POINTS TO INCREASE CUSTOMER CONVERSION RATES
While marketing approaches have begun shifting to customer acquisition as the top marketing goal in 2009 in response to the direst of economic times, online marketers must never forget the significance of customer conversion. You may have enough traffic flowing through your site every day but if your visitor profile is not exactly the type you need, then most likely you’re not getting any sales either. You might as well work on increasing your customer conversion ratios.
The Customer Conversion Ratio is the direct proportion between the number of total web visitors and the number of visitors that actually did something productive on your site (i.e. buy, register, download, or subscribe, etc.) The industry standard for e-commerce is about 1% to 2% - and falling below these standards tremendously calls for intensified conversion initiatives.
How to do it? Easy - the faultless way to make your web conversion rate soar is to align your web sales structure with the behavioral buying process of your potential customers.
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BEHAVIORAL BUYING PROCESS |
WEB SALES STRUCTURE |
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Identifying Needs (“I think I need…?”) |
Search Engine Strategy Keywords Navigation Mechanics |
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Identifying Providers |
Design & Presentation Quick Download Market Directed (Targeted to Customers) |
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Making A Selection |
Superior Content Management Copy and Product Reviews |
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Doing the Purchase (“How easy could it be?”) |
Purchase Navigation Tools Shopping Carts Contact Forms |
Link Needs to Searches
The survey published by Marketing Sherpa and Enquiro indicates that 93.4% of respondents would use the Internet as a tool to arrive at a major business decision. This shows that potential customers start identifying their needs via the Internet, using generic search terms and eventually refines them towards narrower searches. Such process underscores the importance of your search engine strategy and keyword selection – making certain your potential customers find you on the first generic search term before they land into other keywords that lead their search away from you.
Your website should also have friendly navigation tools that lead your visitors to the target pages for conversion. It should take less than three clicks for your visitors to arrive at the page you want them to be in otherwise they’d exit your site and move on to the next search result. You wouldn’t want them to get lost within the complex structure of your website either.
Build Trust with Web Presentation
Being among the top results in search engines may direct more traffic to your site but design and brand identity will be the key players in turning them into buyers.
Questus.com co-founder and research and strategy director Jeff Rosenblum in the January 2006 ClickZ release says, “We find that Web sites have three seconds to make an impression. The actual usability is more important than aesthetics, but at the same time aesthetics are critical.” Supported by the studies in Carleton University’s Human-Oriented Technology Lab in Ottawa, Canada, web aesthetics plays a critical role in catching possible conversion down the web.
Part of your site web presentation tactics should include download time. Who would want to wait for information on a website when the search engines offer other sources of information within seconds? The contents of your website should be managed in harmony with aesthetics to ensure you’re not compromising download time that should always be, as they say, faster than a speeding bullet.
If you’re fast and your appearance dictates that sense of quality that catches your target customer’s interest – in other words, market directed – in no time will you be able to build trust from your visitors.
Create Customer Confidence through Content
After design accomplishes the task of persuading a viewer, it is your content’s role to guide him through the evaluation process of the buying decision. Writing up content is not just about addressing a viewer’s needs but also about addressing the Web’s. Based on a study conducted by John Morkes and Jakob Nielson, re-writing Web content so it was more succinct, scalable, and impartial (as opposed to sales-oriented) resulted to a 159% increase in measured usability. It is then important to know that every other website your prospect has gotten involved with is your competitor which makes it more important to be certain that your website design and content are topnotch to make a powerful impression.
One way to enrich content especially for product merchandising websites is to provide product reviews. Reviews create customer confidence not only in the products or services you provide online – it also adds up to your credibility or expertise in the industry. You can have your top clients write about you or have client logos displayed on your homepage.
Lead Everything to a Purchase
Consumer-oriented sites similar to those included in the Nielsen Norman Group’s list of stickiest online brands are those that tactically make recommendations, create buyer profiles, track site traffic, and provide actually negotiation capabilities. Nielsen Group co-founder, Jakob Nielson says, “There is a difference between the look and feel of a website. Feel is what happens while you’re using a site, and it is important to adapt the site’s task flow to the individual user’s problems.” Hence, for your online customer to commit a purchase, they should be able to feel that they have ownership and control of the buying process online.
You get discovered with the aid of search engines. You attract prospects through stylish design and convince them with carefully considered content. It is the responsibility of your website’s ‘business end’ to set up interactivity that converts visitors into customers. Your Web applications, from request forms to shopping carts, drive viewers to “get something done.” They transform your superior position in search engines into tangible accomplishment in the form of a new customer.
Somni Creative, Inc., rich media marketing professionals from Los Angeles, California, specialize in providing online customer conversion services. We value our customers, both old and new. We welcome the challenge of getting you ahead in the corporate race. Call us at (310) 6973199 or visit www.somnicreative.com.