What is a Conversion?
Conversion is the marketing process of getting people on your site to do what you want them to do such as subscribing to a list, making a purchase or visiting another speciifc part of a website. In other words it is a key measure of any internet-based business. The more sales conversions you are getting the better. Likewise if you a trying to build a list to market to, the number of subscribers you can get will directly impact on your ultimate profitability.
For the vast majority of websites conversion rates are extremely poor and one reason for this is that they are usually designed to look good rather that to act as direct marketing machines.
Conversion levels on sites are effected by a vast array of things including the wording, or copy, on the site, the images that are used on the site, whether there are any Testimonials on the site and critically the source of traffic.
A strongly converting website will make it very easy for the visitor to know what to do next and will limit other options. Good websites that convert well are also usually the result of targeted traffic, effective copy and continuous testing. There is little or no point in driving untargeted traffic to a website and expecting it to convert well which is why the source of web traffic is also key. If you sell epoxy resin it is very unlikely that an internet user taken at random will be interested in buying some.
A number of marketing tools can increase the conversion rates of a site such as autoresponders. These market to sales prospects automatically by sending out sales messages via email. Over time it is usually found that, provided the sales messages are well crafted, the overall sales rate of a website will increase if an autoresponder is used – although very few businesses make use of them.
The facts are that people who use an autoresponder can drive up their visitor values which makes them a lot more profitable.