So now that you’ve launched your very own online product or service.  You’ve got your landing page up and running, you’ve emailed your mailing list, tweeted the link, posted the promotion on your Facebook wall, scheduled a few blog posts and set up some adverts.

But with all of this preparation, you only resulted in a few sales.  Far lower than you imagined.  To put it simply, you’re getting a lot of traffic to your website but your website’s Conversion sucks.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could convert traffic into sales like your competitors?  It’s not because your competitor’s websites have super powers or because they’re using magic voodoo tricks.  It’s simply because they’re doing things that you’re not doing (yet).

Optimising your website to convert traffic into profit involves many things, like market intelligence, split testing, measuring results, web analytics etc.

In this article, I am going to make things simple for your and give you 7 easy tips that you can apply to your own sales process to help you improve your conversion rates.

1. Cover the basics

At bare minimum, make sure your website;

Loads quickly

Have no broken links

Has a shopping cart that takes payments hassle-free and glitch-free

Has data capture forms that actually work (Contact us forms, request for proposal forms, etc.)

Let’s not forget about the backend and customer fulfilment sides of your online business.  If a payment goes through but nobody on your team gets notified (due to a technical glitch) you won’t be able to fulfil the order which will result in unhappy customers (Not cool!)

2. Accessible

Website accessibility refers to things like:

The readability of your content.  Make sure your choice of font, font size, text colour, background colour, a contrast between elements are correct and will not hinder your visitor’s ability to read what you’re selling.

Site compatibility with popular browsers, including mobile devices.  (Is your website responsive?)

Loading times.  Does your website rely on a heavy amount of images, plugins, unnecessary code?  You need to ensure your site is squeaky clean and quick to load on any browser.

3. Know your customers

Ultimately optimising your website for conversion really boils down to how well you can persuade your customers to take action when you want them to take action.  But you won’t be able to persuade these people if you know jack about them.

Knowing your customers is really the basics of any business.  Are you really learning about your customers or are you just making assumptions?

You need to find out as much as you can about your niche market as possible.  The things that you are going to need to know are;

What keeps your Potential Customers up at night?

What are their biggest questions, their deepest fears, their worst doubts?

What keywords are they typing into the search engines?

What websites do they frequently visit?

What are their biggest headaches and how can you help?

Once you know the answers to these questions you will then be able to;

come up with effective hooks and call to actions to grab their attention.

You will be able to produce content they’d devour and pass on to their peers.

You’d know exactly what questions they’d be asking at which stage in the sales process (and you will be able to answer them)

you’d be able to say the exact words that would trigger the needed emotions to help them decide and take action.

you’d be able to put together an offer they simply won’t be able to refuse.

4.Create relevant content

When a visitor lands on your website, the very first question they’ll have is; “Is this content relevant to me?”

Every click that visitor makes is made because they have a specific intention, they have a question they’re seeking to answer.  If they click on a banner ad but your landing page does not satisfy their question, they will click away, resulting in a high bounce rate.

5.Test your Unique Value Proposition 

Unique Value Propositions are positioning statements or incentives that make your offer unique or extra attractive or gain more perceived value in the eyes of potential customers.

These can be statements like;

“Try it free for 30 days.  Download now.”

“Free shipping on orders over £30” or  “free shipping if you order today”

“instantly increase your opt-in rate by as much as 500%”

It’s worth testing your UVP’s to see which gives your the better results.  You can try to use different value propositions like;

As hooks (place it at the top of your website to get your visitors attention)

As a way to lower the perceived risks to your offer, for example, try “use it for 30days for just £1”

As a way to sweeten the deal, for example, “If you buy from me I’ll throw in the following bonuses”

So don’t have a fixed UVP, try out different ways and see how effective it is.  Try to come up with new and better ones, especially as you learn more about your niche market.

6.Sell the benefits, Not the features.

If your website is boasting how you and your offer is the best, the brightest, the number one product/service the world has ever seen, then you don’t get it.

Remember your potential customers are always thinking “what’s in it for me?”  When you state just the features, they tend to sound like gobbledygook to many people.  You must translate those statements into concrete benefits.

Conclusion 

Optimising your website for conversion is not about manipulating people to do what You want them to do regardless of what is best for them.  Neither is it just a matter of randomly changing design elements like colours, shapes, fonts, font sizes, to see what works better.

Rather, Conversion Optimisation is about truly knowing your prospects inside and out, aligning your offer with their needs and answering their questions making sure that you address their fears, uncertainties and doubts.

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