How Small Changes Can Create Huge Profits
Do you want to change your online business from ho-hum to a sales machine on steroids?
The secret is not getting more traffic, but improving how many of your current visitors become actual customers.
To track the progress and performance of your internet marketing campaign and your website, you must analyze conversion rates. Your conversion rate is the number of hits to the website that are needed before a sale is made. It is calculated by dividing the total number of unique visitors you receive in a period of time by the total number of sales you make during that time period. Changes in the conversion rate reflect the overall effectiveness of your internet marketing strategy.
Poor conversion rates are indicators that something needs to be done to improve your internet marketing efforts. To improve your conversion rates and thus the conversion of browsers to buyers, there are a few things that deserve your attention – primarily the targeted market, the products and services, the website, and the business terms.
The target market that you have selected to market to has certain characteristics that will determine what marketing mediums are best for you to use and the internet marketing techniques that will most likely appeal to the target market. Use of certain keywords in a pay-per-click or search engine advertising campaign can improve your chances of driving targeted traffic to your website. So, if your conversion rates aren’t satisfactory, review your target market and make sure that those you are reaching with your advertising are actually qualified buyers who have an interest in what your company is offering.
If your products and services are not selling, even though you have sufficient traffic, perhaps there is a problem with the products and services themselves. The pricing strategy may not appear to add value to the products or services, or your presentation of the products and services may not clearly convey the benefits of their features to the potential customers. Review your products and services to identify their features and to determine how those features translate into benefits for consumers. Then review your sales copy to ensure that it is appealing to the target market.
Another issue that can negatively impact conversion rates is problems with your website. If the website pages are slow to load, if there are broken links, or if the website is confusing or isn’t easy to navigate, you will likely lose website visitors before they even consider buying products or services from your website. It pays to take measures that make your website user-friendly.
Last but not least, your business terms may be an issue with potential customers. Payment terms, shipping policies, warranties and return policies, privacy policies, and ecommerce payment options are all things to consider. Making it easy for a variety of customers to make payments through a secure server using various types of payment options along with policies that enhance their confidence in your company and your business practices can aid in improving your conversion rates and boosting your sales.