How is this achieved? Most web site owners on the Internet subscribe to the “if you build it they will come and buy” philosophy which is completely untrue. Having your website convert at a healthy rate is a process and takes some time and effort. The time spent to get your site to a healthy conversion rate depends on you and the effort you put into the process.
Most likely when you publish your first version of your StoresOnline site it will not be perfect or in other words it will not convert at a healthy rate, so we need to do things to the site to make it convert at a more healthy rate.
If we take a look at traditional media and traditional marketing we begin to realize that the best (highest paid) marketers in the world are in actuality excellent “testers.” You will never find a marketer that will approach a multi-million dollar account and say, “I guarantee if you do this, this, and this, you will have success.” Instead they say, “If we were to test this, this, and this, we can see what type of results we will get, but they should be positive results.” The bottom line is they know how to test.
Therefore, before we get into what to test it is important that we understand the testing process. Remember bottom line is your customers will tell you if you have a good website or not.
So you need to do things on your site to convert our visitors into buyers.
The Testing process should go as follows:
1 - Brainstorm ideas to test Friends and family can give excellent ideas of things you could improve on your website.
2 - Implement the idea (make a change in your site) Remember to only make one change at a time.
3 - Allow for sufficient time/visitors Generally one week is sufficient.
4 - Note the change in Performance Got to your Stats > Analysis tab and see what happened to your Conversion Rate? Did it go up, down or stay the same?
If it went up, keep the change If it went down, get rid of the change If it stayed the same, keep the change
5 - Rinse. Repeat. You will continue this process until you have a healthy conversion rate.
There is a philosophy that we like to live by here at StoresOnline and it is, “the moment you stop testing, you die.” The idea is you never know what idea will be the “big” idea, and if you are unwilling to test new ideas, your competitors, who are willing to test, will win out.
