How to Optimize Your Online Conversion Funnel

Traffic is essential to your website, but it is even more important that your traffic is qualified. If your traffic is not converting, then you may have a problem. If you are overlooking conversion optimization, you are not alone. Statistics show that for every $92 that a business spends on driving traffic; only $1.00 is spent on conversion. In order to convert visitors into customers, you need to create a conversion funnel. Here are some tips to get you started on your Online Conversion Funnel.

Conversion Funnel: What is It?

A conversion funnel is a name for the steps a customer takes along a pathway that leads them to take an action. An action can be a purchase, a subscription to a newsletter or making an appointment. In order to induce your customer to take the action, a funnel has the following steps:

1. Awareness – Bringing your company to the visitor’s attention and educating them.
2. Interest – They become interested and want to learn more about your company.
3. Desire – The visitor is considering taking the action, and is looking into the benefits they will receive.
4. Action – Buying a product, filling out a form, making an appointment or subscribing to your newsletter.

As the prospect goes further down the pathway or funnel, the funnel gets narrower.

Making Your Conversion Funnel More Effective

Once you understand the basics of conversion funnels, you can tweak them to become more effective. At each step, you are most likely losing potential customers. If you can figure out why, you can work to retain more of them.

Common reasons for dropping off include:

• Poor follow-through to the next step or a landing page with too many distractions
• Poor communication of benefits
• Weak calls-to-action or not enough calls-to-action

• Making the call-to-action too complex and hard to navigate

Once you determine your problem areas, you can tweak them and test to see if your changes improve the results.

Retaining Existing Customers

If you are only focusing on obtaining new customers, then you are not working effectively. You should also be improving the retention of your existing customers. To help retention, you can do the following:

• Ask for feedback. Feedback from customers can help you discover areas that need improvement. It also gives customers a sense of value.
• Engage customers with email marketing. Your newsletter can remind customers of your products, tell them about special offers and let them know about new products.
• Offer a high level of customer service. Customer service can make your company stand out. Reward your best customers, and work hard to please your unhappy customers.

Customer engagement and retention is a challenge, but you can learn to convert them into loyal repeat buyers and brand advocates with consistent application of these tips. By giving your customers and prospects a good user experience, they will want to continue their relationship with you.