How would you like more sales and response without getting a single extra visitor to your site?

I’m asking because most web site owners are desperately clamouring for ‘more traffic’, and yet many are totally overlooking one of the most critical aspects of online sales and enquiry generation… which is to optimise what’s called the ‘Conversion Rate’.

Your website’s conversion rate is the number of people who buy or enquire from your website expressed as a percentage of the total number of people who visit it.

In other words, if you get 100 people on your website, and 10 of them buy or enquire, then your site is said to have a 10% conversion rate.

Now in my experience most small business owners are disappointed and frustrated with the lack of sales their site’s helping them achieve — most sites are getting way less than 10% conversion rate.

In fact most people think the main problem with their site is that they’re not getting enough people to it — when in fact the first thing they need to actually fix is not getting more traffic but improving their conversion rate.

That way you can get more sales from the same volume of traffic — and the money you spend advertising and promoting and getting more traffic to your site is going to produce a higher return on investment.

So the key is to find a way to not only increase traffic to your site, but also to increase it’s conversion rate.

In fact providing your site’s already getting some traffic — I’d recommend you optimise your conversion rate NOW — before worrying about your position on Google or spending time on attracting more traffic to it.

Marketing expert Paul Gorman once advised a room full of people NOT to put their web address on print adverts and in sales letters.

The reason he said that is because most websites are pitiful at converting visitors into customers or clients — so what happens when you display your telephone number, postal address and web address in a print ad or direct mail piece?

Well of course more ‘web savvy’ prospects will choose to respond online. So they ignore the telephone number and postal options and load up the web site… and if it fails to impress, will they then pick up the phone instead?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Personally, if I knew my website had what’s technically called a C.C.R. (“Crap Conversion Rate”) I’d never ever display the web address in an advert… it’d be ‘response suicide’.

So with all that said… the campaign I mentioned the other day (the one that pulled in 1,035 email subscribers, which has since increased to 1,067) — in that advert I only displayed a web address.

Now many marketers will advise adverts give as many contact options as possible — phone, fax, post, email, web site etc.

Not me. On the front-end of my business (acquisition) I’m 100% Internet based. (If you ever tried phoning my office you’ll know that!)

So I only need an email address to start with. (Post and to some extent the telephone is used later in the relationship, but it all starts with email.) I don’t know what your business is, so I’m not suggesting you go 100% web based acquisition, but the model suits me fine.

Anyway, here’s the kicker: watch the following video to peek behind the scenes and see my actual conversion rate for the campaign…

Most web marketers will agree that conversion rate is ‘quite’ good.

And the secret of why the campaign has been so effective? It had a very strong and highly detailed (long copy) advert combined with a simple landing page, which was created using principles that have proven to convert well (strong headline, simple interface, hero shot, etc etc) and tested it.

When I saw it had a good conversion rate, only then was I prepared to spend time and money driving traffic on it.

What’s your site’s conversion rate?

Count the number of visitors who arrive on your site over say the last month, and divide that by the number of responses in the same period. (And by ‘responses’ I mean the number of sales, enquiries or subscriptions.. whatever ACTION you want people to take on your site.)

Finally, multiply the result by 100 and voila! That’s your conversion rate…

…and I hope it’s a good one!

No? Don’t worry, you’re not on your own. It’s a well known fact (in online marketing circles) that the average conversion rate for most small business web sites is less than 2%!

Shocking isn’t it. Most small business sites are lucky to get even just two sales or enquires out of every 100 visitors. Worse, the 98 who leave without taking action are being ‘wasted’ — they may never return and yet chances are a percentage of those 98 could have been future customers or clients.

So what’s the answer?

Well there are lots of ways of increasing conversion rate — I explain quite a few of those in my book The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy.

I explain tweaking your site to improve things like headlines, product descriptions, navigation and menu options, graphic design and layout, pricing and so on.

Unfortunately that can take a lot of time (and money, if you use external web developers and graphic designers.)

Luckily there’s a better way, and it’s one you can implement in without changing your site one jot.

1) Capture names and email addresses by advertising and promoting a gift or special offer — and create a simple landing page like mine that people volunteer their name and email address in return for said offer.

2) Capture tonnes of highly targetted names and email addresses (of real prospects, not just suspects).

3) Finally, use email, blogs, surveys and other online communication tools to open dialogue, build a relationship, give you the chance to explain your product or services in more detail and create a profitable ‘lifetime relationship’ with your list.

Change the Model.

Instead of hoping more people visit your site, and instead of assuming your site tells them everything they need to know to make a buying decision (or at least the decision to enquire), give first, sell later.

Do that, and almost by default your site’s conversion rate will increase because the flow of traffic will be more understanding about what you offer, and more trusting of your company (and you if you engage in personal branding like I do.)

-Ed.

P.S. If you’re new to conversion rate concept, and/or don’t know what Google Analytics is (mentioned in the video above) then I strongly recommend you checkout my 2 DVD home-study programme on the subject of using web marketing statistics to increase sales and response.