How to Maximize Your Website Conversions
Is it possible to make more money from your website without getting any more traffic? Yes: increase your conversion rate!
The conversion rate of a website is the percentage of people who take a specific action on your site. Yes, sales are one type of conversion, but other website conversions to be paying attention to are the number of newsletter sign-ups or accounts created.
So, how do you maximize any of those conversion rates? Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Be an authority
Yes, you’ve heard this before, and you’ll probably hear it again, but it’s simple: if you don’t look like you know what you’re doing, no one will want to pay you. If your website has broken links or your checkout screen doesn’t work, customers suddenly have less faith in you shipping the right order at the right time. Make sure everything you do online is the same level of quality as the services you provide.
Answer questions
Internet shoppers can contradictions: impatient and cautious at the same time. Impatient, because they don’t want to wait and find out more about the product during office hours. Cautious, because they want to know as much information as possible about the product before purchasing it.
First, supply the answers to common questions in the FAQ page (even if the information is stated elsewhere – consider linking to it). Also make sure that contact information is prominently available so that customers can call or email direct questions. To go the extra mile, look into services which embed “chat with a salesperson” capabilities directly into your webpage.
Target the right people
When you are advertising, focus on the people who want to make purchases. Make sure you are ranking for the keywords of any items that you sell, not just related products that might generate a lead. Making long-term relationships is good, but being found by a person who is ready to make a purchase is great.
Make your site usable
There are plenty of little tweaks that can make your shopping cart, and your whole site, more customer-friendly. The site needs to be easy to understand and use. Make sure your design doesn’t disguise any buttons or links that your visitors need to follow. Also check that your pages load as quickly as possible, and work in any browser.
Call to action
Make sure your website, and each individual page on the site, asks your users to do something. Make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, receive coupons, contact us. Not all pages need to have the exact same call to action, but all the pages should be encouraging potential customers to either make a purchase or keep in touch.
Testing, testing
Watch individual users interact with your site, as much as possible. Find people to test your site who are in your target audience, if at all possible. Different techniques and site designs work for different groups of people, and if you take every piece of advice, your site will suffer. Make decisions based on what works, not what should work.
After watching individual users, you can test large groups of visitors by using A/B testing, directing different streams of traffic to different versions of pages. You can find services online which will do this automatically, providing you with concrete results with less work.
Encourage referrals
In any business, treating your customers well is the first step to getting great referrals. The second step is to ask customers directly to tell their friends. You could suggest that they forward the newsletter to anyone they think might be interested, or make it clear that online coupons can be shared. With a little more work, you can set up an affiliate program or offer monetary incentives for referrals. Not only is this a way to increase traffic, it is a way to get more targeted traffic.
Make a special offer
No, this one is no surprise to anyone – but web shoppers are always looking for a deal. Try offering a discount or free shipping. Even better, give users a discount when they create a free account or sign up for your newsletter.
These strategies have worked for a number of ecommerce websites. Which strategies are working for yours?
Author Info
Written by Ralph Matlack
Ralph Matlack is a Group Product Manager in Intuit’s Grow Your Business division where he leads the strategy and development of the Intuit Websites offering. Having founded and run two bootstrap startups prior to Intuit, he also has a first-hand appreciation of the challenging part-salesperson, part-accountant, part-human resources, part-janitor roles that small business owners have. He loves golf, beer, college football, and summer trips to Sweden with his family. You can follow Ralph on Twitter at @rematlack.
After struggling for some time. I have no money left to give. Please cancel all services to me and stop taking money from my account. You’re killing me.
Very Seriously, Michael L. Gentry
Hi Michael,
I’m really sorry to to hear that – I’d be more than happy to assist you. Can you please email me your account information so that I can further assist you?
Please send me the email address you had used to sign up your account
(send to: ehsan.carmine@intuit.com)
Thank you.
I’m sorry someone is having such problems with Intuit. I have been with this company about 9 years – since it was Homestead, and if it wasn’t for them, I couldn’t have a website. I love it. It is a seriously good product if you have spent time learning how to use it. I don’t find it particularly expensive, but then I also work outside of intuit on things like SEO – I mean who could manage to spend on Spotlight and get just 50 leads per month from their money?
If you stick within the Intuit services I’m sure it could get pricey, but you don’t have to… and indeed you NEED to integrate more external solutions with your website if you are going to use a service like this for people who don’t read code, but still need their website to be useful to customers, exciting and easily found.
My only complaint is that since it changed to Intuit, they have put a bunch of folks on the help lines who can’t actually help. It used to be that you would get a query resolved and that the tech staff would probably make additional suggestions to help you with your site. They were SO well trained in how it worked, and how it didn’t. These kids can’t. Anything beyond totally rudimentary and they get someone to call you back 3 days later. I can rarely wait 3 days.
Dear Ralph,
This is a great reminder as to what you have written.
I liked what you mentioned, “Even better, give users a discount when they create a free account or sign up for your newsletter.” I guess I didn’t think about that however it is a good idea. I have been trying to figure out how to create a newsletter that will open in the box of the email text section along with blogging.
Thanks for the reminder and information and it was a great read.
Keep up the good work Intuit!
I have been using this service for 10 years now, the product is amazing and very usefull if you spend the time to learn all that it can offer. I have used personal coding on my site and own meta data I have extremely great traffic. You should read up on SEO and implement to your site and as mentioned not stick to just what intuit can offer. I have a gold account, and have used the storefront and it brings in alot. I think intuit marks 10/10 for the services and help they offer. keep up the good work.
How do I send or attach a reply (Like Thank You for visting diypi.com ect.) to the people that visit my sight.
These are great tips and I love Intuit. I’ve called them numerous times for different things and have always been impressed with what they’ve had to offer. Now I just wish I could actually get the conversions I need to actually make money, I feel as though I’ve implemented most of the tips above, but I must still be missing something. I get hits but rarely any buyers. I may soon end up like poor Mr. Gentry at the top.
Good luck to all my fellow Intuit business owners out there. If you need any survival or security gear check out sossurvivaldepot.com.
Stay safe.
I have to say I like Homestead, well now called Intuit. The sitebuilder is easy to use and has a lot of good functionality. I have been a customer for almost 5 years and will stay on. I do have to agree with Sarah, that the customer service is not as good as it was. I guess we were spoiled but it’s still not bad.
Is there a way to find out the number of hits on my webpage other than the page that only shows the last 7 days. I would like to see the total number of visitors we have had.
I am not truly earning anything so far here on my intuit site i don’t really know how to draw any customers and cannot afford to pay for the service and the extra cost to get the help to receive more customers if there is something or someone who can help me without it being expensive or so costly…that would help me i truly need customers.
Sandy – I’m not sure what area of the country you’re in, but you may want to check out Google (& Intuit’s) “Get Your Business Online” campaign – they’re running free sessions around the country you can go to in-person to learn about ways to build your website, get listed on Google, and also how to more effectively market. More info here: http://www.gybo.com/
i have no background what so ever when it comes web designs, for a novice to navigate without even going trough the video
, i somehow manage to pull it together and as i progress with website products and 101, Im willing to learn and get aquainted very well with the customer support, which are good people in my opnion.
the only thing i can comment about intuit is that they dont have 24 hr support, i feel it should be a standard features because you are in the internet business ( it never sleeps)
other than that, they are wonderful company, I feel at home.
D”Flea