This list is aimed towards you who work with conversion or eCommerce and need help with troubleshooting why your pages aren’t converting. These are some of the obvious reasons you might want to check out first before moving onto more advanced test and targeting.

Conversion of online traffic is and has always been a hot topic. This list aims at giving you some advice along the way.

1. You promise more on the source page than you deliver on the landing page

Regardless if you are attracting traffic through Social media or Search engines or Banners, you are in a hole world of mess if you offer something in your link or banner that is not available on the landing page you are directing your traffic to. If you write “compare your alternatives” then the alternatives should be comparable on the landing page. If you say you have the world’s best offers, then they should really be the world’s best offers. At least your page has to give the impression that they are. If you do not manage to deliver on your promise you will not convert regardless of how optimized your page is otherwise.

2. Your load time is horrible

This is not only a bounce rate inflator, but also a real conversion killer. If the load time is long, then it is quite natural to see that extreme amounts of traffic falls off at that time in the conversion process. If you want to enable people to buy stuff from you, then you shouldn’t keep them waiting. Patience is not a trait seen too often in Internet users.

3. Your haven’t optimized based on referring domain

You really have to pay notice the referrer of the traffic to your website. If your traffic comes from the search engines you can generally assume they are more purpose oriented than the research oriented traffic coming from social media. In order to convert a purpose driven visitor you have to give them exactly what they searched for and right away. In order to convert a research driven visitor you need to give them all the information available on the topic. Then they will book mark you until they want to buy what you offer. In order to be successful you need two parts in your website that takes aim at satisfying both of these needs. A good example here is Amazon.com. Easy to convert, and easy to read more about the product. Researchers scroll you you don’t have to put all the links to “read more about…” in the top of the page.

4. You run the same design and features regardless of market

If you are running the same business across several different markets, cultures and TLDs you cannot rely on tests done on one market. You cannot even rely on tests done to a sufficient significance for all markets. You have to test every market individually. This is because culture, trends and opinions differ from market to market, and although there are patterns in the way users interact with a website, regardless of culture, there will be huge gains to optimize your pages with this in mind.

5. You use distracting colors and images just cause “they look good”

I know you have them in your organization. The people who do not care how things work as long as they look good. These people should be terminated as they will cost you LOADS of money. They might be lucky a couple of times or a lot of times, but in the long run they will cost you a shit load of money. If you put something blinking on your page, it should sure as hell have a purpose.

Taste is something you cannot base your decisions on when it comes to converting traffic. Taste is highly individual and even though you take a vote in your group you are tainted by internal organizational sicknesses that makes you blind. THIS cost you money. If you want to sell more, you need to test, target and then let the data make the decisions for you.

6. You don’t take season into consideration

If it is xmas, people want to buy gifts, when it is spring people want to fall in love, in fall people want comfort and in summer people want freedom. Just generalizing, but it is important to meet the buyer where their mind is set. Prepare seasonal changes in the design of your website. Then execute them depending upon weather. You will definitively see effects in your conversion rates. Don’t try to sell sun in the desert.

7. The one mile one page one form

I have seen to many examples of long registration forms. PLEASE put your registration forms into a process of at least three steps. Write a 1 – 2- 3 in top of the registration form page. Then use Ajax to load the next section as a user completes the previous one. This way you’ll reach two extremely converting principles. First of all you will get the most important data such as e-mail address and nationality in the first stage of the sign-up. Secondly you will have nicked the user completely as they feel a sense of satisfaction from completing step one, then step two… woops they are almost done… so they better fill out the difficult stage number three. You see. When they have filled out so much info, they might as well take the extra 5 to do the last page.

If they don’t, then you can still save everything they have done up until this stage and then send them an e-mail in the evening saying, “you only have one step left to complete your order” or you can send them an e-mail saying “your super savings offer will expire in 60 minutes, return to the stage in your registration where you logged off the last time”. You will convert MAAAAD times doing the latter

8. You’ve optimized for the wrong keywords

You might be number one for a single word in a highly competitive vertical, but you still don’t convert. You ask yourself why?? Well, most commonly you have optimized your website for a word that is not a converting keyword. This happens all the time and it is generally not the words with the highest traffic volumes or the fiercest competition that converts the best. It is the action driven keywords that do. So if you are optimizing your website for the keyword “make-up” then you are probably in the wrong place. But add a brand name and a buy into that mix and perhaps you are in a better place. This one is a no brainer but sometimes corporations optimize with link spam towards words that are completely useless when it comes to sales. Think first, test some, do research, start where it is easy to end up no 1 and then move to the more narrow words.

Ok That’s it… won’t share more, but please e-mail me or add me on LinkedIn and I’m sure I’ll give you another 35 quick hints on why your page might not be converting

Some companies just won’t get on this train of social media and search. Some companies are just too ignorant, too arrogant and too self indulging to understand that the future does not lie in the past, but in the future. Adapting has always been the human beings way of survival. It plays out in all parts of our society. Europe was leading until the kings, church and queen stuff made the “janks” want to turn on us and become a republic. They then ruled the world until now when we see the Chinese take over as they change, they adapt and most of all, they adopt better practices instead of relying on best practices.

It is time for corporations to start listening up, start being radical and start making changes. It is time to start being available where people search for them, where people want to talk to them and where new business opportunities can be mutually arranged. I mean. If you are a corporate CEO and read this… I know there are a few of you out there. Are you REALLY going to tell your stock owners that there was a market buying stuff from your sector, but only not from you, and the only reason for this being that you didn’t understand it?

You conquered the offline world with success. You have opened stores in every diary desk in the world. Your growth has been fantastic and thus your stock price has reached beyond what was ever expected. Now the opportunity is for you to double it. Make it digital, make it easy, make it cheap and most importantly, make it available where ever, and when ever.

If you have supply chain problems, set up a franchise where people in different countries can establish their own online supply chain for that country. If you have problems with optimization, then use affiliates to do the optimization for you. If you have problems with data collection, then tap on into Facebook. If you have problems with knowledge then start reading a good blog, or even a book.

Most importantly!!! Being a part of the online community is NOT what many people say it is. It is not either or. It is not a zero sum game between offline IRL stuff and online stuff. It is a new market. Why not move into it. Why not take the corner spots on each street and why not put people in your stores? It is that simple. It is all the same. You know how to do this. A new format, yes, but you know the art of business and what’s happening truly is business. Keep the offline, add the online!

All I am asking you is to treat this soberly. Compare, prepare and try it out. But please do it now!!

//Jesper