21 Conversion Tips to Dramatically Increase Your Online Sales

Are you getting about 30 to 60 visitors a day on your website? If you answered yes, then you should be making some daily consistent sales. If you are not, and your website has decent look and functionality (visitors can order your product in three clicks or less), then we’ve got a problem. Most likely, your site is not considered trustworthy enough, assuming your pricing is fair.

According to Internet Retailer , 26 percent of people who have never purchased online have serious trust issues.

In particular, they are highly concerned about three specific things:

Bizrate reports that almost 75 percent of people who do shop online have clicked on symbols representing a website’s consumer rating. To make matters even more interesting, two-thirds of online consumers don’t even trust Facebook. Now that is a shocker indeed.

Although trust will always be an issue when doing business online, you can definitely reduce this common concern—quite drastically too.

So how can you get someone who has never seen you, met you, or can physically touch your product to happily whip out their credit card? Follow these simple tips and I’m sure more people on your website will start clicking your call to action button(s):

Emphasis is on the word ‘‘informative’’ here. Most “About Me” pages consists of a few lines or a paragraph or two.

Go have a look at your Google Analytics stats right now. You will see that your About Me page is probably the top 5 (I almost want to say top 3) most visited page on your website. Why is that?

Anyone who is actually interested in purchasing your product or service will visit your About Me page. It’s common sense. If your About Me page doesn’t connect with your visitor and fails to give him or her a good idea about your business, most likely that visitor will never come back.

If they did take the time to go to your About Me page, it shows that they are interested in your offer and just want to learn more about your business. A weak About Me page can definitely decrease your chances of getting sales.

To see some professional About Me page examples, click here.

One of the most important things you can ever do on your website is implement an email marketing system and a proper strategy behind it. In fact, as shown by Convince & Convert , 44 percent of email recipients make at least one purchase—that’s almost half of your online sales through just one channel.

MarketingSherpa did another and more detailed study where both B2B and B2C companies increased their ROI (return on investment) by up to 119 percent, all thanks to email marketing.

Quick tips:

If you are selling just one product, try offering three versions of the same thing. When people see more than one product being sold online your site, it raises your perceived value and decreases the ‘‘snake oil salesman’’ factor.

It also shows visitors that you are a real company—plus at the end of the day, consumers do like choices. Car manufacturers do this all the time. They add small features to existing models and change the pricing on them completely.

Quick tips:

This is a great way to add highly-quality content to your site. If you start doing this on a regular basis, you will definitely increase your conversion rate and your traffic as well, especially if the person you interview decides to share it on their own social media channels.

When your visitors see your face next to another human being who is an expert in your industry, they will naturally also look at you as an authority in your niche—and this will raise the trust level further.

Visitors will also appreciate the real value you are trying to offer them. I did this for a supplement website I started a while ago, and the results were awesome. Best part is you get to learn directly from real experts for free.

With YouTubebeing the monster that it is, these interviews could become regular content for your YouTube channel as well.

Quick tips:

According to Forrester, most people will abandon their shopping cart if their method of payment is not offered. And as much as people love PayPal, pretty much the same amount of people dislike it as well. (There are literally websites dedicated to how much people despise PayPal.) At the end of the day, when you offer more payment options, you make more money.

Although this idea is similar to testimonials, product reviews come from other experts who have tried your product—i.e., famous bloggers or thought leaders in your industry.

To get an “Expert Product Review,” simply contact the expert, send them your product, and ask for an honest review. When your audience sees other experts and famous people raving about your product, your conversion rate will literally jump.

Post “how to,” “general,” or just helpful articles and information about or around your product/service. If you start out with at least 10 to 20 quality articles, it will raise the perceived value of your new website immensely.

Articles also work as little ‘‘preselling’’ soldiers, assuming they are of quality. In addition, adding articles regularly will increase your ‘‘footprint’’ in the search engines. The more quality content you have, the better search engines will rank you, and your organic traffic will increase naturally.

Quick tips:

According to Kissmetrics , after watching a professional product video (whether just embedded within your website or from an external source like YouTube or Vimeo), a visitor is 64 percent more likely to purchase your product. Every now and then, you’ll see Amazon testing them too.

Besides product videos, you should also use general videos. These include tutorials and videos offering helpful advice, etc. Not only will your visitors be impressed, watching videos raises the time spent on your site (reducing your website’s bounce rate) and thus make your site more favorable in the search engines as people will be spending more time on your site.

No matter how pretty your website is, if it’s not functional and easy for your visitors to navigate, all your marketing efforts will go to waste.

A functional site has a well laid out and strategic navigation bar, also known as the ‘‘menu bar.’’ If the items in your navigation bar are all over the place, your visitors will have a hard time finding what they are looking for and will eventually leave.

If you are not sure what to use at the moment, use the following layout:
Home | About Us | Products | FAQ | Testimonials | Contact Us

The ideal way to create a navigation bar is to log into your Google Analytics stats, check the “Top Content” pages, and arrange a menu bar in accordance to your stats.

Give the people what they want and they will definitely take action.

Quick tip:

A privacy policy on your website is considered a full legal document. If you don’t have a privacy policy, you will have a very hard time convincing potential customers to make a buying decisions.

You must understand your website visitors can’t physically see you or your product. In reality, your potential customers are behind their computers and have no clue if you are real or not. You must do everything in your power to make sure they feel 100 percent safe and know exactly who they are dealing with.

Quick tips:

A copyright notice makes your site look professional, builds trust, and gives you more power in dealing with any future attempts of plagiarism as well. Once again, the more professional your website comes across as, the more your visitors will feel ‘‘safe.’’

Example of a good copyright notice:  
Copyright © 1999-2015 PayPal. All rights reserved.

You can also just copy and paste the following on your site; simply replace [Current Year] and [Name of your site] with the year and your company name:
Copyright © [Current Year] [Name of your site]. All rights reserved.

This simple edition to your site will raise its perceived value—it’s the little things that make a big difference.

Quick tips:

Having just a plain contact form on a webpage isn’t enough. In fact, having nothing but a simple contact form will only backfire all the efforts that you put into the rest of your site. Put yourself in your visitors’ mindset and imagine the following scenario:

You come across a wonderful, professional looking site with all the bells and whistles, but when you land on the ‘‘Contact Page,’’ all you see is a simple little form with brief instructions. What would you be thinking at that moment? You might think you are about to be taken for a ride, and most likely, you’ll probably leave the site. Well, guess what? So will that potential first time customer.

Quick tips:

If you are selling anything that’s a decent price, and if you’re serious about increasing your sales, you need a phone number. A phone number is the ultimate sign that shows that you are legitimate business. Seeing a phone number will put any antsy potential customer at ease and as suggested by a case study on Practical Ecommerce , will help increase your conversions by up to three times or more.

Quick tips:

If you have a shopping cart, you need to have it SSL secured. SSL secured sites are standard practice these days and create more ‘‘trust’’ for your buyers. Plus if you decide to advertise on Google or Facebook (paid advertising), this is a requirement. You also get a nice seal to place on your website which only builds more trust.

Most hosting providers will offer this for free so make sure you ask them first.

Quick tip:

How do you feel when you go on a website and you see the following or something similar?

Don’t they make you feel secure and increase trust to that particular website? When your visitor sees such things, it will alleviate any doubts that they may have and will help them take more action on your site.

According to a survey done by Adobe , 37 percent of visitors find third-party credibility seals effective, and 47 percent are somewhat influenced by them. When it comes to building trust online and increasing your conversions, leave no stone unturned.

Quick tip:

Forrester Research surveyed over 60,000 U.S. adults who go online, and found out that over 55 percent trust consumer opinions posted online. This should illustrate the importance of testimonials.

Testimonials are essential to include on a website, especially if you have a new product. If people are buying your product, call your customers and ask them if they can give you a testimonial in either text or in a video format—whatever works best for your market.

And don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and ask for testimonials, especially if you have a new product. Most people will be happy to help you out.

If you don’t have any customers to get feedback from, give your products to your friends or strangers, and ask them for their honest opinions. Honesty is the key here because at the end of the day, it is good feedback that will help you improve your product.

Quick tips:

A clear return policy is a must if you are selling products that can be returned. An ideal situation is that all your products can be returned, which is standard practice these days. If you make your visitors aware that they can make returns from the beginning, this will increase the chances of them taking action.

In your return policy, you should highlight what can be returned, what can’t be returned, how many days customers are allowed to use the product with the return policy still being valid, where to ship returns (especially if your product is being drop-shipped), etc.

The key is for your policy to be thoroughly explained and descriptive as possible. Take away any doubts from your customers and use a friendly tone.

Here are more tips by Practical Ecommerce on how to craft a perfect return policy.

Again, nothing like boosting the trust factor of your website by getting in touch with your visitors immediately. A live chat button will do that for you, and according to a study by BoldChat , 34 percent of people actually prefer communicating through live chat. The look of a live chat button will raise the perceived value of your site, especially in a new visitors’ eyes.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to hire new employees; you can literally chat it up with your visitors from your smartphone. Sites like Olark offer some very easy to use live chat services, and most chat services now have their own apps.

I recently did a seminar on e-commerce in Vancouver, and I met a lovely lady named Gail who had over 70 articles in her niche, and people regularly came to her for help. However, to this day, she’s had zero sales online. I looked at her website and I thought it was created in 300 BC.

No matter what your product is, make sure your website design clearly portrays what you are selling. If you are selling a tech-related product, make sure your website design clearly portrays that. Hate to say it, but looks do matter.

Also, with mobile commerce gaining some tremendous ground, your website must be ‘‘responsive’’ or able to display and function fully on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

When you are updating stuff regularly on your site, it raises the credibility of your business. It shows visitors that you are a real business because you are “active” and care about what you are doing. Regular updates will also keep your website “fresh” in the search engines.

Quick tips:

Social media buttons are one of the best ways to improve credibility and for social proof.  When people see other ‘‘human faces’’ on your Facebook widget, it builds an incredible amount of trust; seeing regular activity on your Ttwitter feed will only help as well.

You can add as many widgets as you like, but these three will work just fine:

Social media buttons will also allow your visitors share your content.

When anyone sees massive amounts of content on a site, it greatly increases a website’s trust factor—especially when the information is on the FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions page. If you give your audience super-detailed answers to their questions, you are eliminating a lot of the ‘‘walls’’ that first-time visitors naturally put up.

Quick tips:

Once you establish trust, the sales will naturally come. In fact, you can even get away with selling higher-priced items than your competitors.

Implement these little changes and work on building trust—and soon you will see your sales start to increase.

Post by: Jibron Kazi

Jibran Qazi is the founder of Hunter Canada. A Vancouver, BC based SEO Marketing Agency.

Company: AccessRac
Website: www.accessrac.com

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