Converting Web Site Visitors to Customers: Part 1
I have spent much of the last few months diving into this issue. I’m puzzled. And I’m convinced that this is the area of greatest opportunity for most of us who invest marketing dollars online.
Depending on who you ask, average conversion rates (the percentage of site visitors who take the action that you desire while on your site) online are between 1.8% and 2.4% and FALLING. At a glance, most of us respond to these figures from a direct marketing perspective and conclude that this feels about right. Direct mail response rates tend to fall in this general vicinity (rarely higher… often lower). So why should the Web be any different?
Here’s why. Direct mail recipients have NO CONTROL of what the find in their mail box every day. Through our list targeting, we do our best to maximize the general relevance of our message to its recipients. But in the final analysis, at best, we are making an educated guess that a reasonable percentage of our list may actually have an interest in what we have to say at a given moment in time.
The Web is different. People arrive at our sites BY CHOICE. For whatever reason, people think that the site they are visiting will provide them what it is they are looking for at that time.
How would you feel about your 2% response rate to your direct mail package if ALL of its recipients had REQUESTED the package? You see where I’m going with this….
Add to this the fact that online, we have the ability to deliver far more information than anyone would ever digest in a direct mail package. Plus, the medium allows users to access what interests them - and bypass the rest. With these huge advantages, how can these dismal conversion rates be possible?
I’ll offer three ideas to consider. Address these issues, and your conversion rates will increase. In no particular order…
1. Trust – neck and neck with infomercials, generally the Web is one of the world’s least trusted marketing media. We as marketers often do a bad job of overcoming these trust issues in our site copy, presentation, and functionality. Bad copy, poor grammar, misspellings, counter-intuitive navigation, broken links, confusing shopping carts, questionable security, and unclear privacy practices are all trust killers.
2. Gratification – people arrive at a web site with certain needs. They are looking for something. If they can’t quickly determine that they are in the right place, and find the pathway to the answers they need, they leave. If they arrived at your site by way of a link from an offer or a reference to a product, they had better see reference to that same offer or product when they arrive at your site.
3. Resolution – if your users can’t resolve their questions and concerns, they won’t buy. You have to understand your audience from THEIR PERSPECTIVE and guide them to the answers they need. For this insight, a great place to start is with the people in the company who actually deal with your customers. What do customers and prospects ask? How do they articulate their questions? What are their concerns/objections? Sell in the way your customers would like to be sold to – in the language that they speak – and you will make more sales.
A lot of marketing dollars are being wasted today for lack of consideration of conversion issues like these. I would suggest that if you put the same energy into maximizing conversion rates as you do on driving traffic, the resulting increase in the return on your marketing investment will surprise you.
Tags: Web Conversion | Conversion Rate | Web Sales
Conversion Rate, Web Conversion, Web Sales
