Affiliate Links – Improve Your Conversion By Cleaning Up Your Links

SusanneMyers · 08-28-2011, 05:06 PM

As affiliate marketers we’re all about conversion. After all, that’s how we make our money, by converting visitors and readers into buyers. There’s one little thing you may be missing that’s an easy fix and can have a huge impact on the amount of sales you make. Do you know what it is?

If you are guessing the way your link looks, you’re absolutely right.

Cleaner Looking Links Will Result In A Better Click-Through Rate

I did some testing recently. I created two test versions of a page promoting a clickbank product. One had the new default clickbank link, which was a combination of letters, numbers and dashes that didn’t really make any sense. Go to the clickbank market place and create any hoplink to see what I’m talking about.

The other was a redirected version of the same affiliate link that was my domain name followed by the name of the product (i.e. [http://www.somedomain.dom/productname/]).

In both cases the actual anchor text was the same (the product name).
After running the test until 2000 visitors came to each page, I compared the results.

The page with the redirected link generated 3 times as many clickthroughs to the affiliate product page than the “unhidden” link.

What was even more surprising was conversion rate. The page with the cloaked link was converting into sales at 2.4% while the uncloaked version only converted at .7% – pretty big difference.

Remember that the visitor would only see the actual link if they looked at bar at the bottom of their browser while hovering with their mouse over the link. I’m sure the difference in both click-through rate and conversion would have been much more significant if I had used the direct link (like I would have in an email message for example).

I believe the reason for this difference in conversion lays in the trust factor. An ugly affiliate link with funky characters and symbols just looks fishy while a pretty affiliate link with your domain name as part of the link just looks a lot more trustworthy.

For more tips like these delivered to your email inbox each week along with daily tasks that will help you grow you affiliate income , join Susanne’s Daily Affiliate Tasks at http://www.DailyAffiliateTasks.com

08-28-2011, 05:06 PM	#1
SusanneMyers Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Jan 2011 Posts: 14 Thanks: 3 Thanked 10 Times in 7 Posts Social Networking	Affiliate Links – Improve Your Conversion By Cleaning Up Your Links As affiliate marketers we’re all about conversion. After all, that’s how we make our money, by converting visitors and readers into buyers. There’s one little thing you may be missing that’s an easy fix and can have a huge impact on the amount of sales you make. Do you know what it is? If you are guessing the way your link looks, you’re absolutely right. Cleaner Looking Links Will Result In A Better Click-Through Rate I did some testing recently. I created two test versions of a page promoting a clickbank product. One had the new default clickbank link, which was a combination of letters, numbers and dashes that didn’t really make any sense. Go to the clickbank market place and create any hoplink to see what I’m talking about. The other was a redirected version of the same affiliate link that was my domain name followed by the name of the product (i.e. [http://www.somedomain.dom/productname/]). In both cases the actual anchor text was the same (the product name). After running the test until 2000 visitors came to each page, I compared the results. The page with the redirected link generated 3 times as many clickthroughs to the affiliate product page than the “unhidden” link. What was even more surprising was conversion rate. The page with the cloaked link was converting into sales at 2.4% while the uncloaked version only converted at .7% – pretty big difference. Remember that the visitor would only see the actual link if they looked at bar at the bottom of their browser while hovering with their mouse over the link. I’m sure the difference in both click-through rate and conversion would have been much more significant if I had used the direct link (like I would have in an email message for example). I believe the reason for this difference in conversion lays in the trust factor. An ugly affiliate link with funky characters and symbols just looks fishy while a pretty affiliate link with your domain name as part of the link just looks a lot more trustworthy. For more tips like these delivered to your email inbox each week along with daily tasks that will help you grow you affiliate income , join Susanne’s Daily Affiliate Tasks at http://www.DailyAffiliateTasks.com
	Susanne Myers AffiliateTreasureChest.com ...where I blog about all things affiliate marketing. Daily Affiliate Tasks - Simple Tasks and To-Do Lists to Grow Your Affiliate Income in 30 Minutes a Day.