As a business with a website, you may be rightfully concerned about your conversion rate. How many people who visit your site will get in touch? What percentage of your traffic will become customers?

What we want to look at today is the impact the addition of a web video may have on your website conversion rate.

As specialists in website conversion rates, we have several ideas why a video might boost your conversion rate. First, it improves the customer’s ability to relate to what you are offering them.

Secondly, it presents the object in a more convincing fashion; the customer can see how it moves, how it should be used, etc. Thirdly, video media communicates with your visitors on a much more personal level.

You may be thinking, great! I’m going to upload a video to my website straightaway! But before you do, there are a couple of downsides that can make or break the effectiveness of you web video:

1.    Is it easily downloadable? Think about your users connection speed.
2.    Videos are experienced in real time, as opposed to web pages, but will your users like this?

If you want to enhance your video effectiveness then make sure viewing your video is an option, not an obligation. Also, make sure it’s short, preferably less than a minute long. Final tip… make sure your video supports your conversion goal and it isn’t just a ‘cool’ add on to your website, think relevancy.

By now every Facebook user should have noticed the new redesign that has come into effect. To celebrate their 6th birthday and a milestone, 400 million users, Facebook decided to make the necessary changes to make your experience even easier.

But what do you think?

The company also decided to celebrate the redesign by giving certain members of the press the chance to chat with the Facebook team. In the private meeting, Product Manager, Peter Deng, took the time to explain the new Facebook redesign and all of its new features in-depth.

Check out what he had to say by clicking here

You never know, maybe you'll learn a thing or two about making your users experience easier and more enjoyable.

Yesterday we talked about testing but what if you believe your website design has stood the test of time and defeated any other redesigns you may have thrown at it, then what do you test?

Here are some ideas for you…

1. Headline
      • You can easily test 2 or 3 variations
      • Create urgency such as “available for a limited time” or “you have to know this now”
      • Highlight several benefits
      • Announce an exciting finding, something unique about your service
      • Test a few provocative questions

2. Images
      • Choose 2 or 3 images to test
      • Think about having photographs of people that may relate with your target audience
      • Charts and graphs (prove what you’re saying)
      • Other items related to your target market

3. Colour Scheme
      • Test several different background/font combinations
      • Will a light background with dark font work better? Try it out and see for yourself.

4. Incentive
      • Mention an incentive in the headline
      • Have it as one of the main bullet points
      • Before the button
      • To the right of the button

No matter how much money or market share Amazon creates, they have never stopped testing and many businesses should be following their lead. By constantly proving and disproving new ideas and concepts, Amazon always maintains a high conversion rate. They have no doubt eliminated thousands of page designs that did not work but that’s the result of successful testing.

That’s the one optimisation recommendation I can give to anyone…keep on testing.

One of the first things I would test would be the look and feel of your webpage. Do you look at it and say “Wow!” What stands out at you? Does the overall look feel professional?

Not that ugly webpage’s perform worse than attractive pages but it is to remind you that strategy is more important than design.

Here’s one idea for you to test with your own website…

1. A simple, plain layout

We see a common mistake across many industries where a landing page is composed of elements that just over-complicate the objective. Therefore why not try a page where visitors are given a strong call to action (sign up, enter your email address, etc.) and try to avoid doing much selling.

Your landing page might only need a headline, a call to action, and button. Bulky copy, testimonials, demos, videos, images, and other fancy page elements are just not necessary.

To summarise, test your page with the following:

      • A non-descript background
      • Simple headline: “Download your free report on…”
      • Sub-headline: “Tell us where to send the report”
      • Email field
      • Button

Just make it as simple as possible.

If you try this out, then why not let us know how this works for you? Leave us your feedback in the comment box below…

You’ve probably noticed all the recent bad press IE6 has been getting regarding its security over the past year – remember Google being hacked? Well, new figures out have revealed that IE8 has finally overtaken IE6 as the world’s most used browser.

IE8, the latest version of Internet Explorer, now holds 22.31% of the market, compared to the troubled IE6's 20.07%.

Users have been warned to upgrade their browser after a series of flaws in the nearly decade-old IE6 - including the vulnerability that led to Google being hacked.

The Department of Health have warned NHS staff to avoid IE6, whilst the governments of Germany and France have urged citizens to upgrade or switch.

The third most used browser version was Firefox 3.5 with 17.10%, followed by IE7 at 14.58%.

Overall, the group of IE browsers lead the market with 62.18%, followed by Firefox with 24.41% share in January. Both slid slightly, contributing to Google's Chrome browser climbing from a 4.63% share in December to 5.20% in January.

Safari and Opera also posted slight declines, down to 4.51% and 2.3% respectively, according to Net Applications.

I wanted to show you the following flowchart I found online. It's a useful way to show you the process of e-commerce path to conversion:

 

To read the accompanying article to this graph, click here

Something more meaningful to your customer than relevancy is trust. If a customer doesn’t trust you, then you stand no change of having them buy from you. This even holds true for retailers selling on eBay or by posting ads on Google. In fact, some people just don’t trust eBay sellers in general.

A recent study by the Foresee Institute found that only 49% of Internet users in the US are willing to use online payment methods like PayPal and Google Checkout. Now, if they distrust integrated security systems like these, then this gives you an idea of how much it will take for you to build trust.

So how can you offer your customer a safe shopping experience? How can you make them feel comfortable enough to buy from you?

Well whether it’s online or in a store, people find it easier to purchase when they have the option of returning the item. Including a money-back guarantee on your site can significantly impact on your customer’s decision-making. This guarantee helps build up the feeling of trust and comfort, making it easier for you to convert your website traffic into customers.

Money-back guarantees are actually required by European-law, so if that includes you, then why not use this point as a sound marketing argument in your campaigns?

By stating you promise a no-risk money-back guarantee for your products – you’re being fair, honest and you sound trustworthy. It may also be a good idea to add the “money-back guarantee” into the shopping cart by default, making it a central focus of users.

These considerations will help you to build up a trustworthy environment for your customers and customers are much more likely to return somewhere they trust. Chances are that they won’t actually need to take advantage of that money-back guarantee anyway. But just by putting the safety net in place, you will find that you catch yourself a whole lot of traffic that converts.

Website content is the foundation of everything you hope to achieve through online marketing. I think we’ve even mentioned on this blog before, that content is King. Your website should contain content that is engaging, informative and easy to read.

However, if you need to improve your conversion rate, you content has to contain a much more focused message. This way you will be able to engage your visitors and get them to take your desired action. When you’re thinking about what message to give, ask yourself what message do I want my visitors to receive?

There’s a fine line between getting visitors to do what you want them to do - sign-up for a newsletter, purchase a product, etc. - and what the visitors themselves want to do. You have to create content that converts.

So how do you do that?

1. If your company is good at something, prove it! This means providing strong customer testimonials and case studies. Why not allow your customers to leave reviews on products? Visitors won’t just take your word for it anymore, that want to know what everyone else has to say.  
2. Think about your audience and create messages that appeal to them. When you write, keep them in mind all the time. People won’t buy what they don’t understand. Explain things in a language your visitor understands; don’t presume they’re an expert.
3. Use video. We’ve talked about the growing importance of video many times recently and this is because around 80% of your traffic will click on a video more than any other type of link. Video will increase your response rates.
4. Forget ‘We’ ‘Our’ ‘Us,’ it’s all about ‘You’ and ‘Your.’ Keep focused on the customer at all times.
5. Put your contact information where people can see it. Don’t make it hard for them to call or email you. Include this information where it can be clearly seen, throughout your navigation.
6. Focus on customer challenges, especially if your customer is coming to you looking for an answer to a question or solution to a problem.

People often assume that once content is written, then it’s done, finished with. This is definitely not the case! How often do you want visitors to return to your site? Well, then that’s how often you have to update your content.

If visitors come to your site and find the same thing as last time, chances are they’re not going to be around for long. Bounce rates will increase and your conversion rates will drop.

Keep in mind you have two audiences visiting your site: potential customers and search engine spiders. You need to make your content relevant for both. And the search engine spider loves nothing more than fresh content. If you’re wondering how you can update your content everyday, the answer is blogs. It’s the simplest way for you to upload new content and establish yourself as an expert at your field at the same time.

A recent study analysed 10,500 shopping transactions in 30 online stores. It revealed that the most important feature that significantly improved the conversion rate was when a seller didn’t charge any shipping costs; it was the deciding factor for 34% of all users.

Whilst sometimes, if you’re shipping worldwide, delivery costs can’t be avoided, you should at least try to make sure that the available options are clear and easy to understand. The more complicated a shipping costs table is, the more likely a user is to cancel the checkout process and look for alternatives. Even the tiniest doubt or confusion can completely change customers’ decision, so make it easy for them to finish the checkout process.

If free shipping is a viable option for your business then we suggest trying it out, since it may significantly boost your conversion rate. Of course, free shipping doesn’t really have to be “free shipping,” at least not for you. But there are some strategies that can be adopted: a minimum order price or value, for example. But do not block the user from ordering if this minimum is not reached. Add a shipping cost and call it a “small-order fee,” then inform the user how much more they will need to purchase to qualify for free shipping.

Another idea: why not offer free shipping just for their first transaction? Look at it as an investment in gathering their registration information. Or decide on a certain time frame in which customers can qualify for free shipping offer and state it in an advert. The technique puts more pressure on the customer – but in a positive, money-saving way.

You simply have to calculate how much more overall revenue you can generate by dropping shipping costs. Try it out and you won’t be disappointed.

You can directly traffic coming from an online advertising campaign by changing the content and display location but the key to a good ad performance is relevance.

Decide whether you think there are users on your platform (this could be Google) who might not want anything to do with your product? Are there keywords people would use in a search that might mislead them to your website?

Look at the negatives in order to filter out the visitors your products are not targeted to. You will then be able to attract more relevant visitors.

For example, if you sell cars located in Liverpool, then you should include this location because users from London are less likely to become customers. What’s more, if irrelevant users click on your ad, this will cost you PPC fees and lower your score in Google’s ranking.

Secondly, try and establish a strong connection between a search term and your advert. Think about explaining your product to new users or specifying the exact differences between you and your competitors’ products to expert users.

Now, take a look at the keywords you have chosen. Divide these into two groups and then think up two or more variations of your adverts that reply to your audiences needs.

Remember that your landing page must also be as relevant to the user as the advert. Your landing page and ad should correspond with each other and it should be blatantly obvious to your user that they have come to the right landing page.

To summarise - relevance is probably the most important way for you to achieve conversion success. Relevance separates good communication from ineffective communication.