Website Conversion Improvement

You may have mistakenly assumed it was to build website traffic. While that certainly is a critical component, there are many websites that bring in a good amount of traffic, but make few sales.

On the other hand, if you are converting 5-6% of your visitors, you don't need 1,000 people a day coming in order to build a profitable business.

I'd like to show you just how powerful website conversion improvement can be. Actually, the combination of increasing your conversion rate AND website traffic is the one-two punch that will literally transform your business.

The Effects of Website Conversion Improvement

This chart shows the effects of website conversion improvement on a very modest 1,000 visitors per month and an average order value of $50.

You can see that an increase in 3 percentage points (from 2% to 5%) more than doubles your sales (from $12k to $30k.) Now, a thousand visitors a month is pretty poor traffic. The next chart shows a more mature site that is bringing in 15,000 visitors per month.

It's a little more interesting when you get your traffic numbers up, right? Now we move from $180k all the way to $450k with the same 3 percentage point increase in conversion rate.

Let's look at one final example. In the chart below, I've shown the effects of fixed traffic and conversion rate, but a small increase in the average order value.

So, a $15 increase in the average order value results in a yearly sales increase of $135,000 - and that's with a fixed conversion rate and traffic volume!

The Three Factors for Profitability

1. Increasing traffic to the page
2. Improving website conversion rate
3. Increasing the average order value

While website conversion improvement is the subject of this article, your overall success is very much dependent on your average order value as well as the total traffic volume your site generates. Of course, if your ultimate conversion goal is non-monetary (e.g., newsletter signup), then the average order value doesn't factor in.

But even if your overall traffic volume is underwhelming, you can easily double and even triple your overall profits by concentrating on website conversion improvement.

Website Conversion Improvement - Usability Testing

Let's say you had a mailing list of 100,000 names and you wanted to test the offer. You would make two random test groups of perhaps 10,000 names each. You send offer #1 to one of the lists and offer #2 to the other list.

After a few weeks, you take a look at which offer produced the best conversion and then mail out the rest of your 80,000 names the higher converting offer.

You can see how expensive this can become for direct mail. Fortunately, the power of the Internet will allow you to do all types of testing using your headlines, photo captions, offers, pricing and more. Now, it is easy to set up a multivariate test to find the combination of page elements for maximum conversion.

Make no mistake, a well-thought out testing program will be your number one tool for website conversion improvement. To this end, I highly recommend the free Google Website Optimizer for setting up powerful split and multivariate tests quickly and efficiently.

Website Conversion Improvement - Usability

Especially if you are the one that built your site, you can quickly lose your objectivity and assume your site is easy to navigate.

The only real way to measure where people get tripped up on your site is to write down a half dozen tasks you want performed and then watch someone attempt to accomplish those tasks.

In the past, putting together a usability testing program could cost thousands of dollars. Fortunately, you can now hire an independent tester for just $29.

Website Conversion Improvement - Visitor Attention

How about being able to track the sections of a page where visitors pay the most attention?

Wouldn't it be helpful to see how far down your sales page people scrolled on average?

If you could somehow measure visitor attention of specific page elements, you could rearrange them to maximize their effectiveness, thereby increasing conversion.

Imagine being able to view an overlay on any page of your site that showed the concentration of mouse clicks. By knowing what links are popular and which ones are ignored, you could make page changes to increase visitor engagement.

Not only are these types of tools available, there are free versions available that allow you to get started immediately without the need to purchase some fancy software.

Below is a link to a service called Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg uses what is known as Heat Maps to help you better understand how your visitors are interacting with important landing pages.

Website Conversion Improvement - Visitor Feedback

Even if it doesn't directly affect your sales page, improving your overall website functionality will help reduce visitor frustration. A visitor that comes to your site and quickly finds what they need will be more open to completing a defined action than someone that is frustrated by your site navigation.

There are several great ways to easily obtain direct feedback from your web visitors. One of my favorites is Kampyle. Kampyle is a cool little Feedback Button that sits in the corner of your web page, allowing visitors to give instant feedback on an issue in just seconds.

It's one of my favorite programs for obtaining customer feedback without being annoying to visitors. Give the free version a try below.