What Conversion Is, Why it Matters,
and How to Improve It

Conversion is one of the most important concepts you need to understand if you want your blog and your freelance business to succeed.

Conversion is when a website visitor does what you want them to. A website’s conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who do what we want them to do, or, convert. Your site’s conversion rate is a very important way to measure the effectiveness of what you’re doing.

Are You Throwing Your Money Away?

If visitors don’t take actions that result in profits, you are wasting your time.

You can do all the SEO work you like, but if nothing happens when visitors show up, you did it for nothing. You can pay tons of money in advertising, and you have thrown away every penny if nobody buys anything or signs up for your newsletter. You can write comments on other blogs and work through social media to attract visitors, but if those visitors just bounce right back out of your site without doing what you want, you’re leaving money on the table.

Two Kinds of Conversion: Content and Design

I see two kinds of conversion: content-driven and design-driven.

1. Content-driven conversion is nothing more than good ol’ copywriting. By itself, it is a powerful tool.
2. Design-driven conversion has to do with where elements are placed on the screen, their size, color, and visual qualities. Did you think that “design” for blogs was only the theme or template you chose? No, my friends, it is much, much more than that. By itself, without changing a word of your copy, you can improve conversion by changing your design.

You magnify the power of both kinds of conversion by combining them together for a hard-hitting one-two punch that really gets results–results you can measure.

Conversion Goals

You can’t achieve higher conversion unless you know what you want to accomplish. Do you want visitors to make a purchase? Fill out an inquiry form? Sign up for your newsletter? Decide what your primary and secondary conversion goals are, because everything you write and your entire blog/site design should move to meet these goals.

Tips for Improving Conversion and Increasing Response Rates

• Measure and Test. Take the average number of visitors for your services or products pages and the number of clicks for links that are the result of conversion, such as a buy button or a contact form submission. Calculate the percentage of conversion clicks out of visits, and that is your conversion rate. A conversion rate doesn’t have to be for an entire site, it can be for specific pages or set of pages. After you make a change to improve conversion, test again and look for improvement.
• Learn copywriting. In spite of all the blogging “how to” advice out there on the web, the one thing you should do to dramatically improve the quality of your content (and therefore the response to it) is to learn and apply copywriting. Understanding your audience, getting inside their head, and writing persuasively to them without sounding like barking salesperson are what good web copywriting is all about. There is no better place to learn the basics than Brian Clark’s Copywriting 101 series of posts on Copyblogger.
• Make conversion links prominent. This is the number one thing you can do to experience improvements in conversion immediately. My own site is an example: clearly, I want you to check out my free ebook, investigate my services, and visit Gateway Blogging. Those boxes are in your face. And they work wonders. A link that is buried in the overall design will not stand out and it will not get clicked. When I redesigned the Cosmetic Dentistry Guide, conversion rates shot up 200% for blog and forum visits.
• Place conversion links above the fold. Above the “fold” is a phrase borrowed from newspapers: the main headline and part of the picture were always above the fold in the paper. You’d get sucked in by the headline and want to see the other half below the fold. On a computer screen, above the fold is what you see without scrolling down. Visitors are more likely to see–and therefore click–on prominent links above the fold.
• Clearly communicate the benefit of clicking the link. Write in clear, simple terms what the visitor is rewarded with if they click on the link. My link to my services above invites you to learn more, and the page which follows delivers on that promise. For the cosmetic dentists’ site, visitors are invited to discuss cosmetic dentistry issues in the forums. Simple!

Where Conversion Fits into the Big Picture

There are four general stages a blog visitor who converts will go through:

1. Finding and getting to your site (usually via search, which is why you should learn SEO)
2. Pre-conversion investigation/research (for blogs, this often means subscribing, a secondary conversion goal)
3. Conversion
4. Post-conversion/follow-through (once a visitor has converted on something, it’s easier for them to do it again, but it’s also easy for you to lose them)

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If you want professional help improving conversion for your blog, contact me for a free phone chat to tell me what your goals are and we’ll see what I can do to help your blog succeed.