Thus, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is no longer a nice-to-have, but an absolute must for us internet marketers, and we all know it. Some of you reading this might even be “closet conversion optimizers” – you’ve been secretly running tests on your own but because you haven’t been seeing improvements, you haven’t dared come out of the closet to brandish your impressive conversion rate increase to your peers. Meanwhile, the tiny sliver of hope you have left about gaining more bang out of your marketing buck is hanging by a delicate thread.

But it’s not your fault. Most likely, you’re getting paltry results because you’re implementing some changes that are actually working against you. And most likely, the changes you’d been making are stemming from false assumptions and ineffective methodologies.

So here I discuss the most common myths and misconceptions that many people have that actually hurt their conversion optimization efforts. If you haven’t ran any conversion optimization tests yet (but want to do it or hire someone to do it for you), pay special attention as well because these revelations will save you a ton of time, heartache and money.

Myth #1: It’s OK to test whatever I feel like testing because conversion optimization is all about creating magic buttons, following “best practices,” changing elements willy nilly, and then seeing what works best from there.

“It’s not converting too well because the design looks outdated. So let’s redesign the logo, the brand identity and the entire flippin’ sales page. I’m sure the conversion rate will improve after that”, is a common demand we hear from first-time clients.

They can hardly be blamed though. At first glance it does seem like CRO is all about changing elements like the size of call-to-action buttons or the color of headlines and seeing what sticks, but it actually goes much deeper than that.

Imagine that your website is a bucket. Think of your visitors as water going into the bucket. Now think of the things that are making your visitors not buy or leave your website as holes in your bucket (and there are many!).

You can’t optimize your conversion rate until you know exactly what’s causing the holes in your business bucket.

Your bucket is leaking, BIG time.

And the thing is that in real life, you can’t easily see where the damn holes are – and that’s the problem.

Redesigning elements of your website without first investigating what could be going wrong is just like getting a flashier, posher, different-colored (but also hole-infested) bucket. It can’t better serve you or your customers if you are still stuck with the same problems as before, and you are several thousand dollars worse off.

The solution is obvious: you must thoroughly investigate and find out the nature, location and shape of the holes, and based on your findings, come up with the appropriate solutions to repair those leaks.

The conversion culprits could vary. Broadly speaking, it’s possible that:

• Your website is difficult to use or certain information are hard to find.
• Your copy is confusing or boring. Maybe it’s “too hypey”. Maybe it’s heartless, or maybe it’s simply flat out inappropriate because it’s tapping on the wrong buyer motivations.
• Your website doesn’t look credible/trustworthy.
• Most of the traffic you’re getting are unqualified, or they’re just researching/“window shopping” at this point in time.
• Your visitors don’t trust you or believe your claims.
• Some of your visitors think your offer is not the best one (at this time) for them.
• You’re forcing your prospects to go through an unnecessarily frustrating process to get what they want, so they exit.

As you can see, each problem would require a solution unique to itself. There’s no one-size-fits-all plug available, unfortunately. Like it or not, the only time you’d be able to take the appropriate actions to improve your conversion rate is when you know exactly what’s preventing your prospects from taking the desired action.

Simply put, your decisions must be data-driven, not opinion-driven.

Myth #2: I don’t need to survey or talk to my customers/target market. I know them very well and I know exactly what’s going on in their minds. I dictate what changes should be made.

Myth #2 is very similar to Myth #1, but coming from a slightly different angle. While myth #1 is essentially stemming from the belief “it’s OK to make changes without doing any research first”, myth #2 is more about the false assumption that since you can imagine being your customers, why bother asking them anything at all?

Remember that regardless of the industry you’re in, or even if you’re selling just one type of product, you’re likely to be marketing to many different customer profiles or different market segments who naturally would then have different motivations.

Take a weight loss product as a classic example. An obese and hormonal teenage girl would have different motivations compared to an overweight and heartbroken 49-year old male divorcee, or a 28-year old woman who just gave birth. Could absolutely know exactly how to think like each of these market segments effectively without asking them for feedback?

Communicate in a way that answers this primordial question for as many of your prospects as possible.

And that’s just the bit where we consider the buyers’ layers of motivation. I haven’t even mentioned different personalities or styles of processing information, like:

1. Methodical – or the I-actually-read-all-the-fine-print anal type
2. Spontaneous – or the just-gimme-the-bullet-points-please type
3. Social – or the I’mma-buy-based-on-what-other-people-say type
4. Competitive – or the just-show-me-how-it’d-make-me-faster-richer-sexier-better-stronger-I-don’t-care-about-anything-else type.

The point is different types of people go to your website. If you really want your site to convert, it’s best to gather feedback from the very people you hope to serve – and use the market intelligence you’ve gathered to help you craft your next experiments.

Myth #3: Conversion Optimization is a matter of guessing what to test using my gut instincts.

Using your gut instincts could be a great tool when forming hypotheses to test, but don’t rely on it alone. For example, you might suspect that the reason why you’re not converting well is because you’re providing too many packages to choose from. That’s well and good, but don’t go about creating a “6 packages VS 3 packages” right away.

Apart from surveys and heatmaps, creating usability tests is another way to really get in the head of your target market.

What if the real problem is not the number of choices per se, but that your prospects are unsure which package is best for them to pick, because the unique advantages of each package are unclear? If this is the case, then the appropriate test to conduct involves creating pages where the packages have clearer and easier-to-understand unique value propositions – NOT reducing the number of packages on offer.

Form your theories but do whatever’s needed to investigate and uncover the actual problems first, and then implement the appropriate experiment to find the possible best combination of solutions.

Myth #4: If I copy a great company’s website design, layout, colour scheme and words, I’ll enjoy the same high conversion rate.

If this is the case, then we can all just model all our websites after Schwan’s or Vitacost.com and we’d enjoy over 24% conversion rate.

Conversion case studies are there not for you to copy exactly, but for you to gain insights from. Just because someone changed their call-to-action button from a green square to a red rectangle and gained a 16% lift in conversion doesn’t mean you’d enjoy the same lift if you implement the same change.

Myth #5: Conversion Optimization is all about making a webpage look great and look high-tech and all fancy. It has nothing to do with anything else.

I’m a sucker for intelligent, beautiful designs, but design is not the end-all-and-be-all. In fact, there are many impressively designed websites that are not persuasive at all.

Design is just an element (and a superficial one at that) among many other elements that make up your website.

Design is just like hair, make-up, jewelry and clothes. You can dress someone up looking all snazzy and sophisticated, but at the end of the day, it’s still their personality, character, and the person they are inside that counts.

Similarly, sometimes what’s really needed in order to raise your conversion rate is not a website redesign, but changing an aspect of your business “inner game”. This could mean changing/rethinking your philosophy, your values, your product positioning, your brand strategy, your business processes, redefining your core competencies, restructuring your main offers, reworking your company culture, etc.

You have to be willing to change yourself and your business if you are really serious at dominating your market. At the heart of CRO is the principle continuous improvement. This should cover every single thing in your business and your thinking, not just your website. Otherwise the benefits you’d reap would be superficial and short-lived.

Creepy or genius? Clicktale is a tool that records visitor sessions. It’s just like looking over their shoulders as they use your website!

Myth #6: CRO is about manipulating as many visitors as possible to do what *I* want them to do: buy.

Of course eventually we want as many of our visitors to buy or perform whatever action needed to make profits for our business. But there’s a subtle added later of depth to this dimension. But understand that some visitors go to your website with an intention other than buying or subscribing. Maybe they are there to find a specific article they read before, and want to share it, or they want to just plain marvel at your awesomeness and drool over your pictures which isn’t bad at all.

Imagine you’re selling software online. It comes in standard and deluxe version. You make more profit if you sell more deluxe versions, so you really should gear your entire website to getting people to buy the deluxe version. That’s just right, isn’t it?

Well, over the short term, yes it could make you more money, but it could bite you in the ass over the long term if that’s your sole focus.

If the standard version is the best fit for Joe’s current needs, then it’s your job to help Joe understand this and help him make a well-informed buying decision. Sure, you could have sold him the deluxe version and made more money, but what if he used it and got put off by the extra features he didn’t need? What if he felt duped and put up negative reviews online and encouraged others to never buy from you? (Reflect about this especially if you have a high refund rate or member attrition rate or high number of complaints from customers)

CRO is not about manipulation so that you make a sale regardless of what’s the best fit for your customer. Rather, it’s a win-win process, in which you find out exactly what would serve your prospects best given their unique situations, so that you could align your business to meet their needs, thus helping them get exactly what they were looking for.

Myth #7: The shorter the sales presentation, the better. (Or the shorter the sales copy/video, the better).

Not necessarily. In fact, there had been cases where longer sales presentations or longer sales pages had been tested to convert higher.

People who read your sales letter have questions, concerns, doubts and objections. In order to convert them into buyers, you must uncover all of their concerns and address them in the most effective way possible.

Don’t worry about the length of your sales presentation. The fact is that people who are really interested in what you’re offering will put in the time needed to digest your information. The crime is not long sales letters per se, but flat, boring, unpersuasive sales letters that fail to connect with and move your audience to act.

Is it worth eliminating the fluff? Absolutely. But don’t aim for brevity for brevity’s sake alone. Instead, aim for aligned persuasion.

Myth #8: Sales conversion rate is the only metric I should care about.

Depending on your business/website objectives, there are many other metrics that, if you also track, would give you a much deeper understanding of how to achieve your goals faster and more effectively.

Case in point: for non e-commerce sites like news sites or blogs, useful metrics to track are Visitor Loyalty (how often people visit your site), and Visitor Recency (the amount of time in between visits).

The shorter the time in between visits means the more engaged your audience is.

So you see, apart from the question, “how to increase my website conversion to X%?” there are other interesting (and fun!) questions you could aim to answer in your research or tests, such as:

• Which PPC campaigns/traffic sources/search keywords are resulting to higher Average Order Value and why?
• Which content on my site are generating me the most [ad clicks/opt-ins/sales] and why?
• Which of my email marketing campaigns are generating the most opens/clicks/sales and why?
• Which price point results to most sales over the long term without hurting the refund or attrition rate?
• Which traffic sources are giving me the most engaged visitors/ highest-converting traffic and why?
• How much is my Cost Per Acquisition? 
• Which of my content are the top 20 most shared/commented on and why?
• Which traffic sources are generating me the highest revenues and why?

Which of your marketing campaigns are resulting to higher Ave Order Value (AOV)? What creative upsell tactics could you do to increase AOV?

While it’s good to know what your visitors did while on your website, it’s much better if you also know WHY they behaved the way they did. While it’s good to know how many transactions occurred or how much money you made, it’s much better if you also know the reasons why you made as much as you did.

Conclusion

To create tests without knowing what the real problems are is like a plumber trying to unclog pipes without knowing which pipes are blocked in the first place. Stop guessing and operating from myths. Instead, start investigating what exactly are the reasons why visitors are not converting, so you can start implementing the correct solution.

There’s a lot more to conversion rate optimisation than what’s on the page: you need to consider your visitors’ objections, motivations, personality, communication style, their stage in the buying cycle, their goals and expectations.

If you dig deeper to uncover the roots of your conversion problems and implement win-win solutions, you’d soon enjoy a higher conversion and you could finally come out of that closet.

The post 8 Myths that are Hurting your Conversion Optimization Efforts appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

I’ll talk about the conversion boo-boos (yes, it’s the technical term for that) we marketers often commit. In doing so, I hope to make you become aware of the many ingenious ways we internet marketers make our prospects bounce, get turned off, not buy and cast us into complete oblivion.

But first…

Let’s Play a Game!

For any conversion boo-boo I mention here, think of a specific web page you’ve encountered that has committed the same. Then post the link or submit a screenshot in the comment section. If it’s a great example of the conversion boo-boo, we’ll use that page as a glorious illustration here in this blog post, with credits to you!

For this reason, I have deliberately included only a few images here.

Sound fun?

Let’s begin…

There are numerous factors that influence your conversion rate. However, generally speaking, when our website fail to convert your prospect (Joe is the name I’ll use to refer to “your prospect”, and for our purposes I’ll refer to Joe as a man or a woman or both), it’s because one or several of the following is/are happening:

A. Joe’s Specific Needs, Motivations and Desires are Not Met

Many sales are lost primarily because we failed to meet our prospects’ needs. We do this in various ways:

1. Not having solid market intelligence (or worse, having it but not using it).

I know I already harped on and on about this on my previous post, but it’s only because it’s the single most powerful thing you could ever have/do as a marketer. If you really want to covert, aim to develop the skill that Mel Gibson had in the movie “What Women Want”.

The lesson is clear: You may be the best looking salesperson in the world who know all sorts of fancy selling techniques, but if you don’t have a friggin’ clue who Joe is, what conversations she’s having inside her head, what she’s afraid of, what her biggest frustrations are, what his ultimate fantasies are, etc then you’d have trouble converting your visitors into customers.

2. Trying to sell to anyone.

A saying goes, “chase two rabbits and you catch none” (I’m pretty sure it was the legendary Anon who said it. Or some really old Chinese wise guy.)

For example, instead of targeting “anyone who wants to get their dream body and look good”, get clearer about WHO your niche market is and write a copy specifically for that persona. It could be:

• the skinny guy who’s got only 15 weeks to put weight on, and look big, strong and muscular on his wedding day.
• the obese 18 yr old girl who wants to stop feeling like she’s invisible, and gain self-confidence.
• the woman who just gave birth and wants to lose the fat and get her sexy, toned body back.
• the rich, successful but time-poor 53 year old business exec who wants to look leaner, get more energy, and be able to play with his grand kids without feeling like he’s going to have a heart attack.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t serve multiple market segments. It just means that if you want to convert more people, you need to present your offer in a way that makes certain people think, “They are speaking directly to ME! This company is solving MY problems. They made that solution especially for ME!”

3. Not appealing to both emotions and logic

Pretend you’re a 25 year old single man who is having trouble getting a pretty, fun girlfriend because you don’t know how to approach women. Which of these opening lines would grab your interest more:

# 1: “How to approach women with confidence”

versus

# 2: “A simple, works-every-time way to approach a woman in a way that makes her see you as an attractive, sexy man she must get to know but actually gets her turned on as she is talking to you (you can learn it in 30 seconds, and it works especially well on those smoking hot, snotty women who usually don’t give men their time of day)”

’nuff said.

(By the way I stole these from Craig Clemens)

4. Not being customer-centric

What’s worse than not being customer-centric? Believing that you are customer-centric when in reality, you’re not.

Not being customer-focused can take many forms, some of which are subtle.

a. You do it when you don’t implement changes based on the user feedback you get.

For example, if you keep getting asked what your returns policy is, slap on a ‘Returns Policy’ link somewhere more prominent/obvious. If you’re driving decent traffic to your free giveaways but not getting enough opt-ins, maybe the freebies are not very valuable to Joe in the first place. Get Joe’s feedback, get some clues from your competitors, then change it.

b. You’re not customer-focused when you craft your website based on how YOU think, your preferences, and your opinion, without asking for feedback from the very people you hope to serve.

(Like when you make your website mostly pink just because it’s your favourite colour; or when you insist on organising your site’s information a certain way in spite of the fact that you get many questions from visitors showing their confusion/difficulty finding information.)

c. You’re not customer-focused when you make self-aggrandizing claims that are left unsubstantiated, or when you say “we” in your copy more than “you” :

“We are the best, fastest, easiest and best-value.
We have been in business since 1808.
We are pioneers in our industry.
Our standard is superior, our service is world-class.
We have offices worldwide.
We are so good at what we do, that we published many articles and won lots and lots of awards…”

I heard someone call this as “we-we’ing”. In short, stop pissing all over your website, then wonder why it stinks

Use “you” and “your” more in your copy, and you’ll be trained to think and speak in terms of how Joe is going to have a better, happier, richer life because of your offer, instead of you talking in terms of what a God’s gift to humanity you are.

B. Joe Doesn’t Truly Understand the Benefits/Results He’ll Enjoy

Have you ever been to a web page, scanned through the entire page, and you still haven’t a clue as to what exactly the site can do for you?

Yep, we’ve all been there. Classic examples are…

5. Hiding the benefits your product/service provides.

This is often the case when you’re selling something that’s perceived as complex, new or technical, and you’re trying to sell to people who are unfamiliar with your fancy words. Your statements may make complete sense to you because you’re an expert at what you do, but be aware how they may sound like gobbledygook to another.

Take the case of “hidden benefits”, or benefits that you know your product/service provides, but your prospects may not necessarily know about. For example I saw this “stool” in a shop in Camden last weekend. Had it not been for the explanation, I wouldn’t have known it wasn’t just a weird looking thing to plant my booty on.

Time Machine with 4 speeds forward and 4 speeds back

I also found  this musical instrument called didge or didgeridoo with a very exciting “hidden benefit” :

Naturally, I bought the whole lot.

But only cos Christmas is coming soon.

C. It’s Unclear to Joe as to WHY he Should Buy YOUR Offers NOW

Noticed the caps? You could avoid this mistake by avoiding the following:

6. Unclear “Value Proposition”

I’ve explained UVP (unique value proposition) in my previous post already so please refer to it again. In todays’ marketplace where your Joe is inundated with marketing messages, it’s very important to emphasize why you are uniquely positioned to meet his particular needs, and what you’re able to provide that other vendors don’t (or don’t provide as well as you do).

7. Not utilizing the Voice of Customer (VoC)

Telling Joe that your stuff is good does not have the same impact as hearing Jill, one of your customers, say that you’re awesome and that your stuff is like Manna from heaven. So why not let your customers sell your stuff for you?

An effective use of the VOC (Voice of Customer)

Notice how all three statements talked about the same feature/benefit – could it be because the electronic ink display is the Kindle’s main UVP? (wink)

D. Joe Doesn’t Know What She Should do Next to Get What She Wants, and How

Here is where usability issues could come into play. Since usability is a broad topic, let me just hone in on one of the most common usability issues :

8. Lack of Active Guidance from You

A classic example of this is having no clear Calls to Action, or having no clear guidance on ways for Joe to “move forward”. In the words of MarketingExperiments.com :

If you don’t guide visitors to your main objective, someone else will. Use the five elements of guiding eyepath (size, shape, color, position, and motion) to clearly communicate with your visitors (1) where they are, (2) what they can do on your page, and (3) why they should do it. In seeking to answers these questions, you may find that the less (distractions) you put on your page, the higher your conversion rate will be.

Remember that just because the next step may be clear to YOU, doesn’t mean it’s clear to Joe (even if you think you’re vey much like Joe). Don’t expect them to unravel the mystery behind your cryptic copy and secret offer.

Saying that though, what most internet marketers are guilty of is having too much call to action, to the extent of being douchy and annoying (e.g., having the buy now” button inserted every 5 sentences, or having big red animated arrows pointing to the call to action buttons).

Remember that people buy not because you told them to click a button. People buy because they think you are best positioned in the marketplace to give them what they want.

9. Confusing – could be the copy, the layout, the design, the way the information is presented/organized.

For example, I found this e-commerce website in webpagesthatsuck.com :

Would you buy from this website?

This website is trying to cram too much information everywhere, that it’s difficult to decide what you should do first or what to click. Everything jumps out at you, competing for your attention, and there is no clear thought sequence to follow.

If you want to convert, think of ways how you can make your visitors’ experience easy, pleasurable and hassle-free.

E. Joe has Questions, Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts that You Hadn’t Fully Dealt With

At the heart of every failed sale are prospects’ questions, fears, uncertainties and doubts (FUDs) that were left unaddressed. A few examples are:

10. Important information is difficult to find, or buried somewhere inconspicuous.

Hands up if you’ve been to a website and the pricing is impossible to find in one or two clicks. Or how about a restaurant website with no link to their address, no map to their location, and their phone number is nowhere to be found?

Or the menu requires you to opt-in before you can view it or they require you to download it?

Frustrating, isn’t it?

11. There simply isn’t enough information.

Have you ever been to an e-commerce site before that’s selling a product you’re interested in, only to get frustrated because there is no (or very little) product description?

Have you ever been presented with the buy button, when you don’t even know yet what the product could really do for you?

One thing I noticed is that many marketers are afraid to create “long” sales copy. If you’re asking someone to make a buying decision, give them all the information they need to make a well-informed decision!

12. Short-term thinking.

I once helped create a sales page that converted at slightly above 5% when it was first launched, but we soon realized that the customers we’re getting didn’t actually understand what was included in the packages they bought, resulting to a lot of  support emails from frustrated customers with false expectations (the offer was quite technical and expensive).

We revised the page, which resulted to a much longer copy as more information needed to be presented and clarified to avoid misunderstandings. After the first revision it converted lower than 5%, but the customers we acquired were our ideal customers, there were very little complaints, and certainly no refund threats nor were there any unreasonable demands. Conversion was lower, but our net profit was higher because overheads, refund rate and stress were considerably lower, too.

I also know someone who had a similar experience during a super hyped-up launch. They had a high-converting page, but they also got a high refund rate and high levels of complaints from buyers. In the end, the marketer decided to stop using some of the selling tactics he used during the launch because his brand and reputation was more important to him.

Are you making the same mistake?  Ask yourself what’s truly important to you over the long term.

Conclusion
Making your customers the center of your marketing universe is one of the pillars of conversion rate optimization. It’s a mindset, a philosophy, and a practice that you must do daily if you truly want to be a great marketer.

Evaluate your marketing materials and ask yourself this question: “In what ways am I committing <insert conversion boo boo here>?” Then look at your website pages one by one and identify how you’re hurting your site’s conversion. Develop your testing hypothesis, then test and measure the changes you made.

Happy testing, and don’t forget to report back here with links to conversion boo-boo’s you see around the web!

About the Author

Marj Galangco is a certified Conversion Rate Optimization and Web Analytics Practitioner. She’s also the co-director of Easisell, a company offering premium web design and web development services to successful internet marketers.

The post 12 Conversion Boo-Boos That Make Your Website Stink appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

You’ve got your slick sales page up and running.

You’ve emailed your list, tweeted the link, posted the promotion on your facebook wall, scheduled a few webinars, published videos, set up some ads…

But it only resulted to sales far fewer than you imagined.

Put simply, you’re getting a lot of traffic but your conversion sucks.

What happened?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you were converting more like these websites:

[/caption] 

It’s not because these websites have super powers or because they’re using magic voodoo tricks. It’s simply because they’re doing things that you’re not doing – yet.

Conversion Optimization involves many things: market intelligence, developing hypotheses, split testing, measuring results, web analytics, etc.

In this article I’ll make things simple and give you 7 easy tips that if you apply to your sales process, will surely help improve your conversion rates.

1. Cover the Basics!

Just like you shouldn’t wear your pants before your underpants, it’s better to optimize your conversion rate after you’ve got the fundamentals right.

Start by ensuring your sales page or website is functional and accessible.

Functional

At bare minimum, make sure your site:

• Loads quickly
• Has no broken links
• Has a shopping cart that takes payments hassle-free and glitch-free
• Has data-capture forms that actually work (lead generation forms, ‘contact us’ forms, ‘request for proposal’ forms, etc).

Lets not forget about the backend and ‘customer fulfilment’ sides of your business; if a payment goes through but nobody in your team gets notified (due to a technical glitch or misconfiguration in your ordering system), you won’t be able to fulfil the order which could result to very unhappy customers. Not cool.

Accessible

Website accessibility refers to things like:

• The readability of your content. Evaluate your choice of font, font size, text color, background color, contrast between elements, etc.
• Site compatibility with popular browsers, including mobile devices like tablets and phones
• Loading times for different internet connections – will the dial up users in your audience have problems loading the site?

2. Know Who You’re Trying to Persuade

Ultimately, conversion optimization really boils down to how well you can persuade your prospects to take the action you want them to take. But you won’t persuade these people if you know jack shit about them.

Knowing the people you wish to serve is elementary stuff but are you really learning about them? Or are you just making assumptions, imagining what they must be thinking, arrogantly believing you know exactly what’s going on in their heads?

Go find out as much as you can about your niche market. Let’s say that your niche are Nazi-loving, one-armed, pregnant hermaphrodites (by the way I’m the market leader in this fast-growing niche so don’t even try to steal this from me). To effectively convert them into buyers, you must find out:

• What keeps them up at night?
• What’s their wildest fantasy?
• What are their biggest questions, their deepest fears, their worst doubts?
• What conversations are they having inside their head?
• What keywords are they typing in the search engines?
• What websites do they visit and why?

If you knew the answers to these questions, then:

• You would be able to come up with effective hooks to get their attention.
• You’d be able to produce the type of content they’d devour and pass on to their peers.
• You’d know exactly what questions they’d be asking at which stage in the buying cycle – and so you’d know how and when to answer.
• You’d be able to say the exact words that would trigger the needed emotions to help them decide and take action.
• You’d be able to put together an offer they simply won’t be able to refuse.

Conversion Optimization goes beyond the demographics and psychographics. If you’re serious about increasing your conversion, you must ask questions like:

What’s stopping people from buying? What are their buying criteria and how do they make buying decisions?

When a qualified prospect doesn’t buy, it’s rarely due to the price. Most often, a low website conversion rate is partly due to inadequate information. So explore what questions your prospects have that your sales page is not answering – then answer them persuasively!

Another cause of low conversion rate is that you haven’t clearly demonstrated that what they’re going to get is worth at least 3x the asking price. WIN-LOSE is the new win-win. If you make your prospects feel your offer is a WIN-LOSE situation (they ‘win’ because the value you’re giving is so great and you ‘lose’ because you must be out of your freakin’ mind to offer it at that price) then the investment becomes a no-brainer for them.

What made your existing customers buy? Exactly why are your happy customers happy? What do they think makes you awesome?

If you found out you’re a massive hit to your tribe because of your fast turnaround time or your competitive rates or your impressive portfolio or your amazing case studies (or whatever) – shout about these! From these you’ll find your core strengths, your unique value propositions, your unique positioning statements – so declare them, use them, proclaim them! Put them in places where your prospects will most likely find them helpful or influential to their decision-making process.

3. Serve Relevant Content

When a visitor lands on your site, the very first question they’ll have is: “Is this content relevant to ME?”

Every click that a visitor makes is made because they have a specific intention, they have a question they’re seeking to answer, or a need they want to meet. If they click a banner ad (for example) but your landing page does not satisfy their question, they will click away. This results to a high bounce rate.

Did you know that studies show visitors decide within 5 seconds whether your page is relevant to them or not? So you’ve a very short time to capture their interest!

To minimize bounce, create and maintain relevancy. Keep the consistency between the traffic source and landing pages.

For example, make sure the advert has similarities with the landing page in terms of the copy, the unique value propositions, the general look and feel, and of course the offer must be consistent.

Looking at the banner ad below, the value propositions are:

• “Instantly adds 2 cup sizes”
• “Free Shipping on U.S. orders over $100 then there’s a code supplied (SHIPVS10)”
• “can be worn as crossback or halter”

Notice also the headline (“Hello Spring, Hello Bombshell!”) and the Call to Action (“Shop Now”).

The banner ad took you to a page with a different tag line (“Dream Angels Forever”) – where is the “Hello Bombshell”?

Also now it talks about ‘needs a little lift’. If you’re the type of woman who felt compelled by the tagline, “instantly adds 2 cup sizes” do you think you would get excited by “need a little lift”? I don’t think so!

Also, the “Free Shipping for orders over $100” value proposition has been changed to “Free Shipping with any full priced bra purchase”.

Confusing, isn’t it?

You see there’s a massive disconnect there. No relevancy has been maintained. The continuity was broken.

You’d think it’s pretty common sense, but this happens a lot.

So if you have a high bounce rate (50% upwards), it’s likely that your campaign materials are failing to establish relevancy, or you have set up traffic sources that are attracting UNtargeted traffic.

When you design a banner ad or a PPC/PPV ad, when you write an email subject line, make sure you pair it up with targeted content. When you create a call to action, make sure the link takes them to a page with relevant content. When you promise to give a specific freebie, make sure the link takes the visitor to a page showing exactly the promised freebie and how to get it. Don’t be a douche by taking them to a sales page.

If your main traffic source are affiliates, you must educate your affiliates heavily about the importance of how they pre-sell your offer, what the best creatives to use for what situation and what link each creative must lead to.

4. Test your Unique Value Proposition (UVPs)

Unique Value Propositions are positioning statements or incentives that make your offer unique or extra attractive or gain more perceived value in the eyes of your prospects.

I’m sure you’re familiar with statements like:

• “Try it free for 30 days. Download now.”
• “Free shipping on orders over $35” or “Free shipping if you order today”
• “Instantly increase your opt-in rate by as much as 500%”

To increase your conversion rates, test which UVP is attracting the most number of clicks. For example, this campaign test was featured in Whichtestwon.com:

The above is a screenshot of the improved version of a Hotel Booking page. The ONLY improvement made was adding FAQs on the right hand side of the page. Just by adding this Point-of-action Assurance, this page got a 9.2% increase in completed hotel bookings, which, as you can imagine is probably worth hundreds of thousands of increased revenue for this hotel chain.

Other POA ideas you can use are:

Conclusion

Conversion Optimization is not about manipulating people to do what YOU want them to do regardless of what’s best for them. Neither is it just a matter of randomly changing elements in your site like colors, shapes, sizes, layout and seeing what seems to be convert better.

Rather, Conversion Optimization is about truly knowing your prospect inside and out, aligning your offer with their needs, anticipating and answering their questions, and addressing their fears, uncertainties and doubts.

Apply the seven simple tips above and you’ll surely be ahead compared to many of your competitors. If you want to learn even more advanced Conversion Optimization principles for your website, join me on my next webinar: “Why Your Website Sucks and What to Do About It: How to Make More Sales Without Getting More Traffic”

About Marj Galangco

Marj Galangco is a certified Conversion Rate Optimization and Web Analytics Practitioner. She’s also the co-director of Easisell, a company offering premium web design and web development services to savvy internet marketers.

The post 7 Fast Fixes to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate appeared first on How To Make Money Online.