Sometimes you come across web pages that look like a disaster for their owners. By the time you get ready to sympathize with them, you find out that they sell more than you could ever dream of. This article will help you understand why.
What Is Conversion Rate and Why It's Important
When a web surfer notices your ad and clicks on it, you have a potential customer. If this visitor decides to buy something from you, you have a customer. We say that the visitor was “converted”. The percent of people that buy something when visiting your site represent your conversion rate.
The conversion rate can be influenced by:
Ad Quality
AdWords™ is the cheapest and most trustworthy way to test your ads. Every time, put two ads to compete for the same keyword. After some time (maybe a week or two), you'll be able to notice the difference between those two, and give up the lower performing one. Then, another version of the same ad can enter the competition, and so on (read more about this great technique in Perry Marshall's free email course).
Don't overlook any aspect of your ad: capitalization, puctuation, how you write your URL, etc. With AdWords™ you'll have to discover a more technical side of your own creativity. Learn how to write killer ads.
Beware: ads are better when they bring in more traffic that converts. The volume alone doesn't count.
Efficiency of Your Keywords
As we said before, keywords contribute to the distribution of your ads. When you place your ad in the wrong place (by using the wrong keyword) you lead towards your site visitors that are not really interested in what you're doing. They are not your target clients. Your landing page, no matter how good and professional, will never convert them. But you still pay for their clicks. In this case, having more visitors does hurt. Keep the keywords that bring you targeted traffic.
The Quality of Your Landing Page
The landing page is the final step in your conversion efforts and too many people act as it would be the least important, too. In fact, the landing page is esential. You can't start an AdWords™ campaign before having a landing page (at least one page, not to speak of a real website). You should not have an AdWords™ campaign up and running before you make sure that your landing page has all the ingredients to ensure your success: a clear message, a goal, good copy that leads to conversions, and high usability.
Some people tend to become preoccupied with the “looks” of their landing page. But their page is there to perform a duty, a purpose. When you find the answer to a problem, you don't care where you find it and how the place looks. You care how you can use that answer (i.e pay a fee) and if the solution is trustworthy.
People that found their answer on your web page become a kind of leaders for more targeted traffic. Not to mention they come back if they need you again.
The Overall Quality of Your Campaign Management
An AdWords™ campaign becomes better or worse in time, depending on the way you manage it. Never cease testing various solutions, improving keywords and landing pages. It takes more time and effort to make the first steps than to keep going.
Tracking Your Conversion Rate
Tracking conversions is probably the only process that you can automate. But we have a separate article about tracking.
Improve Your Conversion Rate
More traffic doesn't necessarily mean more customers.
The best customers are the ones that bring you the greatest ROI. You'll be surprised to find out that the best customers are, most of the times, the same persons. And they represent a small part of all the people that ever bought from you. And they are low cost, too. Why would you spend money with the others? It doesn't make sense, does it?
Belive it or not, you are the one that makes the selection. Though the modern consumer times taught us differently. If you sell top price products or services, you don't want bargain hunters landing on your page. If you sell red things you don't need blue things seekers clicking on your ads, wasting your money.
So, to recap, how can you improve your conversion rate? Basically, there are three ways:
Read on :).