What Is More Important - More Traffic Or More Sales?
For an online business there are two ways of making more money - increase your web traffic (get more customers into your shop) or improve your conversion (get more of the customers in your shop to buy from you).
Let me illustrate this:
A site has 10,000 visitors per month generating 50 sales, equivalent to a conversion rate of 0.5 and up to 2-3 equals 150). Alternatively the site could forget about increasing traffic and instead concentrate on increasing its conversion rate from 0.5, which would also result in 150 sales (10,000 times 1.5.
A lot of the web marketing related articles and information are focussing on increasing traffic - the best strategies for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), how to select the best keywords, how to run PPC (pay per click) campaigns and so on. Very few people are focussing on conversion strategies, how do you convert the 98-99% of people that are leaving your site without buying.
In the following we will discuss some of the most important aspects when it comes to conversion. One word on the term ‘sales’. We will use ‘sales’ throughout the document but you may be in a different business where the aim is to generate leads by convincing people to sign up to something (a newsletter for instance). However, the principles we will be discussing apply to both lead generation and sales.
So how do you improve your conversion? Well, there are four main things you need to focus on:
Web site usability
Usability is the art of creating convenience for the visitor's interaction, the structure or skeleton of the site. A site with strong usability enables a frictionless customer experience where intuition instead of thinking drives the visitor's movements. This includes intuitive and instructive navigation, clear call-to-actions, clear value propositions, credibility-building communications, convenient order process - all of which create a smooth process for the visitor's movements .
Website Design
Design is the front end to the technology and to the structure/usability of the site. It is the first impression of the website and directs the visitor towards a desired path. Great design directs a visitor's actions through the effective use of colors, graphics and lines. With the average visitor spending 10 seconds or less determining your website's relevancy to them the design is crucial in the early stages of the visit.
Technology
Technology is the website's foundation that must work seamlessly supporting the customer experience. Visitors should not notice the technology and typically only do so when it is broken.
Content - call to action
The last, and to some extent most important part, is the content - the copy writing and how to get a clear call-to-action message across to the visitors. When it comes to copy writing there are two simple tips - headlines and special offers.
Headlines are crucially important to the success of your website. Testing has proven that headlines can increase your sales significantly and professional copywriters consider the headline the most important part of an ad. On average, five times as many people will read the headline as the actual body copy, which means it is important to spend time creating headlines.
Some professional website copywriters write as many as 100 headlines before deciding which one to use. You may think this would be a daunting task but there are some standard practices that can be followed.
The ‘How To’ headline is one the easiest to write and it get people's attention because of the promise of learning something of value. For example, ‘How to increase your conversion immediately with Traffic2Sales‘.
Another headline template that is good is the ‘If’ ‘Then’ statement. For example ‘If you give me 2 minutes of your time I will show you how I can improve your conversion rate, you only need to pay me for sales that I save for you’.
The last headline type is the testimonial headline, which has to be as specific as possible. Here is an example "Traffic2Sales has had a positive impact on our conversion rate and subsequent advertising ROI, because it saves a good percentage of lost orders, and their pricing model allows us to only pay when our company makes a sale" Joe Bloggs, Internet Entrepreneur
The other tip that is important is to making irresistible offers. Or as Don Corleone said in The Godfather ‘I'll make him an offer he can't refuse‘. A powerful factor in making irresistible offers is taking risk out of the transaction for your prospective customer. After all, nobody want's to lose money and get stuck with a bad product. Taking away that fear will boost your online sales. If you can offer something for free or if your payment is performance based then you are on to a winner.
So, if you follow these steps above you have a good chance of converting more of your visitors into happy buying customers. But, there is still a risk that the customer will abandon the purchase at the very last minute. This is where services like Traffic2Sales come into play. By interacting with your leaving visitors, as they attempt to abandon your website, through the medium of instant messaging - one of the most popular tools on the internet today - an automated sales agent will attempt to turn your leaving visitors into paying customers. Most of the time this is done by offering a special discount. It is like having a live salesperson on your website, 24/7, except for the cost. There are no upfront fees or ongoing charges, you only pay a fee per converted customer.
