There are many factors to consider when you’re just starting a home based business online with one of the most important being how your website can create an experience for your visitors so they will decide to become paying customers. This is where conversion optimization comes into play.
According to wikipedia: “conversion optimization or conversion rate optimization is the science and art of creating an experience for a website visitor with the goal of converting the visitor into a customer. It is also commonly referred to as CRO.”
Here are 5 strategies you can employ to increase you home business website conversion rate:
1. Use split testing on your home business website. Split testing can be an extremely effective Internet marketing strategy to employ to help increase your conversion rate. First of all for the uninitiated according to Internet marketing definitions: “split testing is an extremely powerful strategy for increasing the effectiveness of a web based offer.
It basically means you test different types of strategies on your site or sales pages to determine their effectiveness. Then you would implement the ones that generate the best sales.” If you don’t know what works best with your Internet marketing strategy then you will continue to spend money on tactics which are showing little or no return on investment. This is a recipe for financial disaster and something to be avoided at all costs.
2. Establish a trusting relationship with your current customers and most importantly your potential clients. You can accomplish this by following up with both groups at every opportunity. When someone visits your website and provides their contact information email them at regular intervals promoting your home business and your products.
Send them discount offers and invitations to return to your site to further explore your content. Offer them a free sample of your merchandise as an incentive to buy and invite them to join your forum in order to meet some of your current customers. Also invite them to enjoy your freebies page and download whatever interests them. People are more likely to purchase from someone they feel they know and trust rather than from a stranger.
3. When you’re designing your website make sure it’s user friendly. Make it very easy to navigate from one area to the next and make your sales ordering process as straight forward as possible so as not to confuse your visitors. If people can’t figure out how to place an order then odds are your competition is going to get a sale. Give them several methods of purchasing such as paypal, clickbank and several of the most popular credit cards. People need the payment option that’s right for them.
4. Keep your visitors interested. Boredom is the fastest way to lose a guest to another website. Provide high quality content and add an entertainment area to help keep them amused. People love to socialize online as proven by the popularity of many of the social websites on the web today such as facebook. Therefore create a chat room so they can strike up relationships with some of your current customers and potential clients.
Have a monthly contest and provide prizes for the winners. This is a great way to increase return traffic. Also build a freebie page and provide quality merchandise to your visitors for free to download. Be sure to change your free stuff on a regular basis to keep them coming back for more. Quality content drives traffic and helps increase conversion rates.
5. Post testimonials and product endorsements on your home business home page. If people don’t know you or your product they may not believe it can do what’s promised so strategically placed testaments to the quality and performance of your merchandise will go a long way toward changing people’s minds and converting them to paying customers.
The higher your website conversion rate the more sales you will make and the more successful both you and your home based business online will become. Therefore, conversion rate optimization is something you cannot ignore if you want to have a long and thriving business career on the web.