"How good is your page conversion?" This is one of the first questions I ask a new or prospective client. Normally the answer is prefixed by a gentle shrug of the shoulders, "Not sure, I think it's...."
Now most website owners and business people can readily tell you the number of visitors they have (unique or otherwise) and perhaps their monthly sales volume or database growth. But all of this is pure vanity.
The most important metric of any website is Page Conversion.
Forget visitors numbers - what if only 2% of visitors signup for your newsletter or buy a product?
I would much rather than a page conversion of 30% with 100 visitors a week = 30 sales or 30 signups...
... than having a page conversion of just 2% (which is very typical for badly executed designs or campaigns) with 1500 visitors a week = 30 signups or 30 sales.
Imagine if you used Pay Per Click (Adwords) for 1500 visitors @ £1.50 a visitor, that's £2,250 per week on advertising! Your sales margins had better be good for 30 sales to put you in profit!
Start your campaign and Internet Marketing Strategy with getting your Page Conversion metric right. You shouldn't really pay for marketing or spend time on promoting web pages until you've maximised the Page Conversion. It's your most important number. So test, test, test your Page Conversion with low cost / no cost methods and then carefully manage your marketing spend and time spent efforts to monitor and evaluate it over time.
Anyone who owns a business should always be looking into ways to increase page conversion.
Firstly let us look into the different ways a page can convert visitors to buyers.
1) Preselling: when you write articles, reviews etc. you are in fact preselling your visitors through your content. Your article will be so good and interesting to the reader that they will be compelled to click on the link to your sales page and may very well buy your product or service.
2) Sales page: this is the page that will show your visitor the benefits of your product or service and persuade them to buy.
3) Home page: This is often an introduction to your website and will let your visitor know what to expect. This page will make your visitor curious to stay at your website and look into what you have to offer.
4) Background and Credentials: when a visitor reads this page and knows something about you, they will be more inclined to trust you and look into what you have to offer.
These are just a few ways that your pages can convert visitors into buyers. now let us look into these pages a little deeper and see how you can improve them and increase sales conversions.
Preselling: Preselling your visitors through content is a fine art and needs a little thought. In order to make the most of this and increase conversions you should bear a few points in mind:
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Quality of your articles: your articles should be well written with no grammar and spelling mistakes. They should be written in a style that is easy and enjoyable to read. When a visitor enjoys reading an article they will be more inclined to click through to your sales page and be in a mood to buy.
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Subject matter: the topic of your articles should be of interest to the reader and be something your market would like to know about.
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Different articles: Your visitors will enjoy different articles and it is important to provide different ones to appeal to different sectors of your market. Tutorials, reviews and news articles are just a few examples of what you can write to presell your visitors. The more variety you have the better your visitors will like your content and the more inclined they will be to click through to your sales page.
Sales page: You should always try to increase the conversions on your sales page. You can do this by having two sales pages and tweaking one so that you can increase conversions on it. When you have done this you can discard the one that is not pulling as well and leave the one with higher conversions. Classically this is known as A/B testing and the concept can be taken further to A/B test page headlines, emails, adverts and other traffic drivers.
Home page: Your home page should be like an introduction to a book. What makes you read a book? The opening page and contents, your web page is no different. Look at your home page and see whether it excites your curiosity and interest. Would you want to look deeper into your website based on your home page? If not you no that it is time to make some changes and get your readers excited and curious. When you achieve this your visitors will look further into your website and be drawn towards your sales page.
Use of Video: Simply put this can triple if not quadruple your page conversion.
So next time you are thinking about increasing your conversions try to look at each of your web pages and see if they are really helping to convert your visitors into buyers. As you can see from the above points there are quite a few tweaks you can make to your pages to increase your conversions and profits.
