13 ways to improve online sales conversions

1. Focus one page on one product or call-to-action, or if it’s your homepage keep it to a maximum of 5-6 calls-to-action.
2. Make sure all pages have a clear, descriptive page title (h1 tag).
3. Run A/B and multivariate tests with the Google Website Optimizer tool to compare different page content variations and conversion rates.
4. Test page loading times with Google Webmaster Tools. Web users will typically wait only 4-5 seconds for a page to load.
5. List the key benefits of any product or offer.
6. Manage user expectations by following through on claims. For example, if your internal banner advert says “click here to view the latest flight deals”, make sure the landing page contains a list of the latest flight deals.
7. Use the free conversion calculators from House of Kaizen.
8. Set up ‘Goals’ in Google Analytics to measure how well your sales objectives are being met by your website.
9. Check your sign-up page is working. You should make sure it functions in all the major web browsers (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox).
10. Make sure people can do all the key things on the mobile version of your website as on your main desktop site. If you don’t have a website version, test your desktop version on mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Samsung, Blackberry, etc) to make sure mobile users can read the content and sign up or buy products.
11. Add credibility to your site by featuring real customer testimonials.
12. Make your privacy policy page link stand out, particularly if you’re not a major brand and users are signing up to your service, or buying a product, from you for the first time.
13. Look at your sales pricing strategy. If you’re charging 20% more than your competitors, you need to ask why a customer want’s to pay 20% more with your products

Sources:

• http://www.entrepreneur.com
• http://www.houseofkaizen.com

4 website design options for the new mobile audience

The percentage of UK Internet traffic from wireless handheld devices (mobiles/tablets) is increasing steadily, and while different sources vary on the exact figure, a reasonable estimate, based on general consensus, is that more than 10% of global Internet visits are now made from mobile devices. Whatever the true figure, one thing is for sure, the figure is growing steadily.

This leaves many established brands, particularly those trading in eCommerce, or where their web presence is has a serious impact on the bottom line, with a dilema about how best to serve web content to mobile users.

The mobile web content options are these:

1. Mobile applications
2. Mobile-friendly websites
3. Mobile website versions
4. None of the above

While there is much debate on this issue, a select few websites have created world-class mobile-friendly websites that can be viewed, and interacted with, on virtually any wireless handheld device. See: http://www.bostonglobe.com.

Few others would adhere to the W3C mobile validator guidelines (http://validator.w3.org/mobile).

To be continued…

Info-graphic: Types of search engine query

The previous article looked at the three types of user intent on search engines – Informational, Navigational and Transactional. In this info-graphic post, we look at 4 additional types of user query:

1. Informational & Navigational
2. Navigational & Transactional
3. Transactional & Informational
4. Navigational, Informational & Transactional

To print this diagram full-size, please download the full PDF version.

Why do people use Google search?

The three types of search engine query each show different user intents:

1. Navigational – A navigational query occurs when a person is trying to find a specific web site or a specific page on a web site. One example of a navigational search is when a user has looked at a friends social network account on Twitter, and wants to visit the page, but cannot remember the address. They might search for ‘[insert friend's name]‘s twitter account’. By including a brand name in the query, the brand’s official website is much more likely to appear prominently on search engine results pages.
2. Informational – Informational queries show that a person is looking for information about a topic, so they might submit an informational query such as ‘weather in brazil”. In many instances, Wikipedia.org will rank prominently for informational searches. The overwhelming majority of searches are informational.
3. Transactional – Transactional queries happen when a person wants to complete a purchase, such as buy train or flight tickets, or pay a household bill, and typical transactional queries include: ‘buy train tickets’, ‘buy cheap flights to new york’. For transactional queries, there is typically much higher competition for space than for navigational and informational queries because websites know that the user is likely to have a credit card with them, so users will encounter a higher amount of advertising.

Info-graphic: The cycle of success and failure

In a previous article we explained the psychology behind Anthony Robins’ interpretation of the cycle of success and failure. Here is an info-graphic showing a common journey of success and failure in online business.

While belief is only one factor amongst many reasons why Internet entrepreneurs succeed or fail in online business, it is a major contributing factor because it has a direct impact on action which is a key results factor.

If you want to print this diagram full-size, you can download the PDF version.

Copyright ©2012 User Psychology

10 reasons why only 0.01% of Internet entrepreneurs succeed

In the last post we looked at 10 reasons why 99.9% of Internet entrepreneurs fail, and in this post we flip the list and see 10 reasons how 0.01% of Internet entrepreneurs succeed in the highly-competitive online business marketplace.

1. They had belief in themselves
2. They had a business plan
3. They set and achieved realistic objectives
4. They didn’t get bored but stayed focused
5. They took steps back from the website…
6. …and were always concious of the bigger picture
7. They were very organised
8. They put in lots of effort
9. They were ready to hear criticism
10. They read the detail

10 reasons why 99.9% of Internet entrepreneurs fail

User Psychologist

While there are many reasons why you might fail at something, if you want to become a successful Internet entrepreneur there are some major stumbling blocks which prevent 99.9% of people succeeding online. 

Like anything in life, there are always exceptions to the rule. For instance, you might purchase an online lottery ticket and scoop a £10 million ($15.7m) jackpot at the first attempt. Lucky? Sure, but people do get lucky sometimes. Most people don’t get lucky however, they have to work hard, and even then they might not become successful for one reason or another.

In future posts, we’ll look into each of the following points in more detail, but for now here’s a deeper look into the psychology of failure and a list of 10 commom reasons why Internet entrepreneurs fail:

1. They lacked belief in themselves
2. They didn’t have a business plan
3. They didn’t set realistic objectives
4. They got bored and did something fun
5. They got too close to the website…
6. …and forget the bigger picture
7. They weren’t organised
8. They didn’t put in enough effort
9. They couldn’t take criticism
10. They didn’t read the small print

Anthony Robins, American motivational speaker and peak performance guru, worth an estimated $480million, once summed up the reasons why some people succeed and other people (most) fail:

“If you believe you have the potential to do something you will take action. If you take action, you will see results. If you see results, you will believe even more in your potential so you take more action, and get even better results. The cycle begins.

In the same way, if you don’t believe in your potential, you will not take action, you will not see results and you will not believe, so your belief in your own potential will be knocked and you will take even less action, resulting in even worse results.

That’s why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

In the next post, we’ll look at 10 reasons why internet entrepreneurs succeed.