John Lennon wrote the song Imagine, where he suggested we imagine such things as, no heaven, no countries, no possessions.That was years ago. This is today:

Imagine there’s no money
It isn’t hard to do
Lot’s of traffic daily
But no conversions boo hoo…

Unless your website is a hobby, chances are you would like to use it as a venue to sell your product or service. The only way to do that is to have a decent conversion rate.

Conversion Rate: The ratio of visits to action where someone buys something from you, joins your program, etc…

It has been said a conversion rate could be in the order of 3% to 20% on average. What is usually omitted is the process to reach your targeted audience with the right message.

Where so many websites fail is in the process of reaching that targeted audience.  Most likely the site owners missed out on a proper keyword research program. I’ve said in the past, keyword analysis will reveal words and phrases with an acceptable level of traffic, what competition you face, and the commercial value of the keywords you have chosen.

Missing out on the commercial value metric of your keywords can lead you to choosing phrases, while driving traffic to your site, historically have little ability to make you money in conversion.

Overloading your content with Info Keywords instead of Buy Keywords is also easy to do. The difference between these keyword types is outlined in Buy or Info Keywords What’s the Difference. What happens is you have visitors trying to educate themselves and more so than not, refine their searches and move on. If you’re optimization is missing the longer tail keywords, you may be missing out on a conversion.

Another concept which will be discussed in more detail in another post is that of Testing. Using the proper tools you can essentially test different versions of your content to determine which version leads to a higher conversion rate.

Typically called A/B testing and Multivariate testing, you can reduce the guesswork in your site design and increase your conversion rate and visitor experience.

A/B testing is typically testing different versions of entire pages and could be visualized by a different layout of your graphics, using different titles for your product lead in, and other major shifts. For example, you may have a product graphic at the top of your content in a panorama style, and text below on page A, while on page B you may have a similar graphic running down the left and all your text to the right. These are basic examples but should give you an idea of a simple content test.

Multivariate testing is more detailed in you are testing components within the target pages. You may be testing for different versions of your content text, are visitors clicking on the links you want them to, are they just leaving giving you a high bounce rate (where they come, and leave right away).

The testing software would determine when to display each version of your content then measure and report the differences to you. Having this data, you can make the decision as to which version of the pages you want to display to obtain a higher conversion rate. Proper testing of your content should put you on the path to higher conversion rates and add to your bottom line.

Now Imagine There’s Lots of Money! Be well.