How to Increase Site Conversions

Sometimes you’ve got traffic coming to your web site, but nobody is biting. After spending so much time and effort getting people to your site only to have them leave again, how do you figure out what the problem is?

Here are some steps you can take today to get some answers.

Quizzing existing customers

Do you already have customers who have bought from you? And do you have a way to get a hold of them?

If you do, keep reading. They are the best source of ideas on how to improve your web site’s conversion. If not, you try this exercise that will help you get the same kind of information as I’ll describe below.

I see this a lot with businesses that have existed offline for a while and are now trying to take their business online. It can be tricky duplicating an offline experience onto your website.

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 for them, you need to make sure your current visitors are going to experience that as well. 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.

If you’re not sure the best ways to contact your current customers, and use effective methods to enlist their help in gaining the information you’re looking for, I’ll be covering that in a future tutorial.

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.

If everything on your site looks good to your current customers and other professionals you network with and you’re still drawing a blank, it’s time to take a look at where your site visitors are coming from. Not all visitors are created equal.

What brought them to you?

Find out what brought them to your site in the first place and make sure it properly describes what they’ll find when they arrive.

One business owner was getting plenty of traffic through a pay-per-click campaign inviting people to join his business mastermind group, but when people arrived to his site there was absolutely no mention of “mastermind group” anywhere on his landing page. So people were leaving quickly after arriving.

The next step

There’s a lot more to talk about. Join my email list below and in future tutorials we’ll explore tracking where your best visitors are coming from, how to find out what they’re doing on your site when they get there, and additional ways to make your home page more effective so you can better convert traffic into happy, paying customers.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next tutorial!