Quick Ways to Boost Your Conversion Rate

#1 – A Photo Can Make All the Difference

If you have noticed that your web copy does not seem to be generating as many sales as you had hoped, then you need to make some changes to get that happening. The key to a website business is the conversion rate of traffic to sales. The conversion rate is the number of new users who visit the site and then take some action once there.

This action can be as simple as signing up for a newsletter or as profitable as making a purchase. Either way this is the result you want to see. The question is always what can be done to make more people interested in making the next step and going past the copy to sign up for your newsletter or purchase your product.

One way is to make the copy have a more personal touch. This can be done in several ways, one of which is making it feel more like you are there with the potential customers.

One thing that bothers people about shopping online is that they do not get to see the person they are going to buy from. It is still a new way of shopping for many people who are used to browsing in a store and dealing directly with a salesperson, or the store’s manager when making a purchase. With web based stores this is not possible.

What can you do to help with a potential customer’s comfort level about dealing with you? The easiest thing to do is put a picture of yourself on the opening page along with your copy.

It need not be a large photo, and can be placed at the top as the copy begins, at the bottom next to a signature or even off to a corner near your company name or the opening headline. The position of the photo is not nearly as important as it being there. Customers react positively to a kind face, a warm smile and an ability to know more about the person they are going to do business with.

#2 – Hire a Professional

Your website is the key to your web based business and that opening page is the one that will decide if your potential customer is going to browse through your website, sign up for your newsletter, purchase a product, or simply return to the search engine they are using and look elsewhere for the product or service you are offering from someone else.

If your conversion rate, the number of people who visit versus the number of people who take some type of action of your site, is just too low, then what you may need is a professional copywriting company to take your thoughts and put them into more compelling words.

There is nothing wrong with having to take the step of hiring someone else to do the writing. There are many companies that offer this service simply because it is a very much needed one.

You may have terrific products, great prices and fast delivery, but if you cannot tell that story in a compelling way, the customer will never find out. If your copy is slow, plodding, and boring, it needs spicing up and these professionals can do that job for you.

You need to understand that they will not just write what they want. You will provide them with guidelines including the length of the piece that you want, what important points you want made and what subjects they need to emphasis.

You can also suggest the keywords to use. Keywords are the words that the average person will use to make their search on the Internet.

These are important because they are what that brings to your website up as a search result. If you are not sure what these should be, the copywriting company will be able to make suggestions.

Usually it is just common sense and you want the keywords to reflect the product line that you sell or the services that your company offers. Either way, you want interesting copy. You can get it by hiring professionals and it will not even cost you that much.

#3 – Make Your Words Sing on the Page

Sometimes the biggest problem with your copy is that the style and flow is boring. This may sound a little harsh, but the fact is that if you do not catch your potential customers with compelling copy, they are not going to continue to look through the rest of it.

You need to think of your copy as your only chance to make a sales pitch. How would you phrase it if you were face to face with a customer? You would make it lively, interesting, and exciting enough to catch their interest. You must do the same with the copy in your website.

Think of the sales copy as a conversation. Make it interesting. You need to think of this as you would when making your sales pitch; remember that the difference is the body language, facial expressions and voice intonation have all been taken away from you.

You need to replace these with something else. That something needs to be spirit, pizzazz; you need to communicate everything in your words that you would otherwise be able to use emotions for. That means you want your words to paint the picture for you.

Think about the phrase “every picture tells a story.” You want your words to be that picture and your story will be how you explain your service or product and why the reader should continue through your website to do business with you.

Getting the potential client to continue and do something, whether it is make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter is referred to as the conversion rate.

This means how many new users, this does not include those who are return customers, take some type of action when they visit your website. This is your goal so you must encourage this action by making your web content worth reading.

#4 – Are Potential Customers Attracted By Longer or Shorter Copy?

There are many alternatives to improving your web copy when trying to not only bring more people to your website but also prompt them to take some kind of action. The term for this action is conversion rate.

It explains the number of unique, which means first time, users who do something in the website other than just reading copy. What they do might be clicking to get further information, buying something or anything else that can be tracked on the website other then reading the opening page.

The question is: How to encourage the reader to take action? One question is will the reader prefer short snappy copy or do they want to read something that is more informative but longer. Tests have found that people prefer more information rather than less.

When the copy on the first page is short, readers are less likely to proceed through the website and less likely to take some kind of action. In tests, long articles received more than forty percent more action on the website than short.

The advantage to longer articles is an obvious one. The more that is written the more information the reader gets. This means they are more likely to glean answers to their own questions just by reading the introductory page.

The reader will be more comfortable with fuller disclosure and feel that the website company is more honest and forthcoming if there is a product or service that is being sold. Comfort is important if you are expecting someone to do business with you.

If the opening page has a lot of keywords, those words that a person is most likely to use to search the Internet; it makes it easier for the customer to find your website. A long article gives you more room to put in your keywords.

Another useful thing about long articles is it gives the reader the option to read it all or skim it for the information they are looking for. This is one more useful option for those looking at your opening web page.

#5 – Font Choice Can Influence Website Success

For many, the point of having a website is to conduct business. That means not only drawing people to the site, but making it attractive and interesting enough to keep them there and encourage them to do business. This is what your aim is whether your business is selling products or services.

Bringing new users to the website and having them do something other than simply look at it is called “converting” them. The average conversion rate is under two percent.

That is why it is important to work hard to make the website and especially the opening page, appealing. Many people will come to your website, but it is harder to get them to do business than it is to get them there.

One way to influence this is by the font used in the various pieces that are to be read. This may seem like a little thing, but just like the colors you use, font and therefore reading comfort, may make more difference than expected. Some people suggest that using the clearer fonts like: Georgia, Trebuchet MS, Tahoma or Verdana will make your website a more popular and so more profitable place.

No one likes to see copy that is too tiny. Your readers do not want to work extra hard to read what you have to say. They want the words in a comfortable format and that very much can be reflected in the font and the size of the font that is used. Do not worry that larger letters mean your page will be longer or that it will carry on to other pages.

Your potential customers will be happy with that as long as they can read your copy clearly, easily and enjoyably. This is reflected in your choose of font. Something too fancy will also be harder to read. Despite the fact that some of those flowing writing styles seem to be attract they are not as clear and you want to be certain what you say comes across clear and concise.

#6 – Using Endorsements or Testimonials

If you are looking for a way to give your web copy a little extra boost, there is a resource that is only a phone call or email away. One of the easiest ways to create credibility with prospective clients is to include quotations from persons who already do business with you and are impressed with what they have received in return.

The fact of the matter is that existing customers are often very willing to put in a good word for you. However, the exact way you do this must also respect your client’s wish for privacy.

The last thing you need is for all sorts of people – including your competition – to begin contacting your customer directly. This will eat up your client’s valuable time as well as possibly create some bad blood between you and your customer.

In order to make sure your client is not inconvenienced by the endorsement, you may want to ensure your customer that what you have in mind is keeping the actual source of the quotation a little general.

For instance, instead of providing the whole name of your customer, you might identify the quote as coming from “John, an IT manager with a national pharmaceutical firm.” This type of designation will prevent anyone from doing a quick Internet search and attempting to woo John away from you.

At the same time, it will help visitors to your web site understand that you are familiar with ways your product or service can be used by pharmaceutical companies or similar business models.

If you have several different professions or industry types represented in your client base, then attempt to obtain endorsements that represent each of them. The greater diversity you can demonstrate for your product, the better chances you have of appealing to those who find you through Internet searches.

#7 – Keeping Your Copy Simple

The Internet has made it possible for many businesses to compete in ways that were never possible before. In many cases, this has meant being able to connect directly with the residential consumer and create sales opportunities that generate an impressive amount of sale volume.

Much of this potential for increased sales volume relies on the type of content that is provided on the web site for your company. The fact of the matter is that good content results in greater interest on the part of your prospects. Greater interest means you have a much better chance of converting the prospect into a loyal customer.

Unfortunately, where may designers of web content fall down on the job is by creating sales content that does not capture the interest of the prospect, or either turns off the prospect because it dwells too much on factors that are not of any real interest to the average consumer. Here is a tip to help you make sure your web content will hold the attention of your target audience.

The first rule of thumb is to forget all the technical mumbo jumbo. Unless you are targeting IT personnel for your client you don’t need all the industry buzz words and jargon.

The average consumer is more interested in what your product or service will do to help him or her with some aspect of their work or home life. You only lose your chances for making a sale as someone reads on and begins to get bored with parts of your information.

Once a prospect has to begin to skip over text that is of no interest to him or her, you are well on the way to losing your chances for a sale.

A good rule of thumb is to write out your text and then see how it works as part of a conversation. Imagine you are at a part and someone asks you what your company provides and how it works.

With this thought in mind, read your text as if you were responding to that question in a public setting. If you find that the sentences are too long or the words are a bit too technical, so then make the changes. What you are shooting for is concise simple verbiage that tells your prospects what they need to know in a straightforward manner.

Remember that you have only a matter of seconds to grab the attention of your prospect and keep it all the way through to the completion of a sale. The quicker the prospect grasps what a great deal you have, the better your odds of increasing your sales volume.

#8 – Featuring Product Applications

When visitors to your web site are looking over your product and service offerings, don’t make the assumption that they already know all the ways that your offerings can benefit them. To inspire some creative thinking, make sure you include a page that suggests possible applications for your product.

Including possible uses of your product is a great way to increase your sales in two different ways. First, there is the actual text that you use to describe each of the applications.

If you work the text to your advantage, you will create several keywords and key phrases that will help to drive your applications page up to the top of more search engines. This can lead to more people engaged in the professions that you want in your client base to see your web site.

The second advantage of including applications of your product on your web site is that they will not only educate visitors as to what all your product can help with; it will also inspire them to think about what your product can do for them in similar circumstances.

For instance, if you offer a product that is very helpful in board meetings, then someone who is looking for additional products to support a quarterly earnings meeting may see the value of your product in a new way.

Perhaps someone who works for a state level non-profit agency will look at the way your product or service helps with communication between the various locations of a large corporation and find that a viable solution to communicating with field operatives around the state.

By putting your best foot forward about the potential uses of your products and services, you only increase the chances for showing up on more Internet searches, as well as helping people to see your product as being much more flexible in actual use than they may have thought otherwise.

Why not brainstorm a list of twelve different ways your products can be used? You might amaze yourself at what you come up with.

#9 – Using Video to Improve Your Conversion Rate

It is a fact that many of us are primarily visual in the way we relate to the world around us. With this in mind, it only makes sense that you would be able to make the content of your web site more accessible by adding the video features to your web site.

The thing to remember about using video is that you need to keep it short, sweet and to the point. No one is looking to settle down with a bowl of popcorn and a soda while watching the video presentation on your site.

You want the video to follow the same lines as your text. Let it be concise, to the point, and call attention to the features of your product or service that will be of most interest to prospective clients.

Prepare the text for your video script and run through it with a couple of people before you ever begin the process of videotaping. You want to make sure there are no dead spots in the text that would create a pregnant pause during the video presentation.

Also take care to choose locations that will provide you with sufficient light. Nothing will turn off a prospective client like clicking on a video presentation and finding it is too dark for anyone to see what is happening.

There is also the need to consider the Internet connections that potential clients will be using to get to your web site. If your product or service is mainly for a midsize or large business, then chances are they are using a high-speed connection.

Residential customers and small businesses may be using a dial up connection. Make sure you allow for each of these possibilities by providing your video presentation in versions that can buffer and run for at 56K and higher speed connections.

Videos, when planned well and accessible to any potential client, can help to set your web site apart from your competition. Check into the possibility of preparing a short video to include with your web site today.

#10 – Presentation is Important

If you have not been having the luck you think you should experience with sales from your web site, the problem may not be with the web copy itself. Your problem may be that you have not found the right way to present your text in an appealing manner to your prospective clients.

Here are a few tips you can use to dress up that perfectly sound web copy and make it more visually attractive to your potential clients.

Nothing turns off a prospective client quite like the prospect of having a page full of small print to read.

Imagine the consternation of a prospect who comes to your site hoping to quickly learn what you are about and what you have to offer and what he or she finds is a thousand words on a web page. More than one prospect will simply go back and search for someone else to meet their needs.

Using headers to break up your text can make all the difference. Bright colored headers that work well with the background of your pages will allow the prospect to quickly locate and read the parts that are of immediately interest.

Avoid using color schemes that will call more attention to the colors than to the text. The idea is to make the reading experience more attractive to the consumer, not sidetrack him or her into wondering what you were drinking when you came up with that color combination.

Consider the use of bullets to make your key points. If you have a page full of text, chances are you used too many words to make your very important points. Scale it back and use the bullets to help your prospect focus in on what you have to offer.

You may also want to vary the actual font size a bit here and there. While keeping all the fonts in a style that is easy to read, think about using a slightly larger font for your headers or perhaps having all your bulleted points in bold. The slight variety in the way the text appears will add a note of visual interest, as well as help your web pages to be more easily scanned by your visitors.

Approach your web page design just as you would design a one page print ad. Incorporate visual elements that make your excellent web copy stand out and pull potential customers in rather than repel them. With just a little visual diversity, you can have a look that is both visually appealing as well as informative.

So what are you waiting for?

Go and apply these techniques in your next techniques to increase your conversion rates incredibly! 🙂

Best Wishes,
Zai Adi