Your Web site's ability to convert visitors into sales has
tremendous influence on the success of your banner ad
campaigns. Don't fall into the mindset of many online
advertising agencies - that the campaign's job is finished
when the prospect is dropped off at the site.
Now that you've registered your site, you're almost
ready to start taking orders. Next, you need to accept
credit cards. Charge.Com lets you take MasterCard, Visa,
American Express, and Discover. They have the best rates,
over 95% of applicants are accepted, and there's NO
APPLICATION FEE.
If you are tracking your advertising effectiveness all the
way through to the order, doesn't it stand to reason that
your site is a major piece of that process? Many people who
disparage banner advertising are pointing prospects to sites
that can't convert prospects into sales. They buy a bunch of
banner impressions and direct the click-throughs to a site
whose conversion ratios are only a fraction of one percent.
And then they blame the advertising! Amazing.
In the offline world, this would be the equivalent of
someone running a bunch of newspaper or television
advertising directing prospects to a retail store. Once the
prospect gets to the store, the parking lot is tiny and they
can't find a place to park. Once they do find a parking
spot, the store's front door isn't working properly and the
prospect has to struggle with it just to get in. Once in the
store, the prospect can't find what they are looking for and
no one will help them. Luckily, they eventually find
something they want to buy, but the checkout lines are
twenty people long and the cash registers are extremely
slow - when they work at all!
Is this situation the fault of the advertising? No. The
advertising did its job. It brought targeted prospects to
the store. Web advertising cannot be effective if the
Web site can't sell. Maybe that's why so many advertisers
incorrectly focus on click-throughs as a performance metric.
Maybe they know their site can't sell. And, instead of
fixing the problem, they'd rather use a different measure.
No matter how good your advertising campaign is, if your
site can't convert prospects into customers, the campaign
will fail. Make sure the conversion ratios on your Web site
are as high as possible before sinking your money into more
advertising. If your site is only converting 1% of visitors
into customers, put some effort into getting those ratios to
at least 2% or 3% before embarking on a Web advertising
effort.
The higher your Web site conversion rate, the better. Your
cost-per-order will be much lower if your site conversion
rate is high. Your effectiveness ratio will be much higher
if your site conversion rate is high. Everything about your
campaign will be better if your site can convert a high
percentage of targeted prospects into customers.
Kim Wingate of AvidSurfer, is the publisher of "Big Time Banner
Advertising" and "Turning Visits Into Action." Both of these
informative Web business manuals, as well as a FREE conversion
ratio case study, can be found online at:
http://www.avidsurfer.com/default.asp?src=arto
