Tips to increase your conversation rates

These are six surefire tricks of the trade that too many webmasters seem to ignore:

1. Professional Web Design

You’ve heard this before? That’s because it really matters. New visitors form their opinion of your services instantly based on your site design. If you are a legitimate business or service-provider, people assume you can afford to pay a professional designer to make your site purr like it’s 2010, not 2001.

2. “As Seen In”

Positioning yourself alongside trusted brands or news outlets gives credibility by association. More simply put, your new site visitor might not know your brand or name, but they do know The New York Times or the Better Business Bureau. Take advantage of any press or awards you’re received by placing the logos of those organizations on your main page. The more the merrier. Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.com does a great job of this.
3. Customer Testimonials (with pictures!)

Finding satisfied clients or customers should not be difficult. After all, you’re crushing it out there! Take the time to compile the nice notes and emails they’ve sent into a page on your site. Prominently display a few of the best examples on your main page or landing pages.

Be sure to provide the person’s name and location or title along with the testimonial. And here’s an extra tip — post real pictures of your happy customers next to the testimonials. Sites like VA Mortgage Center.com and a lot of universities do this well.

4. This is a Secure Place

Conveying that your website is a secure place to conduct business and exchange personal information is integral to turning a visitor into a conversion, especially in e-commerce.

Most Internet users will not scour the address bar for an “https” designation. You need to put blatant language on your site that says “Your information is secure” and show the logo of the security provider. Examples include Verisign and Truste. Also, have highly visible links to policies on shipping and how you will use customer information once it’s submitted.

Hi

1. Show 3rd party accreditation – Accreditation which is listed clearly on the homepage and landing pages, especially one which is known, is helpful to create trust. It can vary from a professional industry body to a yellow pages icon (which is linked to your page on yellow pages) and even a PayPal symbol can be considered as a type of accreditation.

2. List your privacy policy – In recent months, the subject of user privacy has been a hot topic, affecting companies from Facebook to Google. Listing a privacy policy is important, perhaps more than ever for appearances sake. The Direct Marketing Association is offering a privacy policy generator which is simple to use and free. Once uploaded, place the privacy policy in a visible place such as the page footer.

3. Add a physical address – If you haven’t already, you should add your physical address as soon as you can and register it with Google Local for added value from organic search. Websites with a physical address are considered more trustworthy.

4. Add a contact phone number – Similar to adding a physical address, adding a contact phone number will increase your trustworthiness as visitors are able to query details before and after a sale. If you’re concerned about the cost of buying a phone number, look at VOIP vendors such as Skype who offer a land-line number which you can take with you.

5. List your terms and conditions – In addition to visibly showing your terms and conditions, also allow visitors to download and print this document. If the functionality to download a document does not exist in your CMS, simply upload the document to a service such as Box.net and embed the folder on the page.

6. Pay attention to language, spelling and typos – Grammar will have a profound effect on your conversion rate. Spelling mistakes and typos will instantly discourage visitors from reading on.

Thanks

The best way to increase your website profits with out increasing your traffic is to improve your conversion rate. Say your website gets 1,000 visitors per week and your conversion rate is 1%, this means you make 10 sales per week. By improving your conversion rate by just 1%, to 2% you will double your sales from 10 to 20 per week.