How to Increase Site Conversions
Sometimes you’ve got traffic coming to your web site, but nobody is biting. How do you figure out what the problem is?
The first thing to look at is where that traffic is coming from. If you have a web analytics package like Google Analytics then you can look at your site statistics and get an idea of how people are hearing about your site.
Incoming traffic
Search engines
You should be able to tell by your stats what kind of search terms are bringing visitors to your site.
Are these terms related to what you sell? If you’re in the web design profession, do people find your site using words like “web design” and “build web site” when they search online?
Or are they coming to your site using the search term “adoption” because you wrote a funny blurb about your experience trying to adopt? (yes–that would be me)
If it’s the latter, the people coming to your site aren’t visiting because they’re interested in building a web site and likely won’t buy anything.
Referring sites
If visitors are coming from a particular web site, go check out the site and see how they are linked to you.
Maybe it’s a banner ad you’re paying for. Maybe someone linked to your site because they like your service or product. Maybe someone had a bad experience with your business and linked to you (you probably won’t be selling anything to those visitors).
If the referring source doesn’t accurately describe your product or service or is linking to you for reasons other than your product or service, the people coming to your site likely won’t be interested in buying from you.
This holds true for banner ads, online directories, pay-per-click campaigns, and other forms of advertising.
Maybe the advertising message needs to be changed. Maybe people come to your site expecting something different than they find. Maybe your site needs to be re-worked to sell more effectively. Perhaps you need to look into creating landing pages.
If your advertising looks good and your visitors seem to be coming to your site for the right reasons, maybe it’s your site that needs changing. The easiest way to find out is to ask. Who do you ask?
Offline customers
Do you already have customers who have bought your product or service offline? Perhaps they are people who come in to your store or order from you by phone. These are the people who keep you in business while your web site just sits there. If you have no previous customers, click here for an exercise will give you the same information as I’ll describe below.
First, ask your current customers why they bought your product or service from you. What is it that sold them? Was it was a particular piece of information? A guarantee? A good price? A sales pitch? Whatever it is you find that worked offline, you need to make sure it’s available online. A well-crafted product information page or a special internet discount may get things rolling.
If all your customers say they bought after handling the product or talking to your friendly, knowledgeable staff, you’re going to have to find a way to create the same experience online. Perhaps a 30-day money back guarantee that will get your product in customer’s hands or a 24-hour hotline people can call will help online buyers press the “submit order” button. Get creative. If you’re not coming up with any ideas, ask your customers what they would suggest you do to help you sell to them. If they’re happy customers, they’ll help you out. If they’re unhappy customers, they may give you even more information than happy customers do.
Other professionals
Run your site past other professionals in your industry. I’m not talking about your competitors necessarily, but if you have associates in the same or similar line of work as you, see if they notice any major problems with your site.
You can also leave your web site information below and let me take a look at it. As you might imagine, I’m pretty good at spotting web site problems.
It might also help to look at this tutorial: How to Turn Nibbles into Bites
If everything on your site looks good and you’re still drawing a blank, you may need to go back to the assumptions you made in the focus and flow tutorial. Are you making the wrong overall impression? Are you just way off the mark? It’s unusual that this happens, but it’s something to check if you can’t think of anything else.
Other popular Web Site Tune-Up tutorials:
- How to Turn Nibbles into Bites
- Sure-Fire Site Improvement with Split Testing
- How to Boost Your Conversion Rates