Everybody knows that it’s important to increase traffic for growth, but what many webmasters often fail to recognize is that it’s also important to increase your conversion rate as well.
For example, if your site is getting 500 visitors per day, has a conversion rate of 2% and is earning you half of what you want… then you have several options.
First, you could simply try to double your daily visitors and hope that will also double your daily earnings. This isn’t always the best first step however, because it can be hard to double the amount of “targeted” traffic your site is receiving, and untargeted traffic is basically worthless.
Something else you could (and probably should) do is look at ways you might be able to increase the conversion rate on your site instead.
If you’re already getting 500 visitors per day, and they are targeted, there are a ton of simple things you can do to increase your conversion rate with them. There is already tons of blog postings and ebooks which go into on-page marketing such as link and ad placement, so I want to focus on some of what I think are the most overlooked things you can do.
For example, a “Bookmark This Page” link will encourage repeat visits from these targeted people, and each return visit by someone interested in your topic/product/service is an opportunity for you to make a sale with them.
The only exception to that is if your site has an RSS feed. You’re better off using the page space to promote signups to that than placing a “Bookmark This Page” link. But if you don’t have a feed, be sure to have an easy bookmarking option.
Another widely overlooked technique is a link option for visitors to print your page. This is especially good for a data content heavy site or page. Believe it or not many people won’t take the time to print a web page using their browser’s built-in printing options no matter how interested they are in your content, however they will print it from an on-page link. I’ve heard webmasters claim that adding a “print this page” link increased overall site conversions by double digits for them.
So, why is having visitors print your page good? Because it encourages them to explore your content (and sales copy) further at their leisure, which like a bookmark can turn them into return visitors.
If you (or your company) belong to social sites and have profile pages make sure visitors can see that and “add” you as a friend or contact on any they also belong to. When some people think of marketing on MySpace they think of spammy bulletin posts and messages. Not me, I think of the personal connections I’ve made there that allow me to share information in a completely non-spam way with interested people who want it. The same is true with all social networks. I don’t suggest trying to use these profiles to expand your overall customer reach, but rather to solidify your relationships with customers, and just as importantly with potential customers who add you or your business to their contacts or networks.
Twitter is another great one, especially for businesses. Imagine this, you run a service business that often needs (or wants) to alert mass numbers of clients and other interested folks about specific data. You can use email for this, but that’s not really the most efficient method, and anytime someone forgets that they asked for the updated information you risk being innocently reported as a spammer to their ISP.
However, if you make the information available via your business Twitter feed people can follow along and get the information at their pace, on static or mobile devices at any time and from anywhere; and you never have to fear being accused of spamming their inbox.
There’s much more you can do, but I hope by now you’ve already caught the general idea of all these little things… give your visitors multiple easy and fast options to stay connected to you or your site and pretty soon you’ll see those conversion rates picking up.
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Tags: conversions, social networking
