Increase Your Website Conversion Rate

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Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who carry out your MPA - Most Preferred Action - while on your site. Your MPA might be a sale or opting into your mailing list or downloading your eBook etc.
You can measure your conversion rate page by page or across your site as a whole.

Read on to find out more about website conversion rates and learn some strategies for improving them...

Why Increase My Conversion Rate?
An increase in your conversion rate means you will make more money from your visitors (if that's your aim).
But it can also have another result...
If you are buying traffic, you'll be able to either
  • Buy traffic more profitably.
  • Buy from other more expensive sources e.g. magazine ads, TV ads.

    If you have an affiliate scheme, your affiliates will be more likely to stick with you as they will also be earning more.


    To increase your conversion rate as a whole, it can be helpful to think of it as a series of smaller improvements.

    If you can increase the conversion rate of;
    Your Homepage
    Your Product Pages
    Your Shopping Cart
    Your Advertising
    Each of these smaller improvements will have a cumulative effect on your overall conversion rate.

    To improve the conversion rate of a single web page you should look at;
    Your Headline.
    Many visitors will not read any further if they are not grabbed by your headline.

    Your Tagline
    Your tagline is your chance to propel your visitor into your copy (your text is more properly called 'copy').
    If your headline grabs them, they will probably read your tagline.

    Your Opening Paragraph or Intro
    Many visitors won't get beyond your intro. It needs to lead them to read further.

    Your Pictures
    Buyers like to see what you have to offer - pictures show them.
    A picture can also help them to imagine owning the product.

    Your 'Call to Action'
    Your 'call to action' prompts the visitor to carry out your MPA.



    How can You Track what is Working?
    You need to take a systematic approach to this.
    First, you need a way of actually tracking and measuring results. Some kind of analytics package will help. Study your server logfiles or install something like Google Analytics. These will provide visitor statistics that will help you to measure the results of changes.

    Testing, Testing...
    Test, Test, Test! - and dont worry about losing money while testing...
    The increase in profits will more than make up for any short-term loss while testing

    Change One Thing at a Time - Focus on the big stuff first!

    Only make one change at a time. If you make a load of changes in one go - you won't know what was an improvement and what was a backwards step.
    For a single page, I'd suggest doing them in the order above i.e. headline first, tagline next, intro etc.

    Change your headline and see what happens. If it improves results - keep the new one. If it makes it worse, change it back or try another new one.

    When you're happy, change your tagline. Use the same method again.

    Make sure to get enough data to make your results meaningful. That might be a weeks worth of visitors, 100 sales or whatever suits. Too little data will provide skewed results from your tests.

    Work through this process with the rest of your page, making improvements as you go.

    The cumulative improvements to all of these smaller elements will add up to a more substantial improvement overall.

    I suggest setting up a spreadsheet to track the numbers. Also, set up an archive of past versions - just in case you need to revert back to a previous version.

    Once you are happy with improvements, you can go back and start again. Can you find an even better headline, a more attractive tagline etc? Just repeat the process!

    Test improvements to your shopping cart and ordering process.

    Test improvements to your packaging and shipping.

    Test different prices.
    Reducing your price can result in more sales - you could actually make more money by charging less if the increase in sales offsets the lower price!

    A higher price might not reduce sales as much as you fear. Again more profit...

    If you carry out just one of the techniques here, you will see an improvement in your website conversion rate.

    The most successful marketers out there never stop testing. They might test 100's of headlines.
    Every improvement becomes the standard version against which to test a new one.

    So, what are you going to test first?

    • About the Author:
    Kev built his first website in 1999.
    He is also the author of Build a Better infoProduct - 7 Simple Tactics.

    You can download a copy at http://www.submitsure.co.uk



    Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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