You can’t make pigs fly

Website owners often think they can boost their sales by hiring a search engine optimisation expert to get them more traffic.

While more traffic is always good, you need to bear in mind the advice of Bruce Clay, who is regarded as the world’s leading expert in search engine optimisation.

To quote Bruce: “It is not the job of search engine optimisation to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the website so that it becomes an eagle.”

In other words, it’s a waste of money sending more traffic to a website if the site doesn’t work effectively to convert those visitors into sales.

It’s far better to invest money first to transform your website into an eagle… so it really flies.

It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate than by doubling your traffic

To quote another top marketer: “Trying to increase sales simply by driving more traffic to a website with a poor customer conversion rate is like trying to keep a leaky bucket full by adding more water instead of plugging the holes”

Most New Zealand websites are full of holes. The priority is to get these plugged (or in some cases it’s better to build a new bucket).

If you’re serious about selling online, you do need to work on search engine optimisation too. But that should come AFTER you’ve got your website converting at the best rate possible. And bear in mind, SEO (done correctly) is expensive. It’s easier and cheaper to double your conversion rate than to double your traffic.

Free website assessment - special offer during May 2009

During May, I am offering a FREE website assessment to anyone who has a website but it’s not bring in the amount of leads or sales you were hoping for.

I will look at your website and give you a brief report about how I think it could be improved. I’ll be looking particularly at factors such as the headline on the site, the sales copy, the offer you are making to your prospective customers … dthe overall “selling power” of the site.

I’ll also look at some basic search engine optimisation factors, such the title tag and other meta tags, and the use of keywords throughout your site. If you have a website and it’s not working as well as you hoped to bring in new business, this is an opportunity for you to get your site assessed, at no cost.

This offer lasts until May 31. If you want to take advantage of it, click here to get a free website assessment.

Tell people the facts …. and keep it simple

Changing the look and feel of your website can make a massive difference to the response rate (i.e. the number of sales you make).

In the early days of the Internet, people discovered this by trial and error. Today, there’s a growing ’science’ around web page conversion. But few website designers have any real idea of what makes a web page convert visitors into customers.

Here’s an interesting case study by Carlos and Lupe Garcia of how changing the look and feel of a web page made a huge difference to sales from the site.

This is the web page as it originally was - a sales letter with very few graphics. Even though this is a well written sales letter, it only converted 1.6% of visitors to page into buyers.

Actually, 1.6% conversion is a lot better than most websites do. But it’s still very weak compared to what is possible.

One reason is, this page looks like hard work to read through. This is enough to put many people off.

After Carlos and Lupe Garcia worked their magic on the page, they transformed it into the page below.

These changes saw the page’s conversion rate jump to an impressive 3.3%.

See how the amount of words on the page has been slashed to the bare minimum. Just a compelling headline: “Did you know you can legally watch over 3000 channels on your PC?” It tells visitors immediately what benefit they will gain from the product.

The headline is absolutely vital to your website. In fact, most visitors will read the headline, gain a quick impression of whether they like the ‘look and feel’ of your site and decide whether to stay or leave.

People want the facts. Short and sweet. If you don’t give them a powerful reason to stay, they’ll be gone. That’s the harsh reality of the Internet.

The ‘After’ version of the page also has a video, which you can’t see on the static image. Video can be very compelling on a website, as long as it’s presented correctly.

And then there’s a form where people can sign up immediately. It’s right there, in their face. They don’t need to scroll down and hunt for it.

The ‘After’ version looks professional and not as ’salesy’ as the original page.

This is just one example of many I’ve been studying recently on how to improve the conversion of web pages. I hope to share more in future posts.