5 Ways to Increase Website Conversions

Welcome back!

With the western world still struggling to climb out of a self induced recession, every business should be looking at key elements of their online marketing process from website conversion to traffic generation and often a few small changes to increase conversion are all that is needed.

A business website or blog should have a specific function whether it is creating sales, capturing leads or getting users to fill out a form. It is important to know what your websites main function is so that everything on that site can be geared to this main goal and if anything on the page distracts from that, then it should be consigned to the trash bin.

This can be a long process, but once a website is highly optimized for conversions valuable visitors stop getting wasted and the goals of the website will start to be realized. Sometimes increasing the conversion rate can be easier than trying to increase traffic. If you have 1 sale in 100 visitors and you want to increase to 2%, what is easier? Increasing your visitors by another 100 or increasing conversion to 2%?

There are hundreds of ways to increase conversions but let’s keep it simple and concise at 5.

1.    Web Statistics – Implement Google Analytics show you can see what traffic is coming from where, what keywords you’re been found under. You can also tie this in with any Google Adwords Campaigns you’re running and track conversions and results. Using Website Optimizer with Google Analytics allows you to test and optimize site content and design and quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.

2.    Look in the Mirror – Take a long hard look at your website. Is it obvious what you are selling or can solve your reader’s problem? Are there distracting banners, links taking users away from your websites main goal?

3.    Offer Value – In the current climate people are looking for value. Are you offering it? Giving something away for free, free shipping or a similar incentive to order may sound obvious but are you doing it?

4.    Keywords – Is your website targeting the right keyword phrases? If your headlines don’t work or entice. For example: XYZ Florists offer Flowers for every occasion might be better as XYZ Florists of Bristol offer Flowers for Weddings, Funerals, (and depending on the season) Mothers Day / St Valentine’s Day. This would attract more localised results as well as people looking for flowers for a specific occasion.

5.    Testimonials – Are you collecting testimonials from every customer, or as many as you can? Testimonials are a powerful incentive to new buyers. If you can ask for a more in depth testimonial the better. What was it about your service that they liked? How did it benefit them?

A Seminar, Wedding and a Funeral

It’s been a busy month since my Art Trail escapades and I really meant to get this posted earlier this week. A few days after the trail I was off to Ireland to catch up with family. Unfortunately a popular Uncle passed away while I was over there which was a shock. One thing though, my Uncle lived life to the full, still visiting countries abroad with his wife at the age of 84. No matter how bad things get you have to make the most of this short lifetime – no excuses!

After coming back it was straight off to Robert Puddy’s Bristol Internet Marketing Workshop which was a good show all round. It was great to catch up with and have a pint (or two) with Chris Ferville, Simon Hodgkinson, Phil Wiley, Matt Garett, Tahir Shah, Randy Smith, Tony Sheppard and many others. Unfortunately I missed half the workshop itself as a few business matters cropped up (so much for a no distractions business weekend).

Then it was off to a wedding in Scotland which involved a lot of kilts, whisky and haggis on a large scale. Shame I was ill at this point, having caught a bad cold (no, not swine flu!) so I’ve been struggling to get back on track where I really need to be as we are comp[letely rebranding and relaunching our design and web consultancy business Code 9.

The point of this blog post? Absolutely none, but I thought I’d update you all

The Art of Selling

This weekend we opened up our house to the public as part of an ‘art trail’ with close to 1000 people coming in to see our exhibition of work. You may or not know but I draw cartoon illustration and this weekend put on my work on show along with other artists as part of the Bristol Art Trail.

This was a great opportunity to talk with people interested in my work and hopefully sell some. Just as any online selling, building the relationship with your prospect and sharing your story is a vital part of making sales. People wanted to know about the background to the work and my first sale was based on, obviously a liking of the artwork, but also the background story to that work.

I also made sure I had a sheet so interested punters could leave their name and email updates and news. So we had the traffic (500 people on Saturday, and around 400 on Sunday), an email capture form and a variety of products (my artwork) some of which is based on a story book I will be publishing. Blowing up images to large prints from the upcoming book certainly grabbed interest and now I have a list of people gagging to buy when it is published!