The 6 Fatal Mistakes That Are Killing Your Conversions

Every online business wants to attract customers and increase its sales.

Website owners need to understand that attracting traffic and increasing conversion rate are two different things, albeit somehow connected. Traffic means giving emphasis to strategies such as social media marketing, content marketing, PPC, SEO, etc.

However, by focusing on measuring “how much in dollars” you are getting from your web business, you are talking about profitability. This entirely rests on website conversion.

The obsession with high traffic lies in the absence of good data on what really is a good conversion rate. You can have a good idea of this if you analyze your website’s average conversion rate over the past 30-60 days sans the usual fluctuations that impact your website pages.

Once you have examined your conversion rate, look into your Google Adwords account and click Adwords Performance Grader. Here, you can get a glimpse of the average industry conversion rate.

If your website is within 20% of the PPC average rate of your own industry or niche, it is time to bolster traffic to your website. If the average exceeds 20% below the industry average PPC rate conversion, you need to re-visit your conversion goals as these statistics indicate problematic areas. At any rate, you must avoid the pitfalls of conversion rates that prevent you from making real money on the web.

1. Checkout Process Is Not Clear

Look into your checkout process and ask the following questions:

Are my shipping rates/policies confusing?

Does my website offer different pricing at Shopping Cart than those in Sales or Product Description?

Does my website require an account to be set up before making a purchase?

Are there too many steps before my customer checks out? Are there sufficient payment options available to my customers?

These questions will provide valuable information you haven’t really focused on lately.

2. Content Management System (CMS) Is a Headache to Visitors

Your CMS should never alienate your users. It will be to your advantage if your CMS does not:

• require username/password set-up during the checkout process,
• make automatic changes in your website’s sales funnel that may confuse prospective clients
• erroneously sync with the installed Checkout/Order Processing you have installed

When your website does not encounter the above problems, you are on the right path to discovering potential income that will bolster your operations. If not, you may want to conduct a re-examination of your checkout process.

3. Point of Purchase (P.O.P.) Distracts Users

It is accepted that populating your website pages with more P.O.P. can raise conversion rates, but exercise restraint because it may turn off your prospects. Are there too much P.O.P. in the following: Special Promotions, Featured Products, Related Products/Services, Opt-In Stratified/Special Product or Services Versions, Right/Left Navigation Side Links, and Availability of LGR or Alike Non-Monetized Call-to-Action (CTA)? If you answer affirmatively, you have many issues you need to resolve immediately.

4. The absence of CTA in About Us and Other Content Pages that Do Not Convert

Always remember that your website pages must convert users directly and encourage your prospects to take action or gear them towards conversion-oriented content. Take special notice of your “About Us,” which most website owners have failed to utilize correctly.

The majority just populate About Us with the company’s history, mission, and vision, details of company officers and other information. What is lacking is a CTA. Do not force your visitor to click back on the homepage. Lead your prospects to a clear CTA that would raise your conversion rate.

5. Content Is Not Convincing Enough Visitors

If you notice, high-profile brands can afford to have little content on their pages. This is because their businesses are already well known to the millions and billions of users across the earth. Their brands spend a considerable amount of money on advertising. Thus, their marketing channels are varied, including traditional TV ads, out-of-home advertising, radio ads, social media ads, and many more.

For a website brand that has little recall yet, owners must give emphasis on content to further convince website visitors that they have found what they are looking for. Website owners can communicate that through their content or the information visitors read on the pages.

Provide content that convinces your users that your business offers a unique selling proposition with optimum benefits, unique features, and a valuable relationship in the long term and solves a scarcity in your niche market. And do not forget to put in the primary, secondary, and even tertiary CTAs to convince them to act immediately.

6. Information Overload on Lead Generation Pages

Do not waste your prospects’ time. Build a stratified lead generation funnel to immediately collect vital information from users, such as names and email addresses. Once you get these two important contact details, target your prospects further through an email marketing campaign and provide the links to affiliate opportunities where you can also make additional revenues.

Look into the other angles of monetizing your visitor data. By doing this, you are maximizing your income potential while weeding out leads that do not add value to your business.

Takeaways:

It is high time you make more money.  Your ability to generate better conversion rates is within your control. In addition to generating traffic, you must give more importance to the effectiveness of your conversion rate strategies, as these are where your income potential truly lies.

Access to correct industry data versus your website’s performance can guide you to have a baseline where you can measure your campaign efforts. But you do not stop there. You need to have a plan so you will not make the mistakes of other website owners who did not pay attention to their conversion rates.

You need to equip yourself with the following:

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