Conversion is one of the most important concepts you need to understand if you want your blog and your freelance business to succeed.
Conversion is when a website visitor does what you want them to. A website’s conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who do what we want them to do, or, convert. Your site’s conversion rate is a very important way to measure the effectiveness of what you’re doing.
Are You Throwing Your Money Away?
If visitors don’t take actions that result in profits, you are wasting your time.
You can do all the SEO work you like, but if nothing happens when visitors show up, you did it for nothing. You can pay tons of money in advertising, and you have thrown away every penny if nobody buys anything or signs up for your newsletter. You can write comments on other blogs and work through social media to attract visitors, but if those visitors just bounce right back out of your site without doing what you want, you’re leaving money on the table.
Two Kinds of Conversion: Content and Design
I see two kinds of conversion: content-driven and design-driven.
- Content-driven conversion is nothing more than good ol’ copywriting. By itself, it is a powerful tool.
- Design-driven conversion has to do with where elements are placed on the screen, their size, color, and visual qualities. Did you think that “design” for blogs was only the theme or template you chose? No, my friends, it is much, much more than that. By itself, without changing a word of your copy, you can improve conversion by changing your design.
You magnify the power of both kinds of conversion by combining them together for a hard-hitting one-two punch that really gets results–results you can measure.
Conversion Goals
You can’t achieve higher conversion unless you know what you want to accomplish. Do you want visitors to make a purchase? Fill out an inquiry form? Sign up for your newsletter? Decide what your primary and secondary conversion goals are, because everything you write and your entire blog/site design should move to meet these goals.
Tips for Improving Conversion and Increasing Response Rates
- Measure and Test. Take the average number of visitors for your services or products pages and the number of clicks for links that are the result of conversion, such as a buy button or a contact form submission. Calculate the percentage of conversion clicks out of visits, and that is your conversion rate. A conversion rate doesn’t have to be for an entire site, it can be for specific pages or set of pages. After you make a change to improve conversion, test again and look for improvement.
- Learn copywriting. In spite of all the blogging “how to” advice out there on the web, the one thing you should do to dramatically improve the quality of your content (and therefore the response to it) is to learn and apply copywriting. Understanding your audience, getting inside their head, and writing persuasively to them without sounding like barking salesperson are what good web copywriting is all about. There is no better place to learn the basics than Brian Clark’s Copywriting 101 series of posts on Copyblogger.
- Make conversion links prominent. This is the number one thing you can do to experience improvements in conversion immediately. My own site is an example: clearly, I want you to check out my free ebook, investigate my services, and visit Gateway Blogging. Those boxes are in your face. And they work wonders. A link that is buried in the overall design will not stand out and it will not get clicked. When I redesigned the Cosmetic Dentistry Guide, conversion rates shot up 200% for blog and forum visits.
- Place conversion links above the fold. Above the “fold” is a phrase borrowed from newspapers: the main headline and part of the picture were always above the fold in the paper. You’d get sucked in by the headline and want to see the other half below the fold. On a computer screen, above the fold is what you see without scrolling down. Visitors are more likely to see–and therefore click–on prominent links above the fold.
- Clearly communicate the benefit of clicking the link. Write in clear, simple terms what the visitor is rewarded with if they click on the link. My link to my services above invites you to learn more, and the page which follows delivers on that promise. For the cosmetic dentists’ site, visitors are invited to discuss cosmetic dentistry issues in the forums. Simple!
Where Conversion Fits into the Big Picture
There are four general stages a blog visitor who converts will go through:
- Finding and getting to your site (usually via search, which is why you should learn SEO)
- Pre-conversion investigation/research (for blogs, this often means subscribing, a secondary conversion goal)
- Conversion
- Post-conversion/follow-through (once a visitor has converted on something, it’s easier for them to do it again, but it’s also easy for you to lose them)
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If you want professional help improving conversion for your blog, contact me for a free phone chat to tell me what your goals are and we’ll see what I can do to help your blog succeed.
12 Comments
Indeed, and very well laid out, Michael. Working in both copywriting and design, I know just how easy it is to make a small change and see immediate results.
The best analogy I’ve found for conversion is thinking of the scenario as giving the grand tour of a site. Your design and content tells people where to go, how and what action to take.
If you expect people to land and find their way through the location on their own, they’ll most likely miss all the details, the best parts and wander off.
After all, no one was there to guide them.
As I was reading this article I was also skimming your site to compare the “talk” vs. the “walk” and you’re definitely following your own advice on this one. Hopefully I can apply some of these concepts to better reach my readers.
@James - The tour guide idea is great. E-commerce sites are experiencing high conversions by using video tour guides. In the next redesign of Remarkablogger, I’ll have a welcome video (it will not play automatically).
@PixelWit - I always strive to walk the talk, otherwise how could anyone really trust me? Glad you noticed.
Michael, my side business’s gateway site aims to effectively represent me and get me hired (providing individualized coaching for triathletes and distance runners).
My dilemma: my working method and the way I write about what I do are–seemingly–so far–antithetical to “SEO” and “copywriting” as I understand them.
I’ve gone through this cycle 4 or 5 times: I subscribe to Brian’s feed, or Darren’s, or [the other usual suspects']. After 3 weeks of, um, gagging on the snake oil (gee, that’s lame), I conclude “Well, there’s nothing for me here. I cannot speak in my own voice and have it come out anything like that.” And I unsubscribe.
So my site generates neither inquiries or subscribers, and I’m frustrated.
My day job? Webmaster, WebDev, SEO, occasional copywriter for an ecommerce company whose website is rockin’ its industry.
Geez Mark, if you consider me and Darren to be dispensing snake oil, I’d hate to see what would happen to you if you actually found some real snake oil.
Good copy is all about writing in an authentic, persuasive voice. There’s nothing sleazy about that at all, and Copyblogger is likely the lowest-hype copywriting resource around.
@Brian: Naturally, there’s a spectrum. Posts like http://www.copyblogger.com/michael-masterson/ are perhaps outliers. To my ears, its tone and implicit world view are nothing short of *horrid.*
I’ll have to find another way…
@Mark - I would not put Brian and Darren in the snake-oil category, but I empathize with your frustration. You and I have discussed this before, you may recall.
If you are skilled in SEO and copywriting, then I would suggest your issues stem from a small-sized potential audience. Your niche is small, and the percentage of people who would consider hiring you is smaller.
Also, there is nothing obvious on your site that you are for hire, or what for. That would be a design-based and a content-based conversion issue. Your home page content looks like blog posts. You need to beat people over the head with the “obvious stick”.
I’ve never understood what’s so bad about that post… but it was a one-shot guest post so I guess I’ll need to figure it out. I thought Robert was just very enthusiastic about meeting Masterson (or is it Masterson you have a problem with?).
@Michael - Great advice. On it.
@Brian - My inclination’s to lay it more in the writer’s lap, although his use of paraphrase complicates that.
Reading “2) Spend time researching hot products, then come up with your own versions of those products” makes me wanna scream. “Anybody here got a ‘mission?’ An ‘internal compass?’”
Ahhh, I’m just handicapped by a delicate sensibility. Overcome by the vapors, swooning upon the divan, I take my leave.
Ah, I get it. Taken at face value without elaboration, I can see how that might be offensive.
But it’s really just an abbreviated way of saying “find out what the market wants, and give it to them better.” There’s still plenty of room for mission and innovation.. in fact, it’s a requirement.
For example, Apple didn’t invent the mp3 player. But they did know there was a market for them due to other companies who developed mp3 players before them (SaeHan Information Systems, Diamond Multimedia and Compaq all preceded Apple).
Apple saw a demonstrated market desire based on other existing products. And then they gave us the groundbreaking iPod.
Now, that doesn’t sound too much like snake oil, does it? Although you’ve got to watch that Steve Jobs… he’ll try to sell you stuff.
Do you guys have experience with conversion improvements in e-commerce too? I’ve never really been into blogs as a money making tool although I know it is possible.
@Brandon - Blog conversion in this case would consist of driving traffic to specific e-commerce pages, which also have to convert.
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