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Need some conversion help!

by junkbox
10 replies
Hello everyone,

Quick background:

Been internet marketing for six years, but most of that has been for online gambling with lots of referalls and offline techniques.

I am just now having my first successes with natural seo based internet marketing. Let me tell you where I am at:

Currently my site is getting about 40 to 50 unique visitors per day that are finding specific product pages on my website. So say for example they search for "Blue Widget XL 552" and find that particular page.

Of these unique visitors I am getting about 30% of them to exit the site through the "purchase now" button. I cannot sell these products directly on my site so I have to refer them to the vendor's site.

I am finding an order rate of about two to three percent...So basically at this point I am finding I need anywhere from 35 to 50 people to exit the site to get an order.

Does that sound low? High? Sometimes to me it seems low but I am not sure what my strategy should be:

1. Really work on product landing pages and increase exit link rate.
2. Its all a numbers game, just get more traffic (by adding more products) so you get more people exiting to the vendors site.

Any insight as to where I stand and what the next step should be? My current goal is to get one order per day and then build from there.
#conversion
  • Profile picture of the author dsbusiness23
    2-3% is awesome for a conversion rate! Even getting .5% conversion would be good. It sounds like you have a good thing going. So in order to increase your conversion rate try changing something for like a week.

    Do you have a banner link on the left? Try it on the right, see if it changes anything. Also since you said that your making sales off your exit offer, it must be a pretty good offer. I say just try and sweeten it a little bit.

    I bet you will see massive increases. Do something different, that no one has done before to really pull people in. Again it sounds like you are doing very well, good luck in amplifying what you have.

    To your success!
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    • Profile picture of the author junkbox
      My two to three percent number is "of those who hit the purchase now button or some other exit link to the vendors site"

      Am I measuring that properly or should I be measuring conversions based on the number of unique visitors?

      It is a very specific niche so I am not surprised that the buyers are quite intersted.

      But just to be clear, I dont really have an "exit offer", it is just that most of the people who exit the site do so through a "purchase now" button which then takes them to the vendors site (to exactly the same product page) where they can physically place the order.

      I just started a split test early this week where half the exiters go to the vendors site as normal, and the other half get a a four second redirect page with an ajax loader informing them that they are being "redirected to the secure ordering location at the vendors site".

      I just wondered if people were getting confused because they were being sent to another site so I wanted to try out a redirect page that lets them know...we will see what happens I just started the test yesterday.
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  • Profile picture of the author BenoitT
    Maybe you'll be able to know what is your conversion when they will send your affiliate money because you can be sure their is people that click the button and didn't buy it. However, it is probably high.

    Like dsbusiness23 said, keep testing and tweeking and everything will flow Good work.
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    Benoit Tremblay

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  • Profile picture of the author Marty Foley
    The answer to your question is, not which one of the two, but both.

    Once you've got a winning product or service, then you've got two other main objectives.

    * Get more traffic. Even better: Get more targeted traffic

    * Get your sales funnel to convert better

    Personally, I'd start by adding Google Analytics if not already on the site.

    Then slice & dice that data to find what's working and what isn't.

    In the case of affiliate marketing, where your traffic must go elsewhere to "convert", find which ads/keywords/pages/links work best.

    Once you've got some information to work with, expand on what's working, and improve or eliminate what isn't.

    Marty Foley ~ Traffic and Conversion Mad Scientist
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  • Profile picture of the author Fadzuli
    Don't mind if I share what I do for my campaigns. Even for Affiliate Programs.

    My purchase rates are around 2%. I guess its not bad but I do tons of work to get it. Basicly for every product I would create 10 different type of content - can be video, articles. Most of the time is articles.

    And I have VAs helping out.

    So what I would do is improve on the copy writing in each article.

    >> Traffic >> to Article/Content 1 >> Affiliate Site
    >> Traffic >> to Article/Content 2 >> Affiliate Site
    >> Traffic >> to Article/Content 3 >> Affiliate Site
    >> Traffic >> to Article/Content 4 >> Affiliate Site
    >> Traffic >> to Article/Content 5 >> Affiliate Site
    >> Traffic >> to Article/Content 6 >> Affiliate Site
    >> Traffic >> to Article/Content 7 >> Affiliate Site

    Sometimes up to 10 content site. So I will then do a split test on which article/content converts better.

    Comes to the merchant site, seriously there isn't much control there..

    So control what you can and let the rest be decided by the prospects.
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    • Profile picture of the author junkbox
      Yeah I just added analytics earlier this week so I will have some useable data from that pretty soon.

      Great feedback here...I should have been using this forum years ago...
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      • Profile picture of the author RanD
        Well, YOU are getting a 30% conversion rate. By that, of course, I mean that you are getting 30% of your visitors to click the "Buy Now" button. So it seems that the traffic is targeted pretty well, and the copy on your site is doing fairly well. The problem seems to be with what happens between them clicking the Buy Now on your site, and them having to click the Buy Now on the vendor's site. People are clearly ready to buy when they leave your site, but something happens.

        Maybe the sales copy on the vendor's site is turning people off. Maybe their payment options are too limited. Those are pretty much out of your hand, unless you can find another vendor, or the vendor is willing to work on the problems.

        Maybe the product is more costly than they expected, and you didn't prepare them for it. I have personally found it best to let visitor's know in advance what things will cost. If they aren't willing to pay that much, it's better for them to leave through an adsense link, so you get a little something out of them.
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        • Profile picture of the author junkbox
          [QUOTE=RanD;3543503]Well, YOU are getting a 30% conversion rate. By that, of course, I mean that you are getting 30% of your visitors to click the "Buy Now" button. So it seems that the traffic is targeted pretty well, and the copy on your site is doing fairly well. The problem seems to be with what happens between them clicking the Buy Now on your site, and them having to click the Buy Now on the vendor's site. People are clearly ready to buy when they leave your site, but something happens.
          QUOTE]

          Exactly! See that is what I was a little worried about. The vendor unfortunately has to stay the same so I am trying to experiment with ways to completely prepare the buyer that they will be making their final purchase on another site...
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          • Profile picture of the author PassiveIncomeGuru
            To me, it's always a little rough when you have to depend on another site to give you your conversion, but that tend to be the case with affiliate programs, drop-shipping and the like. My general rule of thumb is that if you can control where you sell the product, best to do so on your own site (I know this doesn't help right now, but for future endeavors).

            I have found that I can increase conversions for off-site purchases by doing a few things to guide the visitor better on my own website. For example, I have calls to action placed everywhere within view of important buttons so that visitors can contact me before making the purchase if they have any questions. We also have live chat software installed on the site, which does 2 things: monitors visitors on the site, where they came from, what content they're looking at, how long they've been on the site etc. and it allows them to chat with us live if they have any questions. That way, we can explain and make sure they understand the payment process so they don't get confused along the way. We can also be proactive and ask them if they have any questions about the content they're viewing. This has helped our campaigns and conversions immensely, because we're able to learn more about our visitors in real time. Then we can tailor our experience more to their needs.

            Quick question...how much of the payment process have you actually seen? Have you gone through it yourself? If not, there may be something in their that's frustrating or confusing that you wouldn't necessarily know about unless you'd been through it yourself or unless customers are good enough to give you feedback. If you haven't been through it, you may want to do a mock purchase as far as the system will let you go without paying, and then consider how many steps it actually takes to get to the payment portion of the process and what all is encountered in between. Sometimes being forced to create an account, or too many clicks or steps confuse or frustrate customers into no finishing the process.

            Hope that helps some!
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            • Profile picture of the author junkbox
              Again, I appreciate all the feedback.

              To answer your question PassiveIncome...I indeed have been through the purchase process. The process requires account creation and then an order...The neat things is that I have access to who created an account, but did not go on to order. So I can see if someone created an account but then decided "nope" and backed out. The number of people who create accounts but don't order is really low though. I however imagine those who create accounts and don't order back out because of shipping charges. You don't get to see the shipping charges until you have an account.

              Either way..the people that back out of the process are not that big of an issue. IE, if people create accounts, they order, other than maybe 5%.

              One interesting thing a lot I will see on Statcounter is that someone hits an exit link and then has another page view on the page they exited from under 10 or 15 seconds later.

              Can I infer this is someone pretty much immediately hitting the "back" button once they see they have been sent to another website?

              I think being very informative and preparing them for the order process is probably really key here and I don't know if I have been doing enough of that.
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