How To Increase Your Site’s Conversion RateBy Ken Evoy "How can I make my site sell more?"How many times per day do I see that in my e-mail? The answer is simple. Lean in close, because I'll whisper this so no one else hears... To make your site sell more, YOU must... ... MAKE it sell more! Not impressed with that answer? Wait!
Before you unsubscribe, note the ALL CAPS on "YOU" and "MAKE." Here's what everyone forgets -- YOU really have to study your site, put yourself into the shoes of your customer, figure out what's wrong, and then... MAKE your site sell BETTER! There are two important ways that YOU can MAKE this happen...
I'm always amazed at how much we learn from proper usability testing. I mean it -- you just can't foresee what "total strangers" will do. They get lost. They don't see a button that you wanted them to see. They complain out loud as they move around. You'll learn tons, and you'll emerge with a better site. Most of you will read this and do nothing about it. Those who do, will e-mail me:
Usability is a huge, ignored issue. MYSS! discusses usability testing in detail, so we won't address this further in this issue. ----- Instead, we'll focus on what YOU can do to MAKE your site sell BETTER! OK, you've picked a nice, quiet time to review your site -- allow no interruptions. Go online, with a 640 x 480 monitor and a 56K modem and a cup of coffee. Start your site review. Review Chapter 20.8 of MYSS! Have you got these "11 Steps to a Site that SELLS!" nailed down? This important summary lays it all out. Get these correct, and you'll be way ahead of most sites already! Now... What sucks? What is actually killing sales? Any weak or counter-productive phrases? Do your pages take forever to load? Chapter 6.10 of MYSS! lists all the ways you can accidentally kill sales. Did any of these sales-killers creep into your site? Eliminate them. See the Spotlight below for a real-world, hands-on, very specific and strong example of how to improve your site's sales power. As you'll see, this is all very do-able -- but YOU have to MAKE it happen. :-) ----- And there's a third way to increase your CR, one that I have not written about in MYSS!. First, though, a bit of background: Our sitesell.com site has a great Conversion Rate ("CR" -- the percent of unique visitors who deliver your Most Wanted Response). Depending on how well the affiliate "pre-sells" (a critical concept outlined in the 5 Pillar Affiliate Manual), the CR ranges as high as 20%. But so what? It's kind of like the baseball player who earns $68 kazillion for batting .333. He gets paid to fail 2 out of 3 times! "What does that have to do with sales?," you ask. Good question (as usual)! Even with its excellent CR, our site FAILS to get the order more times that it SUCCEEDS. Remember, visitors don't stumble into our site out of the ethers of cyberspace... ***EVERY VISITOR HAD AT
LEAST SOME IDEA THAT So why wouldn't such a visitor purchase a book that:
Still, there must be reasons. Maybe:
Perhaps they hate the "look and feel" of the site? There are a zillion possible reasons. Remember, "you don't know what you don't know." Or, as my old med school professor used to say, "You can't treat what you have not diagnosed." In medicine, doctors make a list of possible diseases, just like I did above. Docs don't just "decide" that you have pneumonia. We do blood tests and X-rays to make the diagnosis. And that's what we'll do to our site very soon. To make the diagnosis, we're about to start a study to find out why visitors don't buy. This is a study unlike any other. If you visit the site, you won't even see it happening. The single most important piece of information that any Web vendor must learn is "Why does the majority not buy?" Think about it. Let's say that we survey 1,000 people. Now suppose that there are 1,000 different answers. Well, we know that we can't address 1,000 different reasons. But what if 200 people would have bought if we offered an html version? Or what if 500 people found the site "too hard-sell." Or if 300 people just didn't trust us to refund them? If we find big blocks of common answers, we'll have a strong lead on how to improve the site. If we can overcome or eliminate common reasons, we'll be able to multiply our CR. We'll be publishing the results of this study in "Sales from the EDGE" (see above for info on the EDGE). For now though, here's what you should (?must) do: ACTION STEPReview your own site right now:
SITE-SELL! SPOTLIGHTWe feature part of a site to illustrate a particularly powerful way of "GETTING THE ORDER." This remains a tough one. There are so many sites with all kinds of fancy graphics and elaborate navigation schemes. And with thousands of products for sale. But I still don 't see a heck of a lot of
"selling" going on -- and by that, I mean... A "turn to sales" may not happen for quite a while. As long as Web sites remain in the hands of techies and designers and marketing managers, things won't change. These folks focus on traffic and graphics, not on Conversion Rates. Seriously, involve your sales team intimately in your Web site... if you want it to sell. And please, if you spot a site that does a GREAT job of GETTING THE ORDER, let me know. I'll write it up here. For now, let's give you a practical example of increasing your site's CR.I have just subjected our sitesell.com site to the exercise outlined above (review from Opening Paragraph to MWR). We had not had the time to even look at our site during the three months after our launch. That's a good thing -- our eyes were "fresh" -- ready to really "see" the site again. We made a whole bunch of little changes (improvement in wording, updating information, etc., etc.). Nothing really earthshaking -- just a general polishing. But while doing this, something major hit me! I noticed that we were *not* making full use of our tremendous testimonials. Since we first put the site up, we had received some truly thrilling words of appreciation. The testimonial page had become too long. How did I know? Simple -- I did not feel like clicking on them all to read them. So we did two things:
See how certain headlines hit you and pull you into the main quote? Those testimonials become potato chips -- you can't just eat one. :-) And we made one more important change.... We had received several "super-duper" testimonials that hit key benefits in important ways since we put up the site. We had updated the "Testimonials Page" with them. But... We were using "lesser" testimonials in other critical parts of the site. So we replaced the "lesser" ones with the super-duper ones on...
See how these testimonials add power by fitting in with the context? For example, on the Order Page, we feature a testimonial from the well-respected Paul Myers that stresses MYSS!'s incredible value. Bottom line? We saw an immediate 20% increase in the average affiliate' CR. Not bad for a day's work. How much would it cost you (in time and dollars) to increase sales by 20% if you did it by increasing your traffic? TEST YOUR SITEA challenge to you, dear reader. Go to your site right now and test it. Here's what to do: First, are you using testimonials or product reviews? If not, proceed directly to our Order Page and buy MYSS!. You are missing out on a powerful way to increase sales. If you are using them... Once you are on your site, focus specifically on your testimonials and product reviews:
Do this. I guarantee that it will increase your SALES. |