Don’t underestimate the importance of Conversion rate
23 Feb
I’ve recently become involved in an email conversation with a merchant who is having a few problems getting Affiliates signed up and promoting his site. Aside from the fact that the program is an independent one (and trust needs to be built up for these to succeed), one of the biggest issues he had with his site was the site itself.
Some sites just look like they will not convert. There are really basic improvements that can be made. Even if you are giving away £10,000 CPA, it’s still £10,000 of nothing.
I’ve been working merchant side not for a few years and have looked at a number of ways to increase conversion rates – some working and some falling flat on their face, so here are a few things to look at:
- Is your checkout and quick and easy process? Ideally there should be no more than 3 clicks from the basket to a completed order.
- Do you really need to take all that information? Lots of merchants seem to be asking for more and more information because of the increase in fraud online. This is fair enough but you should still never take more info than is required – ask too much and customers will shop elsewhere – you don’t need to collect five different phone numbers and ask what their fax is!
- Do you accept all payment types ? Lots of sites don’t accept Visa Electron for example. If you are one of these sites then make sure that you offer Paypal as a viable alternative. I don’t have a VISA card and it annoys the heck out of me when I can’t pay for things using my switch – it’s 2007 for gods sake.
- Is the site itself usable? Are products easy to find? Conduct some usability tests. You don’t need to go and pay thousands for this, all you need is to write up some tasks and get someone outside of the company (a friend or family member, for example) to give it a go and see how they get on. Make sure they do it in front of you – watching what people do on your site can be extremely interesting!
- Use Analytics. There is no excuse now – you can use google analytics for free! Look and see where people are clicking using the Site overlay. Look and see what the most popular dropout pages are. You may think your site is perfect but that doesn’t mean everyone else does.
Don’t underestimate the importance of Conversion rate on your site and on your affiliate program – get it right and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
James,
you are absolutely right to point out the importance of conversion. We’ve spent a lot of effort thinking about everything else – from choosing the right keywords to rankings to how people move around the site, but ultimately conversion is the final piece of the jigsaw.
For an affiliate, picking the right link can be the difference between ambling along and making huge profits, whereas for the merchants and networks, it can increase ROI by several times.
One key thing to add is that the merchant needs to have the items in stock, or in the case of travel, the merchant needs to serve the destination in question. There’s no point in being blinded by the temptation of £100+ CPA payouts if the merchant cannot offer any products which are relevant to the page the link is coming from.
James,
Conversion rate is key in almost all marketing channels these days. When I started doing SEO it was about traffic and then people started asking questions about sales.
It was at this point that I found conversion rates key to everything optimising the website alnogside the buying process becomes central to what we need to be achieving.
One of the best ways I find to do this is to cross refence page views with page usage. Where are people clicking and why and from that determining if it’s the real estate or the offer thats driving people into the buying process first. Once you get people into the booking process dicovering its faults is so much easier.
With increased volumes of data about what is going on information can be extrapolated quicker and more exactly.