How to Turn Tire Kickers Into Customers

Half of the battle of building a successful web site business is getting qualified traffic to your site. Sure, you may have 15,000 people visiting your site every month, but how many are actually making a purchase? The key to understanding and improving these issues is to track your conversion ration. Lets start by discussing some of the terms we'll be talking about.

• Sales conversion ratio is the amount of sales that you make divided by the number of unique visitors your site has.
• Lead conversion ratio , is calculated by the number of unique visitors that have visited your site, and have requested information, signed up for a newsletter, or in general have made an attempt to inquire further into your products or services. Each of these "leads" are potential customers so they are an important metric to track. Lead Conversion is calculated by dividing the number of inquires you have by the total number of unique visitors to your site.

Before you can even begin measuring Conversion Ratios, you need an accurate method of measuring your web site traffic. Many virtual hosts now have web statistics available, or you can use one of the popular web site log analyzers available.

Regardless of your method, you must be able to track the number of unique visitors to your web site every month. It is also imperative that you have a measurement tool that does log analysis (Webtrends and Marketwave are two popular programs for the PC) to study traffic patterns within your web site.

Let's take a look at what business web sites on average are making, this might really open your eyes...

Item Got Made Conversion Info Purchase % ----------------------------------------------------- Flowers 14% 7% 50% Computer hardware 57 22 39 Books 40 14 35 Music CDs 35 10 29 Apparel 18 5 28 Computer software 60 16 27 Greeting cards 22 6 27 Financial services 47 8 17 Home electronics 33 3 9 Food 21 2 9 Movie tickets 13 1 7 Business travel 49 3 6 Personal travel 16 1 6 Automobiles 43 1 2 Telecommunications 17 1 5 Real estate 6 - - Alcoholic beverages 6 - - Soft drinks 5 - - -------------------------------------------------- Source: Jul. 1998 Millward Brown Interactive

Looks like everyone should be in the Flower business!.. All kidding aside, we don't have the exact details on how this study was conducted, so if your not converting 9% with your electronics site, don't jump off the roof! The important thing is to constantly work at improving your conversion ratio.

Improving your conversion ratio, step by step

Step 1: Tracking

You must have traffic information on your site or be in the process of collecting this information before you start these methods. If not, you are "shooting in the dark" -- and you won't know for sure if you are improving or hurting your conversions.

Step 2: Testing

The second step in improving your conversion ration involves testing your site. Get a handful of people together that have had very little experience with a computer and the Internet. These testers could be your co-workers, spouses, friends, business associates or anyone that has little or no Internet shopping experience. It's ideal if they have never purchase from a Internet site! How many people do you need? Between 3 and 5 people will likely discover 90% of the problems within your site. It's important to use "Virgin" testers if possible, that is people that have never visited your website before.

Sit down with your volunteer and ask them to go to your web site and make a purchase.

1. Make notes silently in the background on where they run into obstacles or have comments.
2. Don't interfere or interrupt the tester while they are attempting to make a purchase, doing so will waste your effort.
3. You might also benefit by using a VCR camera to film the users as they negotiate your site.
4. Use a stop watch and track the amount of time it takes them to go from your home page to the "check out counter".
5. After completing the first purchase, ask them to go back to the home page and make a second purchase. Track the amount of time this takes them as well.

After you are done with your testing, collect your notes and review. Very likely you will find a number of consistent problems that people face when attempting to place an order. Every one of these obstacles is costing you money, so it's important to address them as soon as possible. By tracking the time it takes a new visitor to make a purchase, you will have a baseline for comparison for future tests.

Step 3: One Click Purchase

The ideal on-line store allows you make a purchase from the home page, however, that can be tricky to implement. Amazon's "1-click" purchase system is a system that really caters to the customer and makes it EASY for them to make a purchase. From almost any product page, a customer with an existing account can complete a entire order by clicking on the "1-click" button.

The reason Amazon implemented this system is the fact that every step you put between a customer and the final sales page costs you a small percentage of sales . You should continually work on your site to lower the number of steps that it takes to get from the product page to "clicking" that final "order submit" button. Not everyone can build as sophisticated system as Amazon has, but we use them as a example of how simple this process can be made.

Step 4: Building Trust

It's very important that you are able to instill a sense of trust to the shopper as they travel through your site. Testimonials from prior customers, information on your sales process, full contact information, guarantees and even images of your store will help. How many websites have you hesitated to place an order with because they didn't have their telephone number and physical address visible? I know I have seen many sites this way, and very few of them have I placed orders with.

Step 5: Create a sense of urgency

For decades, businesses have used different methods to create a sense of "urgency" -- something to compel the customer to make the purchase now .

" Regular price is $69.95 but this week only $49.95 while supplies last "

or

" Order by Friday and receive a free Titanium Widget "

...something to give the customer an incentive to complete the order immediately. As you are probably aware, most people will procrastinate when given a chance and customer procrastination can be very bad for business. Be sure to place your "incentive" strategically in a place where your prospect is likely to be "coming to a decision". Otherwise, using these techniques too early may not be as effective in producing the desired response.

Step 6: Show them how to use it

Use product reviews or examples to help describe and illustrate how the product or service works. When people are comparing products, it helps the decision making process if you have detailed information showing how to use the product, install it, or maintain it. Doing so can certainly remove purchasing doubts in the customer's mind.

First person reviews are great for this. For instance, I'm looking for a new phone switch. If I view two different sites, one with just a part number and description of the product versus a site that shows me how to install it, how other people have used it in their office, and what phones it will work with ...I am going to be heavily influenced to order from the site with the most information on the product.

The key point here is, the more you tell ...the more you sell. However, be careful not to force the customer go through all the information unless they are interested in doing so. Your presentation should follow a pattern of "Would you like to buy now? ...or would you like to learn more?" -- Then, make links available to your product info pages that will tell more to those who want to know more, ...while allowing those who are ready to buy to go ahead and make their purchase. And, above all, be certain to remove any barriers they might have to placing an order.

Step 7: Ask for the order!

Ordering is not a forgone conclusion. You must ask for the order. Never assume the customer will just "go ahead". You must guide them by telling them what to do next . You've seen the bright "Buy it now" buttons before on some websites, it's a call to action that is much stronger than a small text link on the bottom of the page. Likewise, the "Click here" that is seen on virtually every banner ad is a strong, but simple, call to action that can increase responses significantly.

In summary...

You will find that monitoring and experimenting with these and other techniques will help your conversion ratios significantly . But don't stop after you have seen some modest improvement, getting the optimum return on investment requires constantly tweaking things till you know exactly what works and what doesn't work.