh, look we’re different because… that used to work but doesn’t anymore. Once you have them into the story, and you’ve shown several benefits of owning your product… then hit ‘em with the biggie, the whopper benefit, the one that makes your product the best, fastest, most unique… but do it more like an, “Oh yeah, I almost forgot” kind of statement. That will be the cherry on the sundae, the bakers dozen, the one overt benefit that sends them over the top.
- Free shipping is mandatory, not an option. It can be for orders over a certain dollar amount, certain geographical areas, or very basic shipping like ground only. Then if the customer wants premium or express shipping, it’s extra. Like it or not, it’s part of the mental checklist customers make… if the other guys have free shipping and you don’t… guess where they are going shop.
- The opening headline must be about the customer, not your product. The customer must be the star of the show. Don’t talk about you or your company in the opening headline unless its as the solution to their problem.
- Have several friends - or better yet… strangers - sit down in front of your web site and watch how they use it. If they have navigation questions, can’t find something, or can’t figure out how to do something… guess what? So will thousands of your visitors. Remember that your site designer is not going to be there looking over their shoulder telling them or you where to click.
Contact us today to find out how you can improve your company’s online marketing strategy.
