Why do I buy appliances and electronics from Costco? Because I love their life time warranty. The truth is that I have never tested that warranty. Yet I am confident that any Costco in the US will honor it. That confidence is so strong that I shop at Costco over many of its competitors. So do you want to increase your site conversion rate? Can you establish such confidence in the minds of your site visitor? It is not that easy, is it?

One of the first challenges that many companies face online is establishing consumer trust and confidence. It might be easy for the top 100 ecommerce sites to gain the customer confidence but you are not one of them. So, while Amazon enjoys the name recognition, its online competitors have to struggle with building consumer trust in their brand.

What gives clients this low sense of confidence in the first place and how can you deal with it:

Lack of confidence in your company

Does your site look fishy or give the impression that it is selling a scam of some sort? I know it probably doesn’t, but will clients think so? You need to build confidence that you are the best at what you offer your clients. How do you do that?

1. Create client-centric, visitor-focused copy: I talked about giving clients what they want and how that can help you improve your conversion rate.

2. Design your site with easy navigation: goes with the point above but I wanted to emphasize it some more. My golden rule is to make sure the site visitor is able to get to anything they want within 3 clicks. To sum it up, put the customer first and watch your website conversion rate increase.

3. Provide real value on your site: People do not want to be sold, they love to buy. And yes, do not hard sell on your site. Give your clients great industry information through whitepapers or case studies. Some people want to keep their trade secret to themselves. If the visitor does not find this information on your site, he will find it on your competitor’s site.

4. Include PLENTY of testimonials: this is one of the best ways you can build a user’s trust; they need to see who your clients are, what you did for them, and how. Of course, make sure that these testimonials are real and from actual clients!

5. Manage your online reputation. There is nothing worse than searching for a company and getting hundreds of reviews that tell you how bad that company is. Always remeber that poor customer services and scams are easy to discover with Google.

Lack of confidence in products/services

If packaging is essential offline, it is even more significant online. I have seen too many clients with low conversion rates because their own site does a horrible job in representing of their products or services. Quick tips to build confidence in your company:

6. Include high quality images for your products: images displayed on your site can make a product look cheap and ugly. By the way, high quality does not mean large size images that take forever to download. The rule of thumb is to keep image size to less than 15 kb. An image optimizer can do wonders in reducing the size of your product images while keeping their quality.

7. Deal with bad reviews head on: With you or without you, the online community is always talking. It’s estimated that 54% of customers check product review venues before making a purchase. If you’re offering bad products and services don’t be surprised about low conversion rates. Before getting out there and selling your stuff, make sure it’s of the best quality in order to avoid this very embarrassing obstacle.

Lack of confidence in the site

Maroon background, neon font, and clipart make for one ugly site. You can’t PAY me to buy anything or sign up for anything from a site that looks that horrid. Are there actually sites actually still OUT THERE? Yes, and you can probably talk to the owner of the site who will tell you that they did a swell job with it! Okay, just stop right there, you’re still wondering why your client has low confidence? OH MY GOD! Just re-do your nasty site and see the difference it will make! How do you fix that?

8. Get professional help to design your site: Many people think they are great designers; few are actually good at it. You can hire a professional web designer to redo your website for a minimal investment. Of course, if you do hire someone, guide them through the process. So, no flash and no fancy images that take forever to download. Web designers are good at design; they are not experts in creating a site that converts well.

Lack of confidence in your customer care

Customer service starts the minute someone lands on your site. It should never end when someone buys something from you. Every customer should generate repeat business. Here is the online twist: it is not enough to provide amazing customer services to every client; you must let your site visitors know about your customer service.

9. A satisfaction guarantee goes a long way in assuring customers that you will stand behind your products or services. So can you put your money where you mouth is?

10. Indicate through your copy and some icons that customer service is a top priority. Include things such as how fast is your response time to a problem or questions they might have.

11 Don’t be a “Sprint”: Sprint is notorious for bad customer service; they are rated the worst customer service phone service out there! Sprint experiences a close to 50% customer dissatisfaction rate with their services and customer care. Recently, the company “fired” 1000 of their worst customers; rather than getting the 1 phone call complaint a month per customer, these customers were averaging 50 times per month! Well I guess that’s the latest trend for companies out there: fire your complaining customers!

Lack of confidence in the security of the site

This is a huge one. People are already worried about giving you their private information. And if they feel even the slightest lack of security they will leave! So make sure your site gives them a feeling of safe

12 f you are a B2C site, you’d better make sure that pages that require sensitive information are absolutely secured and the client is aware of this.

13 If you are lead generation site, you need to include text of how much you value the customer’s privacy and that is a top priority.

So as you can see, there are many things that will stop a visitor from becoming a client. Make sure you tackle each issue and really try to build confidence in each individual area. Have you experienced any lack of confidence recently from your customers? How did you resolve it?

Tags: client-centric-site, increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing
Posted in Conversion Optimization

How many times have you walked into a store and been so enthralled with product that you just couldn’t imagine your life without it?  I hope not too many times! But seriously, sometimes companies do such a great job advertising their product or service you think you can’t live without it.  Like some of those infomercials; I mean I watch them KNOWING that the item is most likely crappy because of previous experiences; but they still now how to advertise their product so well.  They understand what the client is looking for, what they would want to see, and what would catch their attention and intrigue them.

So when creating a website, how can you offer products or services that your client’s simply can’t refuse?  You need to get into the mind of your client.  Too many times I’ve seen websites that talk about themselves and how great they are forgetting their target. I don’t care that you have 15 years of so and so experience, or that you are number one in this industry.  I want to know what you can do FOR ME.  How can you help me? 

It truly is a challenge to create a client-centric and visitor-focused site.  But you’ve got to get in their heads, understand the language they use, and sell them your product and service in the most subtle yet convincing way possible.  So let’s say you offer lawn care services; what are the terms that your client would be looking for?  Well not productivity; that’s for sure.  It’s a stretch to assume that since you are providing them with lawn care, and taking that responsibility off their plate, that their productivity will increase. What your customers want to know: how much it will cost them, how often you need to come to cut the grass, maybe a little about your experience, etc., And those are the terms you need to target in your copy.

Some tips you can implement in order to give your client what they want:

1. Make sure your language adheres to your audience:  You want to speak to them; not at them. So if you’re targeting the consumer, tone down the corporate lingo.  But if you’re talking to executives, make sure the language is appropriate for them. Very often you write to please yourself, not to please the client. So if you come from a corporate background you begin writing that way although that would never appeal to your clients, and vice versa.

2. Let the client see the benefits of your product and service: They will be interested in reading about your company later; but now the want to know what your product and service can do for them.

3. Make certain your site is user friendly:  Maybe provide a site map or bread crumbs to help the visitor navigate easily.  Don’t make certain pages on your site impossible to find; make the site experience a nice one for your potential client.

4. Include information, good and bad, about your product offerings and competition:  This can be in the form of a tool.  For example, Progressive offers a tool where clients can easily compare prices that of their service and the service of competing companies. Progressive is not always the lowest costing insurance, but they offer a useful tool that will drive hundreds of clients to their site; and might be the cherry on top that helps clients choose them over other services out there.

5. Give your clients an incentive to come to your site.  If your site is a mere 10 pages and doesn’t offer clients anything else; that will drop visitor response tremendously.  But if you offer articles, guides, ezines, or whitepapers; you will have a lot more traffic and immensely build your client’s confidence in your services or products.  Another great hook you can include is a blog.  This way you can directly communicate with clients addressing specific industry questions or concerns, or discussing the latest and greatest company/industry news. Clients love to see that the top officials of the company are involved and are giving customers the time of day to focus on their needs and address their concerns.

Implementing a few good tips can help build trust and confidence in your potential clients.  When customers feel that they are number it will reflect in your sales increase and traffic increase to your site.  DO you have any additional tips that will “give clients what they want?”

Tags: client-centric-site, increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing
Posted in Conversion Optimization

Whether you want to increase your site sales, the number of leads you generate from your site or simply increase brand awareness, I will let you in on a secret. No matter how many conversion experts you talk to, no matter what complicated, jargon-filled explanation they use, increasing conversion rate comes down to examining your site from three elements. Sounds too simple?

To sell better online and to convert more, examine each page of your site from the following three aspects:

1. Who are you targeting on that page?

2. What actions do you want them to take on that page?

3. How can you get them to take this action?

All three are related to each other, if you ignore one, you’ve lost them all. So how can you tackle each?

1st Factor: Who are you targeting on each page?

Creating a successful page that converts visitors starts with understanding these visitors. Understanding your site visitors comes down to two components.

1. Understanding your target market,
2. then, using marketing data to create site visitor personas.

Understanding your target market

This thread on MarketingProfs forum points to three extremely useful articles. An article titled Defining your Niche Market discusses the importance narrowing your target market to maximize conversion and results. The author stresses the fact that although many may feel that you are limiting your potential market by narrowing it to your niche, on the contrary since you are capitalizing on the people who will actually convert on your site. Once you get in the heads of your potential clients; you can target them through keywords they would search for, articles and content that would appeal to them, and ads that would direct them to your landing pages or website.

Before analyzing your niche, you must do some market research to understand the demographical, geographical, behavioral, and psychological bases. This can be determined through:

1. Extensive market research
2. Refer to trade and association publications and experts
3. Watching key competitors
4. Conducting surveys of your own clients

So you’ve narrowed your market? That’s excellent. The next huge hurdle is creating personas. Basically, personas are hypothetical individuals creates for user-interface, website creation, copy, design and more.

How can you create them? Well, you need to research your market and classify the types of clients that you have. So, you create market segmentations and customer profiles across the board. You survey your customers; their interest and their preferences. Then you take all that data; you research it thoroughly in order to determine of these 10,000 customers is their a few reoccurring personality traits? Of course there will be. Once you’ve determined that; you create 4 primary personas, Bob, Mary, Ellen, and Steve. Each one of them has a very distinct personality, lifestyle, goals, and objective for visiting your site. Each will come to your site with different reservations and motivations; and you need to address them in order to reach your 10,000 other clients. So when designing your site or constructing your copy, Bob, Mary, Ellen, and Steve are in mind. You make them so real; a life, family, a history, a job, hobbies, favorite foods, pet peeves, and even a picture that represents them. Everyone in your company must become familiar with your personas; what triggers their interests, what discourages them, and what objections do they have?

2nd Factor: What action do you want the persona (site visitor) to take on the page?

Too many websites have more than one objective per page; which makes the conversion process all the more difficult if not impossible. In order to maximize conversion results on your website you need to set one and only one conversion objective per page. Otherwise you run the risk of confusing your potential client. And you need to use all the elements on the page to guide your visitor to the action. Now keeping the personas in mind; each of them will have a different goal; for example you know that Bob will most likely want to convert immediately so you need to direct him to the benefits of your product or service. Mary on the other hand needs a bit more information, she’s very methodical and would like to explore more about the services/products and the company; so you would need to direct her to links or information that would satisfy her.

So where do you place these calls-to-action? Every site is not created equal, so what may work for amazon.com and ebay.com, may not work so well with your site. Always keep that in mind. But there are some general tips you may want to consider:

• Always place your contact number (especially if you are a lead generation site) in a large font in the upper right corner of the web page. Many studies have determined where the online user’s eyes flow; and generally placing your number in that place will increase the chances of getting leads.

• Limit the number of fields you place in a contact form. The more fields, the less chance you have of converting your customer. If it’s a lead generation site, a simple request for an e-mail address and/or phone number will suffice. If you are a B2C site, just make sure you don’t ask excessive questions that may turn off your potential customers.

• Be careful of what your button says, and where you place it. Too many times you find sites that ask people to “submit” rather than something more acceptable like “begin now” or “get started today.” Additionally, some sites may have a great call-to-action form button, but right next to it is a reset button. This is a huge mistake! Too many times people fill out the form, and rather than clicking the main form button the click reset; which erases all the entries and turns off a potential customer.

3rd Factor: How can you get your clients to take the action?

The last element in the big three requires you to combine the first two elements.. In the first element, you’ve created your site personas: you know what kind of information your visitors are looking for and how you should present it to them. In the second element: you focused each page to support your conversion goal. The only missing element is helping your site visitors take the conversion decision. This element is about answering two questions:

1. What assurances would my site visitors need to make that conversion decision?
2. Where do you place these assurances?

If it’s a B2C site and you want clients to close the sale on the site; then make sure your credit card processing pages are secure, hacker free. That would go a long way “assuring” your visitors that they can convert.

If you are asking site visitors for their email addresses, then assuring them that you value their privacy would help a tremendously in converting them.

This goes back to understanding any concerns your visitor might have and making sure that you deal with these concerns. Where do you provide these assurances? That is a simple question to answer: Next to your calls to action. Pictures here!

Like I said, these 3 elements of a successful converting website go hand in hand.

How difficult do you think it would be to implement this?

Tags: client-centric-site, increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing

It sounds all too familiar: limited budget, limited resources and a website that does not generate enough revenue, right? So if this is you, where should you start? If your online sales are low then conventional wisdom tells you to bring more people to your site. It is a numbers game after all, isn’t it? The more people you bring, the higher are your chances of converting more of these visitors into actually clients. Of course companies that sell conversion optimization services would disagree with this completely. But just like many other realities online, the truth is somewhere in between.

Why bringing more traffic to your site works?

There is no to dispute that fact. Assume that your current site is only converting 5% of its traffic. Assuming that you are able to keep the same conversion rate as more customers visit your site; doubling your current site traffic will roughly double your site revenue. Of course there are a couple of things you will need to keep in mind when trying to acquire new traffic. You need to make sure that the traffic you are receiving is targeted traffic. If you just get any traffic to your site, then you can practically slash your conversion rate in half.
 

Why converting current traffic to your site is even better?

You already getting the traffic. And you can easily assume that 80% of your site visitors are interested in your product or services. They are already in your store. It is a question of converting them from mere browsers to actual customers. 

In the traditional brick & mortar stores, the focus most of the time is on converting current traffic. Why? Because it is generally cheaper to convert traffic, as opposed to acquiring and targeting new traffic. Increasing conversion rate usually involves a little more focus on sales force training and changes around the store. Offline stores usually have a conversion rate of close to 30%. If a sales manager has a store with a conversion rate around 10% then he will focus on increasing that conversion rate if he wants to keep his job. It will be laughable to suggest that the store should try to bring more foot traffic because his numbers are low with the current traffic he has. Online, the story is very different. Most sites focus on increasing traffic because:

It is easier to increase traffic as opposed to increase website conversion rate: offline you train your staff, you reorganize the store, and you conduct customers surveys.  But online it is not that easy to increase conversion rate. It is a lot easier to increase your PPC campaign spending (for example); thus increasing the traffic to your site.

To say that increasing your conversion rate does not cost anything is foolish. Increasing conversion rate requires time, money and commitment. And while increasing conversion rate does require a financial commitment, you will continue to reap the rewards from that commitment. Keep in mind that average optimization projects start at around $2,000 and run into the tens of thousands.

So, where should you start: increase traffic or increase site conversion?

Of course it is a question of where you get the most for your money. But sometimes it does make sense to start with driving more traffic to your site. Site conversion rate is a statistical number that is calculated based on the number of visitors you are getting in a certain period of time. I only start evaluating site conversion rate if I am getting more than 1,000 hits for a related group of keywords with low conversion rate.

Let me explain. If you are getting 1,000 “untargeted” visitors to your site per month, that amount of traffic might not be enough to evaluate how well your site does for conversion. However, if you know that you are getting 1000 “targeted” visitors to your site and your conversion rate is low, then you should consider methods to increase your site conversion rate. So, it is a question of the quality of traffic your site is receiving. Quality and targeted traffic with low conversion rate is a problem. Of course the best way to get quality traffic is either via a PPC campaign or a result of ranking well within search engine results for certain keywords.

What do you think?

Tags: client-centric-site, increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate
Posted in Conversion Optimization

At times we worry about increasing online conversion rate but lose track of the bigger picture. We have been working with a public relations firm for the last few weeks tweaking a couple of their landing pages. As you may have assumed, the site is a B2B lead generation site. After testing different elements on the site, we were able to increase the landing page conversion rate by close to 66%.

Since the site is a lead generation site, the actual sales are closed offline. I was chatting with the marketing manager about his overall close rate. I was certain that the overall conversion rate must have increased since we managed to increase the online rate. Unfortunately, not true. The offline conversion rate hardly moved up. Strange but it sounds familiar. The truth is that we faced the same problem with few other clients. There are generally two main problems that would cause the offline conversion rate to lag while the site conversion rates are increasing:

- The site is not sending quality leads: As certain or exact conversion rate might be, the truth is that it is a very vague term. Sure, give me a lead generation site and I can double its conversion rate in less than a week. Strange? Increasing conversion rate for a lead generation site translates into delivering more leads into your inbox. However, you should never forget to evaluate the quality of these leads. It is useless to double your conversion rate if all I am doing is sending more leads who are not interested in the service you provide. In this case, our client works with large size companies who require more extensive PR services as well as can afford to pay for that level of service. They do not want small businesses that do not have the budget contacting them via the website to inquire about PR work. The site design, copy and other elements were constructed to qualify a lead before he fills the contacts form. For example, we made sure that the minimum monthly budget of $10,000 is clearly indicated to anyone who might want to hire them. The client’s page which included companies such HP, Johnson & Johnson, and Ford gave a good indicator of the size of companies they work with.

- The site is sending quality leads but your sales staff is still asleep! It is great the client is filling the contact form. But here is the big question. How long does it take your staff to respond to a client inquiry? Let me give some examples from our own work because we have been tracking this data for the last 7 months. We found out that if we respond to a client request in less than 30 minutes, our chances of closing the sale with that client increases by 70%. The longer we wait, the less the chances are of closing the sale. Waiting for 24 hour, lowers our chances of closing the sale to less than 10%. Waiting for 48 hour or more, lowers the chance of closing the sale to less than 1%. 

What is the best way to respond to an inquiry?  Inboxes are flooded with emails. Your email will be just another email amongst hundred others. So, get on the phone right away! When we did a quick analysis with our client, the delay in response to website requests was the culprit. It was taking the staff on average about 4 days to respond. No need for a lengthy speech here; that simply does not work.

Do you have a similar experience?

Tags: client-centric-site, increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing