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The blog webinar we held two nights ago entitled, “The Opportunities and Perils of Business Blogging”, was a smashing (as the Brits would say) success judging by the incessant emails and phone calls I’ve received since. Our big winner of the FREE My Blog Builder Program giveaway was John Crawford of Crawford PR International.

We are looking forward to working closely with him to develop a fully optimized, powerful blog.

Now to speak a bit about conversion rates…

Recently, I was asked several specific questions about how to improve website conversion rates— converting clicks to customers. Here are my answers to the first three, with answers to the second three to come in my next entry.

What do you mean by conversion? Do you mean getting someone to answer the simplest call to action, such as “read more here,” or actually selling a product or service?

What you’re talking about here are two different ways to measure your website. “Read more here” is what I would call a variable affecting your conversion rate. I call these kinds of variables “micro conversions” because they are all small (microscopic, even) steps toward full conversion.

A micro conversion is something you should test and measure. “Read more here” might not get as high a click-through rate as “Click here to find out how to win a month’s supply of vintage wine.” So by improving this click-through, you get the person browsing to take another small step toward your final website goal. By doing this, you improve your overall conversion rate, which in this case is to get someone to register or subscribe to win a month’s supply of vintage wine.

Micro conversions can be tracked by measuring the click-through of links, or the read time for content, or the bounce rate for headlines and copy. Full conversion means persuading your visitors to do what you want them to do. In my example, it would be registering to win wine. But it could be subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an audio file, buying a product, selling a service, or whatever. It should reflect your website’s business objective.

What strategies would you suggest when no online conversion is possible? I need them to call me for more info, to learn more and to eventually give them a proposal.

There is no such thing as “no online conversion.” You’re looking for leads that will eventually phone you, but the visitor is the one with the power. If you don’t give your visitors a reason to let you continue to have a dialogue with them, then they won’t. Using opt-in is one answer. If, for instance, you ask for a name, e-mail address, and telephone number from your visitor so that she or he can then get useful information from you in the form of a free report or audio file, you do two things. First, you qualify the visitor as someone who is interested in your services, and second, you get permission to contact him or her again.

Rather than expecting someone to pick up the phone, you need to build into your website a powerful reason for your visitors to give you permission to e-mail or talk to them. In your case, you say they need to ring you to learn more. Put what they need to learn into some form that they can opt-in to get, such as a white paper, report, or audio file. Then you have a conversion rate that is the percentage of people who give you permission to continue the dialogue with them by giving you their e-mail address or phone number so they can learn more about your offering. People visit a website to get information, so give them the means to get it.

What if the product you sell is also sold by several others on other websites? How do you get someone who is browsing the internet to notice your site and want to order from you?

In offline marketing, a successful tactic is differentiation. It’s no different online.
If you stand out from your competition, you get noticed. What makes you different (not necessarily better, just different) from your competition? A USP (unique selling proposition) makes an enormous difference to conversion rates. For example, we improved subscriptions by 11% per month for six months by differentiating ourselves.

The second point is that your site should be of use to your visitor. The one thing that all people online have in common is that when they browse they are looking for information. So give your visitors what they want in the form of education.
If your potential customers become educated about your offer and take away something useful from your site, they will remember you over your competition.

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