Posts tagged Internet Marketing

First things first, what is CRO? CRO is (among other things) conversion rate optimisation. Put simply, this is taking an existing product or service for sale on the web, and improving the sale rate of the product, without a heavy focus on increasing traffic numbers. Although traffic may play a small part in CRO, the main focus is optimising the site itself to increase the amount of sales per visitor to the site. For example, XYZ.com may be receiving 1,000 hits per month and getting 10 sales (a sale rate of 1%). The job of a CRO would be to increase that percentage, not the number of hits.

Why post this on an SEO blog you ask? I may be shooting myself in the foot here, but sometimes traffic isn’t the issue, it’s saleability. Many SEO professionals can increase your traffic 10,000%, but will it increase sales?

Take a look at your current sale rate. Is it at what you think is a reasonable level? Anywhere between 0.5%-8% are good benchmark figures, with 1%-2% being good levels for a financial website for example, whereas retail websites can go as high as an 8% conversion rate. If you are somewhere in this conversion rate (5%-8% for retail, and slightly lower for most other services), then SEO is what you should be focusing on.

However, if have a conversion rate of 2% or lower, then maybe your first port of call should be optimising for conversion, not for traffic levels.

I am no conversion expert, but I have done some work with it in the past, and here are a few tips to help increase your conversion rate (yes, most of them are just common sense but remember a conversion is a different thing for each site, sometimes a conversion is simply a phone call, these are just simple points that should work on every website).

Direct the User

Don’t let the user aimlessly stumble about your website. Try to direct them to sales pages in the least clicks possible. Ideally you should be able to make a sale on the first page they land on.  Have “Buy Now” buttons spread out so that one is always visible on the browser (but try and do it in a neat, attractive way).

Attractive Yet Simple

Having an attractive site is important. Think about when you buy something from a retail store, the look and feel of the store determines how much you are willing to pay, what you expect to find, how long you spend there etc. A website is no different.  Make your website an inviting space for users where they can linger.

As with everything I seem to write there is a ‘but’. In this case it involves ensuring your website is attractive, while still maintaining it’s ease-of-use. Don’t overuse Flash or annoying animations, and make sure your images aren’t so large that they increase loading times substantially. Avoid clutter and superfluous information/images/text as this simply distracts the user from what they should be doing, buying!

Alter Your Pricing, Payment Options

By offering a range of payment and pricing options, you are making your product readily accessible to more markets. Not everybody has a credit card, not everybody trusts direct debit. Make sure you use PayPal as one of the options, as this tends to be one of the safest options for both you the seller and the buyer. Buyers tend to trust PayPal more than standard payment options.

Offer a Guarantee

By offering a guarantee of some sort, money-back is the most common, you can prove to the customer that you are so confident in your product you can guarantee they will be satisfied with it. How can they lose then? If they love your product (which they should) they simply completed the transaction that was expected, and if not they haven’t lost anything.

Be Open, Honest and Trustworthy

Don’t try and hide anything, or put extra charges behind a wall of tiny text and Terms and Conditions. Make the charges transparent, so the buyer isn’t hit with extra charges at the last minute (as there is no surer way of blowing a sale). If you have extra credit card charges, shipping costs etc, make sure the buyer knows about it early on.

Post some testimonials of happy buyers in the past, show that you are posting by courier and give them the reference number, give realistic time frames for delivery, anything to reassure the buyer.

I know these are all relatively obvious points, but I have used them all in the past to up the conversion rate of a number of sites. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or disagreements please comment!