" How I Increased my Conversion Ratio by 200% without Costing a Dime "

(Author: Wayne Ouellette Sr | Article Views: 25 | Word Count: 1497 | Published: Sep 4th 2007)

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Competition online can be fierce and he who can monopolize the traffic will be king...even if they have a crappy website and product. In other words, you can have the best web site and coolest product in the world, but if you can't manage to get any traffic, you lose.

While there are many ways to build a steady flow of traffic, most are not free so it is in your best interest to squeeze every sale you can out of the traffic you have. This is where determining what your conversion factor is comes into play. For those who may not know what a conversion factor is, I will give you a brief explanation.

Example:

Lets say that on an average day you have 100 visitors (nice round number).

Out of 100 visitors you make 10 sales. Your conversion ratio is 10% (for this example your cost per visitor is not factored in).

Looking at the figures you just need more traffic to close more sales which will land more cash into your bank account right? Sure, that's one way.....but if you are paying for your traffic such as with PPC (pay-per-click) that may not always be cost effective to just shell out more cash hoping you still close the same percentage of sales with the increase in visitors (if your traffic is not 100% targeted then you are just going to be wasting your money anyways).

There are other things you might do to increase your conversion ratio which will still land more cash in your bank account. Some might take a little work, and others might be something as simple as adding a few things to a web page (my personal favorite).

Here are a few things you can do:

1) Take a good hard look at your web page. Make an honest assessment of its overall appearance and tell yourself if you would buy something from a site that looks like that. If the answer is NO, then you need to rethink your design strategy or ad copy.

2) Lets assume in your assessment that you determine that the web page looks professional and the ad copy is written well. The next big hurdle is does your site look trust-worthy? If the answer is NO, then you need to take steps to make it so. A couple big issues is ....

a. do you have a money back guarantee clearly posted? If not, then you should consider adding one.

b. is your order page secure? At this day and age on the internet everyone is well aware of the dangers of identity theft and online security issues pertaining to their personal and payment information. With SSL certificates as cheap as they are now, there is no reason not to have a secure order page.

c. is your contact information clearly posted? No one wants to buy anything from an anonymous person online. That's a huge red flag.

d. do you have any customer testimonials posted? while there are many sites out there that have fake testimonials, there are still plenty of sites with real and honest testimonials from satisfied customers. If you don't have any posted, you may want to consider adding them to your page.

While there are more things to consider when judging the trustworthiness of a web site, these are by far the largest concerns.

3) Is your site navigation streamlined? Or does it make the visitor hunt for your order button or sales page. A big mistake allot of web site business are guilty of are making the visitor "work" to place an order. A good rule of thumb is for a new visitor to be no more than 3 clicks away from placing an order. After all, getting the sale is the primary reason you want them there right?

4) OMG laaaaaaaaagggggggggggg! What is the load time of your web pages? Online everyone had ADD (attention deficit disorder). They will NOT wait for pages to load. If you lose their focus for more than a few seconds, then their brains will go numb and they will be hitting the back button as fast as they can trying to find where they came from.

Sales pages should be fast loading and image-light. Unless you are specifically selling flash and graphics, then you really don't need to have allot of it on your site (flashy is not always better). On the flip side of the problem.....if you DO have an image-light web page that still seems to lag more than it should, perhaps its because you are on an overloaded server (thanks mr. webhost). This will cost you lost business. If this is the case, then it will be in your best interest to find another hosting provider (this is who I reccomend).

5) Ok now lets recap.....Assuming you have a professional site (1), it is trustworthy (2), has a clear navigation following the "3 click rule" (3), with pages that snap because they load so fast (4), here is where you can be a little creative....

When a visitor lands on your page (targeted visitor = a visitor looking for exactly what you are offering) you only have between 5-8 seconds on average to capture their attention. Once you have it, they need to be directed quickly and efficiently to your order page to close the sale. More often than not if a visitor leaves your page without ordering, you will have lost the sale to a competitor. Most people are impulse buyers online and the web site owner that manages to create a sense of urgency will more often than not be the one who gets the sale.

In other words, when a visitor is looking at your product on your web page, you need to give them a reason to BUY NOW instead of saying to themselves "well I will shop around a bit to see what everyone else has to offer". As soon as they leave your page guess what, they will be on your competitors site who GAVE THEM a reason to BUY NOW, and they will get the sale.

If you can be the one to push that impulse to buy button on your visitors, then you will be the one to get the sale and your bank account will thank you. You will also be making the most out of the traffic you have, getting more sales without having to shell out more money for traffic. Everyone likes a fatter profit margin ; )

Now you are asking hmmmmmmm, how can I create a need for them to buy now (abandoning the need to shop your competitors) ? Well there are a number of ways actually. I will share one with you that worked for me like a charm. In fact, for my online business (at the time) I was the first to do it and I saw an instant increase in sales of 200% (yes my bank account was happy). In my case I operated a web hosting business at the time.

My web hosting site was professional, well written with good hosting packages and prices. Orders were secure, testimonials were in place. Like you I just needed to squeeze more out of the traffic I was already getting. How could I get the order NOW without them feeling the "need" to shop my competitors? Here is what worked for me.

On my home page above the fold (the tope half of the screen) I added a live clock script that displayed "real-time" and colored it red (made them stop and look). So they would see time counting away while they read the companion text (which was green for "go"). Written under the clock I added an incentive "Order by MIDNIGHT - Get 3 Free months hosting and a Free 1 year domain included with any 12 month plan." With that I added a link directly to my hosting plan comparison page (3 click rule).

Believe me, considering I would be getting paid for a full 12 months hosting revenue in advance, the 3 free months and 1 year domain were a minimal expense. Especially considering what annual revenues on some of the hosting plans were. I added the same live-clock and text above my hosting plan comparison chart (just for that extra nudge).

As soon as I made that one addition to my site (which took only a few minutes to implement) I increased my conversion ratio by 200%. It was magic. In case you are wondering, yes I did have a money-back guarantee. Fortunately we provided very good service so refund requests were extremely rare.

In closing....often times it only takes a little common sense and a little refinement to make your web business successful. On the web when it comes to making the sale image and convenience are everything. Present the right image and give them a reason to trust and buy from you, making it easy to place the order and you wont have to worry about losing the sale to your competitors. It will be yours.

I wish you all the success online.

About the Author

Article by: Wayne Ouellette Sr. having owned and managed a 6 figure internet business now writes informative articles about web promotion, web development and online business tips and advice helping webmasters at: http://WhoisToolbox.us To read more articles or to post your own visit: http://WhoisArticleDirectory.com

Source: http://WhoisArticleDirectory.com

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