Every online business watches certain statistics about its website like a hawk. A website is designed to facilitate transactions, whether they involve purchasing products from the site itself or being redirected to another site. These transactions are a measurable variable that can be studied statistically. Each transaction represents a successful transition from visitor to customer. This transition is known as a “conversion.” Every conversion can be tallied and measured against the total number of visitors. The number of customers divided by the number of visitors yields a percentage that is called the conversion rate.

The Importance of Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the most critical statistic about a website.

The conversion rate directly impacts profitability and, as such, is the key to the website’s success or failure. A low conversion rate means too few visitors are being converted into customers. A high conversion rate means that a larger number of visitors are becoming customers. A high enough conversion rate can boost a website’s profits by a large amount. The conversion rate is the pass/fail grade of a website. A low conversion rate can lead to negative consequences such as getting pushed out of the marketplace by more profitable competitors.

Fortunately, an online business can engage the services of a methodology to remedy this situation: conversion rate optimization (CRO).

What is CRO?

CRO is an art and a science. The goal of CRO is to persuade visitors to purchase a product, subscribe to a newsletter or submit an inquiry. CRO is a methodology and not a technique in itself. It uses other techniques to accomplish the goal of successful persuasion of visitors. A website that has been conversion-optimized is like a digital salesman who works for the business constantly without eating or sleeping. CRO provides long-term benefits to websites that use its teachings and recommendations.

The benefits of CRO are seen in the results. Websites that use CRO have experienced an increase in profits ranging from 50 to 200 percent or more. One business experienced phenomenal profit growth of 600 percent after using CRO.  CRO works by measuring different variables present in a website. A website consists of multiple elements, such as a title, colors, headlines, buttons, graphics and layouts. Each of these elements represents a potential sales point for a customer. CRO takes all of these elements and creates multiple testing scenarios that reveal which combination of elements results in the highest conversion rate.

Takeaway

Once the results are applied to the website, profits start increasing rapidly. CRO can help take an online business to a undreamed-of level. Business owners frequently cannot imagine the results from adopting even simple principles of CRO. The future for online businesses is very bright as CRO becomes more widely adopted.

Eric Wyatt writes on internet marketing and social media. He particularly focuses on conversion optimization and landing page optimization.

An online business will not make a sale every time a visitor lands on their website. Should they just accept that and allow the visitor to leave, hoping that they may return at a later date and make a purchase? No. The business should be doing everything they can to persuade every visitor to submit contact details.

Why Are Contact Details Important?

A visitor that leaves a site without purchasing may return at a later date – or so the business hopes. There is no guarantee that this will occur and leaving things to chance is not good business strategy.

Persuading a visitor to leave contact details now, allows the business to treat the visitor as a potential sales target, almost as they had already made a sale and may be interested in future purchases.

Leaving contact details shows a mild interest. The visitor has stated that they wish to be contacted – this is a golden opportunity to gain their trust and gently persuade them to become a paying customer. Contact details provide a source for the business to keep customers up-to-date with new products and promotions.

How Can a Business Persuade Visitors to Submit Their Details?

If a business want a visitor to hand over their private contact details, the business is going to need to offer the visitor something valuable. This could be in the form of information, discount vouchers or free gifts.

The visitor may be interested in receiving a weekly newsletter, packed full of the latest industry information? Or they may want the 10-page free report that has the solution to a particular problem? Maybe free coupons would persuade them to return and make a purchase?

Basically, the business must have an offer that is of value to anyone that visits their website. If the offer is tempting enough, a visitor will gladly provide an email address, or a phone number, in order to receive the gift.

What Should a Business Do With These Details?

These contact details provide an invaluable pathway direct to the visitor. Whether the chosen path is email marketing, or telesales, the important point is that the business must keep in contact with the customer.

Taking email marketing as an example: If a visitor has submitted an email address; the first email should be a “thank you for joining our mailing list” correspondence. This email should provide details of how they can receive their free gift.

The following emails will contain valuable information related to the business and will go towards gaining the trust of the visitor. No attempt should be made to sell to a new subscriber. The idea is to coerce subscribers into viewing a business as reputable, helpful and as an expert in their field. Then, and only then, should a business start to send product offers and attempt to turn a subscriber into a customer.

Less Selling Means More Sales

This slow-approach technique is vital to successful subscriber marketing. If a business dives straight in and starts hard-selling to a subscriber, they will soon delete their subscription. The business has to give the subscriber a reason to keep receiving their emails and it does this by providing useful information.

Once the business has a subscriber’s trust; that subscriber is pre-sold and becomes a viable sales prospect. Even after a sale, the business can continue to provide quality correspondence, and turn the new customer into a long-term prospect that will continue to make regular purchases for some time to come.

About the author: Roko Nastic is writer and editor at WebmasterFormat.com, website developed to help webmasters build and maintain successful websites. Visitors to WebmasterFormat can enjoy a lot of useful tips, latest news and help in finding the best web hosting company.