heartharmony.com.au

Ever had the experience when you build what you believe is a great website, you have created loads of content, you get solid traffic to your site and then … (insert sound of crickets chirruping here).  This was the case for one lady who rang me this week and asked me to look at her site.

So what was going wrong? Here’s what I shared with her. If you want to create a well converting website, there are a few elements you need for success.

1. A hungry market. Are people actively looking for what you have to offer? You need to start with the market first – if there is no market for your product, then you will never end up selling many items. Sounds logical, but you would be surprised at the number of people who start with inventing a product and then try and find a market to sell it to.
2. A good product. People are looking for solutions to their needs – they are not looking for 100% perfection. Many businesses struggle with this, spending years perfecting their product before going to market. If you find yourself on the perfectionism loop – whack yourself on the side of the head and look at Apple. Was their first i-pod perfect? What about the 2nd or 3rd generations of i-pod? They created good products and then refined them as they went (on the basis of income from the earlier versions).
3. A professional looking website. When people visit your website for the first time they judge, based on the appearance of the site, whether or not your site can be trusted. If your site looks cheap or shoddy, with budget graphics and text that cannot be read in many browsers, they will click away. Your site needs to look professional, polished and easy to see no matter the browser type. Is your site search engine optimised so that your hungry market can find you? Does your site use images that reflect the images of your market? Can they see themselves, and other’s like them, using your product or service.
4. Logical navigation. Do you make it easy for people to work their way through your site, or do you hide bits and pieces on different pages? If you make it too hard, people will leave. If you are selling a product, then one page sites are great as every time you make people click away you give them the chance to leave.
5. Are you attracting the right kinds of people? High traffic is not the be all and end all. You want to attract people who are already interested in your product or service.  There is no point in getting loads of traffic to your site if they are looking for something else. They will see that you don’t meet their needs and click away. 
6. Does your text make sense and inspire action? If your text is confusing to follow, uses too much jargon, misses core pieces of information or doesn’t ask for the sale, then sales will be less than they could be.
7. Stacks of credibility. Can people read lots of success stories and testimonials? Can they see a picture of you and easily get in contact with you? If you are asking them to buy, is your site secure or do you use a trusted payment provider like Paypal? Do you guarantee your product or service?
8. Do you make choice easy? Many businesses offer too much choice. Keep choices simple – one option is perfectly fine. Two also works, but when you offer lots and lots of minor variations on a theme, then you lose people. They simply can’t make up their mind. Keep the choice simple (This of course doesn’t apply to shopping mall type of sites like Amazon, where people expect options).
9. Is your price right? You generally need to test to find the right price for your product.  Guesstimates don’t cut it – you need to test to find the right price the market is willing to pay.
10. Are your expectations realistic? A website generally will not generate thousands of calls or sales each week. 1% conversion on a site with these other points in place is normal, 2% is good. Above 3% and you can expect choirs and angels to descend.

If you want to boost your conversions, look at these 10 areas and work out which ones you need to refine for your site. Often the problem will be in more than one area, so keep digging, testing and editing until you hit on the perfect combination for your site.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter