10 Quick Tips to Increase the Conversion Rate of your Website

Want to see how to quickly improve the conversion rate of your site?  The easiest way to see if your site is measuring up with your competitors is to take some screen shots of specific features that are on your site and on your competitor’s sites and to paste them all together into a word doc side by side.  You can then easily see what others are doing in your same market and get the creative juices flowing to do what they are doing even better!

1. Do a Google search for your top keyword and open new tabs or windows for the top 10 sites.

2. Open up Microsoft Word or other similar program.

3. Take screen shots or use SnagIt and copy the different sections of your site and the your competitor’s sites and paste them into your Word doc.

Areas to check:

1. Top Navigation bar.  Check to see if you have too much white space.  What things are above the fold on your competitor’s sites that you don’t have above the fold.  Do you have an 800 number?  Do you have a top navigation link map that links to the top sections on your site? Do you have an awesome Logo that your customers can identify with? Do you have a search box?

2. USP.  No that is not UPS.  USP is the Unique Selling Proposition.  The unique selling proposition are the reasons why your customers should buy from you instead of at your competitor’s sites.  First research and see if your competitors have a USP.  If they do, then write down their USP.  Look to find as many other sites in your market as possible and create a master list of all the USPs that you can find that apply to your market.  Once you have a list, then see which ones you can also offer and which ones you can one up them on and offer a better proposition.  Low price is NOT a good USP.  You never want to compete on price.  Think of what values you can add to your product or service that will make you stand out from the competition.

3. Guide the Site Visitor.  When someone goes to your site, where are they guided to click?  Is the process confusing?  There should be a clear call to action.  As you look at other sites, check out where your eyes are drawn to.  Look at what action you are compelled to take on other sites and then see how you can improve the call to action on your site to guide your customers through the sales funnel.

4. Live Chat.  If you don’t offer live chat, why not?  If you are selling to hundreds of customers and your phone lines are constantly jammed up, having live chat will literally save sales!

5. Call to Action.  What is your call to action?  Is it clear to your customers?  If your call to action is to call a phone number, then that phone number should be on each page four, six, eight or even ten times!  If your call to action is to click the Order Now button, then make sure your Order button is bright and easy to find.

6. Borrow authority.  Having credit cards, BBB, and Security Seals is known to improve conversion rates.  Make sure your seals are above the fold and if possible in the top banner.  Shipping logos such as by Fedex, UPS, or USPS are also good to have.  Compare your site with the other top 10 sites and see what seals they have posted on their site above the fold and be sure to do the same!

7. Collect emails.  Add a webform to collect emails on your site.  When analyzing the top 10 sites see what their web forms look like.  Check to see what words they are using.  Look at if they are offering a freebie in exchange for email addresses or maybe a discount or coupon code.  After you start to build your database, be sure to follow up and send out weekly emails!

8. Testimonials. As soon as possible, add customer testimonials to your site.  Be sure to check out the new FTC regs and be absolutely sure to follow all the rules.  Having testimonials throughout the site especially close to where your customers see the Buy Now button, is a great way to increase conversion.

9. Professional graphics and advertising.  Who says the professional ads on the right side nav of your site has to link out to someone else’s site?  Use professional looking ads on the right side nav of your site to link to other sections of your site!

10.  Last but not least, be sure to have analytics installed.  Google webmaster tools and Google analytics are a must.  Crazyegg.com is also ideal for seeing exactly where your customers are clicking.  If you have a link on your home page that is not being clicked on, then you need to get rid of that link or change it in some way so that it does get clicked on.  Links are the doors on your site that open to other sections.  If no one is going through those doors, then you need to either move the doors somewhere else or do something to call attention to them!

Enjoyed this article?  Have another tip to improve the conversion rate of websites?  Let us know by leaving a comment below! 

 

 

 I am a huge fan of the site Conversion Rate Experts! They have some free articles over there including a huge checklist of things you can do to improve your site.

What is Google Caffeine?

Whether it was a move in response to MSN’s new search engine Bing, or just the next step in Google’s evolution, Google is hoping to make big changes with Google Caffeine. Being called “the next generation of search”, Google Caffeine claims to be faster, more accurate and more comprehensive than the current Google search. They have actually opened up the test version to some of their toughest critics, the users, for review and feedback. This is a great way for Google to find out about issues and gain free advice on suggestions for their new technology.

While Google is claiming that the average Google Caffeine users may not see any major changes in the search engine, web developers and power searches should notice some upgrades. Google has issued an open invitation to its users and they can see a preview of Google’s new infrastructure by going to http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and trying searches there. Google is looking for feedback on the differences that users see with Google Caffeine. Are users seeing more real time search results with the new system? Some of the early feedback is indicating that this is true which may even place more relevance on social media marketing than ever before.

It is important for SEO specialists to understand that Google makes changes to its algorithm all the time without to much publicity, but does tend to announce major changes. Therefore, Google Caffeine, while bringing better service to its users may have significant impacts on your search engine results and rankings. These changes could be for the better or for the worse, only time will really be able to reveal this answer. It is very important for companies to start testing their keyword searches with the test version of Google Caffeine and comparing the results to the current Google search.

While, one of Google’s goals is to index more and more information on the internet, this could negatively affect your listings. With more and more information being indexed, your pages may have much more competition, and therefore, you may fall back or off of some Google searches. However, if you feel that a number of your url’s are not being indexed with the current functionality, Google Caffeine could make a positive impact to your search results. Either way, you can expect to see some changes to your listings once Google Caffeine is officially released.

While we really have no idea how these changes will specifically affect our future business, it is important for companies to stay informed and be open to some strategic changes in the way they are currently doing business. If Google Caffeine does have some negative impacts on your listings you may be able to compensate for this through more focused pay per click campaigns. For example, you may want to make your ads more specific based on geographic location. By making this change you may even find that your advertising dollars are being better spent. Bottom line, change is the one constant in the life of Google, so it is much more productive to embrace the change than to fight it. Hopefully, Google Caffeine will help us as searchers and internet business owners.

Keeping Track of Links is an Important Step in Your SEO Strategy

For any online business it is very important to keep track of your inbound links. Many people spend a lot of time and resources creating unique articles and posting them to article sites all over the internet, but do not take the time to track their links to see which ones the search engines are finding. As you create articles it is important to keep a spreadsheet listing each of your articles, where you posted them and which keywords you are focusing on. Some articles will be more appealing to the search engines than others and this is why it is important to track which articles are performing on which search engines.

The second thing you will need to do is sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and verify your site. Once your site is verified you will start seeing statistics about your website including inbound links. This will give you a list of which sites Google is tracking and which pages on your website have links pointing to them. This will help you build a strong backlink strategy which will bring your website up in search engine rankings and increase traffic to your site.

Link building is still one of the most important steps in any search engine optimization strategy. It is the main way to get your website listed organically on the top search engines and increase the page rank of pages on your site. The more links you can build the better, but you need to build links in a natural way. You do not want to go and post 100 articles pointing to your website in two days. The search engines will not like this technique and they could actually penalize your site for it.

Understanding the importance of link building and the proper techniques for it can seem a bit overwhelming, at first. The key is to stay focused and organized. Keep track of the articles that you write and the keywords that you are using. Post articles on popular sites such as Ezinearticles, Hubpages and Squidoo, and post them a few at a time. Do not go out and pay some company to post 1000 articles for you in a few days or a week. This is a sure way to hurt your website.

Outsourcing the writing of your articles is a great place to start with your link building strategy. You can then post the articles yourself in a way that will not cause the search engines to penalize your website. There are many freelancers online that can help you with this task for a reasonable rate. Link building is one of the most important tasks related to building any online business. If done correctly and tracked regularly you are sure to see amazing results in your search engine rankings. If done incorrectly you can really hurt your online business. So, keep a list of your articles and keywords and sign up for Google Webmaster Tools in order to see which sites are working the best for your website and post articles slowly.