How to Increase Online Sales – Part 1 – We all want to maximize profits. I certainly do. It’s proof that our business is working efficiently. And a key to maximizing profits is to increase sales, while keeping expenses to a minimum.
But here’s the problem… you go to the massive effort of starting a business online, you’re careful to cater to the needs of a niche audience. And you do this with great content that appeals to them.
Yet all of this will be a big waste if you’re not paying attention to your conversion rates.
We must avoid making a mistake many marketers are guilty of.
They mistakenly think conversions only apply to a sales page or affiliate promotion.
Wrong!!
Conversions take place at every turn from the moment your readers first see any content you create.
Conversions should happen when visitors land on your blog, receive an email from you, get sent to a landing page or sales letter or see your content on social media, because they have a choice to act or walk away.
You want your conversions to function for you at the highest level with everything that you do.
There are optimization strategies you can use in multiple areas of your business to raise your conversion rates, and below, we’re going to cover seven that you may want to implement right away.
Each of these methods is proven to work in any niche for a variety of purposes – whether you’re trying to convert visitors into subscribers, buyers or loyal followers.
Take time to see how they work for you and monitor your results for improvements over time.
#1 – Shorten All Processes for Your Visitors
The first step is to eliminate all friction, remove all barriers for your audience.
The more you make them jump through hoops, the less likely they are to convert for you.
Everything you expect them to do should be boiled down to the simplest processes.
For example, when they arrive on your blog to read a post, make the organization and navigation of the content easy to understand. You might include a hyperlinked table of contents section at the beginning so they can jump to what they want to know.
Often many of us have trouble consuming a lot of information in one sitting, and I am one of them.
So, break the big blocks of text up into smaller sections.
By organizing the information in sections and having short paragraphs, you’ll be making the learning process easier for them.
Even on your sales page, give them the option to buy at the top and middle of the page.
Don’t make them scroll down past page after page to find the buy button. You can even have a hyperlink that says something like, “I’m ready to buy.”
The buying process needs to be short. Don’t put them through a funnel that lasts twenty minutes. They need one or two quick upsell options and then allow them to go about their day.
Ask For the Least Personal Information
Don’t ask for a myriad of information, either with a purchase or even for a simple lead magnet offer.
A first name and email address is all you need to know in order to work with them from that point on.
The more friction you put in the processes, lengthening it to more than necessary, the lower your conversion rates will be.
The reason is because you’re repelling those who don’t want to hand over more information and those who simply don’t like or don’t have time for that type of interaction.
Ask yourself if each step in a process is necessary. If it’s not, eliminate it. Make it easy for them to download the products they buy. Don’t make a password protected membership area difficult to access.
#2 – Tailor Your Approach to Repel the Wrong Prospects
The next step in helping with your conversion rates is to zero in on your target audience. When you’re casting too wide of a net, your conversions will be much lower than if you were to focus only on the best demographic possible.
By weeding out your non-audience, your numbers are going to soar for conversions. For example, imagine if you had a business teaching senior online marketers how to get started online.
Instead of only creating content for seniors, much of your traffic was coming to your landing page to receive advice about Internet marketing, but they weren’t in the senior demographic.
While you might see some sales periodically from those who don’t fit the mold, your overall conversions will be low. If you send 100 people to an offer and most of those aren’t seniors, your conversion rate might be in the single digits.
Cater to the Needs of Those Who Will Want What You Have to Offer
But if you focus solely on sending seniors to your offer, your conversion rate will skyrocket. This holds true with all of your content and offers. Not only do you want to put a message out that envelops your correct audience, but don’t be afraid to repel those who aren’t a good fit.
This might be true with different strategies you’re teaching in your niche. For example, instead of being afraid to say that you think all carbs are bad, say what you truly believe and repel the naysayers so they can follow someone in line with their own train of thought.
Same with marketing, pet care, gardening and more. Marketers can disagree on white hat and black hat tactics. Pet owners might disagree about feeding pets commercial food versus homemade meals, and gardeners will have differing opinions about pesticides.
The best way to see great results is to only cater to the needs of those who will want what you have to offer and forget about the rest. You can do this with your products, social content, emails and more.
#3 – Implement a Controlled Testing Strategy to Enhance Conversions
If you’re not taking two versions of your content and split testing it for increased conversions, then you’re not performing to the best of your abilities. Split testing, also known as A/B testing, can help you raise conversions in different areas of your business.
You don’t want two completely different versions of the same piece of content. Instead, it needs to be controlled testing where you tweak one specific thing and test them against one another.
This might be something like a headline, the length of your content, product graphics, the use of a certain word, a change in the color palette, a difference in the style or tone of the piece, or something else.
Try Two Headline Versions
So if you are not seeing the kind of open rate you hoped to get with your emails, you might try two versions that have different subject lines being sent out to your readers so that you can see which one performs best.
You might have one short, punchy subject line or one that has an emoji in it or a specific power word. You might take two different approaches, such as one subject line that asks a question and another that states something seemingly shocking.
Not only can you split test in your emails, both in the subject line as well as the body of the email, but you can split test your blog content to see what resonates best with your readers.
You won’t be split testing the exact same way on a blog because you don’t want duplicate content, but you can take two similar content pieces in terms of the topic and publish both of them to see which one gets the kind of engagement and traffic you desire.
Spit Test the Various Elements of a Blog Post
When split testing a blog post, be sure to change the title, headlines or subheadings, the length of the paragraphs, and the images you use to break up text.
Also, change the number of links within the content, and choose whether to use a hybrid approach with video mixed in or left out.
Most marketers only try split testing with their emails or sales pages. On a sales page, you can tweak your headlines, storylines, bulletpoint benefits list, product graphics, sales page length, buy buttons, call to action statements, price points, and more.
You can do the same when you are using a bridge page as an affiliate marketer who is warming up an audience before they link out to the product they are promoting. You might have two different approaches such as one that focuses on the benefits of the product they’re about to see, and one that focuses on your bonus.
Split Test the Style of Content For Social Media
You can also split test the style of content you put out on social media. For example, if you are using TikTok, you might split test to find the sweet spot of length for the videos your followers enjoy most, or you might test out different approaches such as ones where you are on camera of speaking and those where you are simply using text on the screen along with a music or sound piece.
If you don’t take the results of your split testing campaign and analyze them before making changes, you won’t see any type of improvement in your conversions. Or, if you do, it will be the result of luck and not something based on careful analysis.
If you are like me, you may have put off split testing until a more opportune time comes around. But if you do this, you will eventually discover you missed out on increased sales and profits because of this wrong decision. Don’t let this happen to you.
Be sure to check out How to Increase Online Sales – Part 2
Comments are closed here.