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Part 6 - Website Conversions

Let's take a look back at what we have learned so far in this book.

We talked about the many ways to increase traffic to your business website, such as SEO, pay-per-click marketing, article publishing, press releases and more. We also talked about ways to create a quality website (and blog) for your business, filled with valuable content written specifically for your target audience of prospective customers.

So in essence, we have talked about two-thirds of the web marketing process already — getting people to your business website, and giving them what they want once they arrive. Now we need to polish off this book with a chapter about onsite conversions.

Essentially, you've done the hard part of web marketing already. You've created a quality website for your business, possibly a blog as well, and you've filled them with useful information about your products or services. So now let's talk about some proven techniques you can use to increase the number of website conversions.

Online Conversion Defined

By way of definition, an "onsite conversion" takes place when somebody goes from being a website visitor to something else as well.

For example, if a person visits your website and signs up for your email newsletter, an onsite conversion has taken place. The person has "converted" from a casual website visitor to a newsletter subscriber. If somebody visits your website and contacts you, another form of conversion has taken place (from casual visitor to viable lead). If somebody purchases a product, they have converted from a visitor to a customer.

As you can see, there are many kinds of conversions, and they differ from one website to another, and from one organization to the next:

• A non-profit website might seek donations or volunteer registrations. Those conversions are valuable to them.
• A service-related business like financing or consulting might seek website conversions of a different nature. Maybe they want people to sign up for a newsletter list or call to learn more. Those are valuable conversions for their business models.
• A product-based website like Amazon.com seeks one type of conversion above all else. They want people to purchase products, plain and simple. So that's the most important type of conversion for them.

You get the idea.

Because of all the different ways to define and pursue website conversions, this is a somewhat tricky chapter to write. So instead of focusing too heavily on specific conversion tactics for specific business models, I will focus on the core concepts of lead generation and onsite conversion.

Combine this information with what you've learn thus far about quality website content, usability, and traffic generation, and you will easily be able to devise your own tactics for onsite conversion. After all, nobody knows your products, your audience and your industry as well as you do!

The Importance of Converting Web Traffic

Here's an Internet marketing observation that may shock you. The average business website has more than enough traffic to support the company's business goals, but simply does not capitalize on that traffic. Even if you only had 100 qualified website visitors per day, that would be enough to support your business ... if you converted a small percentage of those visitors into customers.

The problem is that many business websites never reach their full potential because they are simply not optimized for onsite conversions and lead generation. Their owners look at the traffic going in one end, but wonder why so few sales are not coming out the other end. And that's exactly my point. A web presence is the first half of your Internet marketing success. The web presence brings the traffic. But site conversion is the other half of that marketing equation, and in my experience it is grossly neglected on many small business websites.

I've worked with clients who swore they did not have enough website traffic, based on the fact that they were getting very few leads or sales from their website. After analyzing their website logs or analytics programs, I would discover that they had steady streams of web traffic, day after day. And judging by the search phrases people were using to find the company's website, I realized they were highly qualified prospects as well.

In other words, these companies wrongfully assumed that web traffic automatically equals web leads and sales. This is not the case at all. Traffic equals traffic. You don't generate conversions (leads or sales) until you get proactive and employ techniques to generate those leads and sales.

• False: Web traffic = leads and sales
• True: Web traffic + lead generation = web leads
• True: Web traffic + sales conversion = web sales

I would say website conversion is the most important aspect of online marketing. After all, you could own three different websites, blog twice a day, and get 2,000 visitors per week. But without a plan in place for lead generation or sales generation, all that activity and traffic would do you little good.

To illustrate this point further, I've created a few "laws" of online marketing, based on my own experiences over the years. Apply these laws to your Internet marketing efforts, and you're bound to generate more leads and more business for your efforts.