Are You Converting Web Visitors into Customers?

Your website is generating tons of free traffic. You've done everything right. You've created hundreds of pages of original web content, spent the last three years securing high-quality links, and have all your products and services listed on your site for immediate purchase.

However, you still have one little problem. Ok, it's a rather big problem.

You're not selling much.

With all the focus these days on Search Engine Optimization and driving traffic to your website, you might assume traffic is all you need for a successful business.

As you've probably already realized, driving large amounts of targeted traffic is only half the battle. Once people get to your site, they must be compelled to take action. This action doesn't necessarily need to be a purchase. If you're an infopreneur, it could be a newsletter signup. If you're a nonprofit, it could be making a donation. If you have AdSense on your site, it may be a simple ad click.

The Three Factors for Profitability
Obviously, there is real power in being able to accomplish the following for any particular sales page on your website.

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

While this article is going to specifically focus on point number 2, you must be aware that your overall success is very much dependent on your average order value as well as the amount of targeted traffic your site generates.

But even if your overall traffic patterns are underwhelming, you can easily double and even triple your overall profits by concentrating on improving your conversion rate.

Here are some of the main tools you can use for increased conversion rates.

A/B Split and Multivariate Testing
In the old days before the Internet, increasing conversion rates via direct mail was a bit time consuming and expensive. Here's how it worked.

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. You'll also learn about the power of multivariate testing for finding the combination of page elements that yields the best conversion rate.

Make no mistake, a well-thought out testing program will be your number one tool for increasing your conversion rates.

To get started testing your pages, just use the free Google Website Optimizer. It will allow you to perform both split and multivariate testing.

Website Usability
Have you ever watched someone go through your website and attempt to perform defined actions such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter?

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 website usability test could cost thousands of dollars. Now, by simply typing in "user testing" into a search engine, you can find user testing services as low as $29 per test. For the first time ever, it is no longer too expensive for a small business owner to conduct their own website usability studies.

Visitor Behavior
Wouldn't it be nice to know which links get the highest click percentage and which get the lowest?

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

Wouldn't it be nice 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.

There are several amazing new companies that have developed low-cost tools that, for the first time, allow small business owners to perform page tests that simply weren't possible just a few years ago.

One free service, Google Analytics, has a special overlay that shows the percentage of links that were clicked on any of your web pages.


Visitor Feedback
Acquiring actual customer feedback has always been an important marketing method for making product and service changes. Obtaining direct visitor feedback will help you improve their experience and increase your page conversion rates.

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.

Fortunately, there are several great ways to easily obtain direct feedback from your web visitors. One free service in particular, Avinash Kaushik's 4Q survey, allows you to collect important information after your visitors are finished browsing your site.

Conclusions
Ultimately, the most important factor in a successful website, assuming you have some traffic, is to work on increasing your page conversion rates. Testing, understanding what visitors do on your landing pages, and obtaining customer feedback are all important factors in achieving this goal.

Corte Swearingen has been a marketing professional for 20 years and is the creator of Small Business Marketing Tips and the Small Business Marketing Blog. He is also the author of a best-selling guide on increasing your website conversion rate.