Conversion

Conversion is the art of turning an information seeker or browser into a customer. Its often hard work, but the first two Cs, Content and Credibility, go a long way to helping with conversion. The next thing you need to do is identify your conversion goals, and design you site around those goals.

Usually a site would have at least two goals. One is a primary goal first prize. A primary goal is usually something that brings in money or has significant value to your business like:

• A sale on your online shop
• A booking for your seminar

The other goal, the secondary goal, is your second place prize, sometimes referred to as the backup goal. Secondary goals are usually a mechanism to give you another chance later at converting the browser to the primary goal. Secondary goals are things like:

• A contact us form
• An email newsletter subscription

How can you enhance your chances of conversion? The key things you can work on to improve conversion are:

1. Identify and refine your Conversion funnel. A Conversion funnel is the path you identify that begins where the customer is starting down the path to conversion, and ends after the conversion is made. A funnel needs to be designed to build comfort in the purchase, not be too many steps or be too complicated, but also not be too short. Funnels that are too short result in a half-baked customer who isnt sure if they want to buy yet!
2. Use Calls to Action. A call to action is something like Buy now, Click here, or Get started today. You should include these both in your site to start users down the conversion funnel but also within the conversion funnel to drive them to action.
3. Use the secondary goal to catch people who fall out of the primary conversion funnel. By placing the secondary goal strategically in the site, you can catch those potential customers who arent 100% convinced.

Customer

Customer is the final C, and the most important. Why it that? Its because the cost of acquisition of a customer is higher than the cost of retention. For you to go out and go through the previous 3Cs and get a new customer is time consuming and requires effort and money. So the 4th C is about how you can keep your customers happier and retain their business for as long as possible, as cost-effectively as possible. The key things to remember are:

• Customers are expensive to acquire.

• Customers can find your competitors online very easily.

• Customers online are impatient they want service NOW.

• The Customer has the high ground because the Internet gives them greater power to choose and compare you with your competitors.

There are several key ways to increase your customers retention rates, including:

• Run loyalty building advertising campaigns. Loyalty campaigns are targeted marketing campaigns that leverage your knowledge of your customer. An example of such a marketing campaign is a birthday campaign that goes out before my birthday to offer me a special deal: Happy Birthday: Buy one T-shirt and get one free in your birthday month

• Provide exemplary service with fast response times. When you receive a lead, enquiry or support request, react as quickly as possible. Better yet, you should be receiving emails and SMSs notifying you of customers requests.

• Dont waste time provide useful FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) to allow your customers to find answers to their simpler questions without having to contact you.

• Build a relationship. Use the right tools to keep track of your correspondences with customers, and make sure you can share knowledge about your customers.

Each of the Cs works in concert with the others, linking together to create a winning process that helps you generate more leads and ultimately make more money out of your online business.

The 4Cs is a process developed to help business owners understand how to make the web an effective, revenue generating channel for their business. Its about making an online business successful. The 4Cs are:

Content => Credibility => Conversion => Customer

Content

On the Internet, your potential customers are searching for information, and they are using search engines to find information that meets their needs. Search engines give greater weighting to targeted, valuable content. So if you want your business to be towards the top of the search results, you need to have valuable content on your chosen topic. That means when designing your site:

Focus on the information need of your visitors, not on making the sale.

An example of this can be seen when searching for Wheatgrass on Google.

wheatgrasskits is number four on the list. How did he get there by having a wide range of varied and useful content on the topic of wheatgrass.

It also happens that wheatgrasskits successfully sells wheatgrass products, but he focused on the information need of his visitors, not making the sale.

Credibility

The net is a low trust environment. That means that potential customers will ask themselves many questions as they browse your site to convince themselves that they can trust you. As such you need to build credibility in the customers eyes. The sort of questions they will ask themselves might include:

• How do I know if this business really even exists?
• How long has this business been around, and will they still be here tomorrow?
• If I buy or contact this business, will my details be safe?
• Will I receive my purchases, or will the promises made by the business be held?
• What type of post-sales support will I receive after receiving the product?

So you need to address those questions, and design your web site to help foster trust and build your credibility. How can you do this?

1. Meet the information need first. Your potential customers came for information, so meet their needs in that department first.
2. Write about yourself how long youve been in business, who you are and why you do what you do. Even put up a picture or two of your team.
3. Display Customer Testimonials who else has used your product or service, and how good was their experience.
4. Capture Customer Feedback Give people a mechanism to contact you easily and provide feedback or ask questions.
5. Create a Community (e.g. Forums) An extremely powerful credibility tool, as it often achieves points 1, 3 and 4 all at once. Plus you allow customers to talk to each other and spread the word first hand to new customers.
6. Write you business contact details such as phone numbers and addresses. If you have some sort of business registration number, include that somewhere too.