Improving Your Conversion Rate Comes Before More Traffic
The question most often asked by new clients who already have a website.
How to I get more traffic to my website?
After all, you have a website and you have something great to offer potential customers. But, right now you’re not making enough sales or getting enough leads.
It must be because I don’t have enough traffic, right?
Improving Online Sales isn’t much different from Improving Offline Sales
Well, of course more traffic will improve sales because sales is a numbers game. The more people you pitch, the more sales you make.
However, great salespeople sell more than good salespeople who sell more than poor salespeople. It’s because great salespeople have refined their pitch and have a higher closing rate than the others.
The same principle applies to your website. It’s your salesperson that is supposed to close sales.
Think of it this way; When you go to an auto dealership, there is someone there to show you around, ask about your favorite color, what features you are looking for, etc. Their job is to get you interested in a particular vehicle.
When you show an interest in that vehicle, they take you into an office and introduce you to someone else, the person who can actually sell you the car. They are called the closer.
Your listings in the search engines and the posts you make on social media are like the people that show you around the car lot getting people interested in something you have to offer.
The links take them to the closer, your website. But is your website ready to close sales? Answer these questions to see how well you’ve done in creating a website that is a true closer.
First, let’s see if your website is optimized to convert sales and/or generate leads
1. Have you created landing pages for your different products and services?
Not web pages. Landing pages. These are standalone pages that you drive traffic to from your PPC, social media, and/or email marketing campaigns.
Landing pages convert sales better than web pages because they are more focused on just one product or service. If you want to improve sales, design great landing pages and create campaigns to target the right people to send to those landing pages.
We’re happy to create high-quality landing pages for you and help you set up your campaigns. Call us at (512)515-0119 for a free quote.
2. Along with landing pages, do you have any special offers, free downloads or anything else that will appeal to your target audience?
Free downloads and special offers are a great way to get more traffic to your website. If you are trying to generate more leads, people will give you their information or sign up if you have something great to offer them. if you are trying to close sales, these incentives will improve your conversion rates.
3. Have you optimized your content for conversions?
The navigation menu is not going to improve your conversion rates. Calls-to-action within the text convert much better.
Our conversion optimization services are affordable and effective. Contact us here for a free quote.
4. Is it really easy to find where to actually make a purchase?
This seems like a dumb question, but you’d be surprised how many websites make it difficult to buy something. Many website developers and designers are their own worst enemy and place obstacles in the way of a purchase without realizing it.
It should be very simple to sign up, join, subscribe or make a purchase!
Have someone you know that isn’t very web-savvy visit your website and don’t help them. Ask your kids to do it. Can they find everything without you helping them?
Technical issues can cost you leads and sales
1. Have you tested your website? Don’t take anything for granted.
2. Do all of the links work on every page?
We have tools to check all the links in your website and will fix them for you.
3. Do all of your forms work?
Forms break more often than you think. So, test them all at least once per month to be sure you are getting the leads you should be getting.
4. Have you checked to see how your website works and looks in all browsers?
Call any tech support person when something isn’t working and the first question they will ask you is; What browser are you using? They know their site has different issues on different browsers.
Do you know how your website works in all browsers and what potential problems there are? Have you checked it since the latest versions of those browsers were launched?
5. Have you tested your shopping cart lately?
Make test purchases through your shopping cart at least once per month to make sure everything is still working the way it should.
6. Is your website mobile compatible?
At the very least it should be responsive or adaptive.
Important Note: Does it load fast on mobile devices? Studies have shown that people using mobile devices are even less patient than those using a PC.
Everyone is focused on being mobile compatible, but you also need to be sure it loads fast on those devices.
We will optimize your website for speed on mobile devices or build you a mobile compatible website that will help you generate more leads, make more sales and get more traffic. Contact us using this form or call (512)515-0119 for a free quote.
7. Speaking of making sure your website loads fast; Are all your images optimized for the web?
Did you know using PNG images instead of JPG images might improve the speed of your site? There’s a lot more you can do to optimize images for both speed and better search engine rankings.
SEO is more than just making sure your website ranks well in the search engines
It’s also about making sure your website works the way it is supposed to.
1. Is your sitemap formatted correctly and has it been submitted to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools?
2. Have you set the preferred version of your domain name in Google?
Google views http://www.aodesign.com as a separate website from the non www version, http://aodesign.com.
This causes the number of inbound links to your website to be split between the 2 versions rather than all counting for your single website. Setting a preferred version redirects the other version to that one and counts all of the links as going to the preferred version whether someone uses the www or not when linking to you.
3. Do you have search engine friendly URLs?
Do your URLs contain a lot of numbers and special characters rather than something simple like http://aodesign.com/seo-smm
4. Do you have a unique title tag for every page in your website?
Did you use your company name instead of targeting keywords and/or phrases?
5. Did you write unique descriptions for every page?
Remember, the description isn’t to help you rank better. It’s your chance to convince people to click your link from the search engine instead of the other results.
6. Do you have duplicate pages on your website?
Blogs and ecommerce sites are notorious for this because there is more than one way to find the same content. Categories, tags, archives, etc. Use canonical links to tell Google which page you want indexed over the duplicates.
If you have done all of these things, you’re ready to drive more traffic to your website
Marketing costs money and time. Before spending that money, you should make sure your website is really ready for more traffic.
AO Design will fix any or all of the issues listed above and then improve your website traffic. Give us a call today at (512) 515-0119 or contact us here.