Three smart ways to boost conversion rates

Know your audience and promote suitable advertisers

In order to successfully increase your conversion rate, you need to know what your audience is interested in and what they are looking for. If visitors come to your website for makeup advice, they will most likely not be interested in buying a lawnmower.

Ask questions and use statistics and common sense to figure out why visitors end up at your website. Write interesting content and promote advertisers within that specific niche. However, don’t be afraid of testing a variety of advertisers that seem to be a match for your visitors. Advertisers you might not have high expectations for, can work better than initially assumed – use testing and the knowledge you attain in the process of increasing conversion rates.

Create selling content

You might consider this point fundamental, and of course, you’re already doing it. However, the thought of creating selling content is not the same as actually doing it. Consider the below actions when reviewing your own content. Anything that can be improved?

Use tangible action words

Change «See the dress here» with «Get your dress here». The second language encourages your visitor to take action rather than being passive.

Use high buyer intent keywords

Rather than using keywords the visitor would use when trying to navigate or find information about a product, use keywords with higher buyer intent. That way, you can reach an audience that is closer to perform a purchase, and hence with a higher likelihood of converting.

Create a sense of urgency

People want more of what they can have less of, and in sales, the principle of scarcity suggests that products and services are more valuable when they are less available. Create a sense of urgency in your text. A lot of online stores provide an overview of how many of the product they have left in stock, or you can state that the campaign or voucher ends at a specific forthcoming date.

Provide social proof

When people are uncertain, they review the actions and behaviours of others in order to determine their own. If a runner states that «this sports watch is used not only by me, but my entire running group due to its user friendliness and great functions», the visitor is more likely to be conveyed than if there is only one person stating it.

Don’t prioritise banners over content

In our previous post, «Five common mistakes made by new affiliate marketers» (link), we mention prioritising ads over content as one of the mistakes. Already in 2016, there were 600 million devices running adblock software on a global basis. Findings from a recent report by Smart Insight further indicate that the average ad performance of banner ads is 0.05%. In other words; don’t fill your website with ads and expect them to drive conversions.

Compared to ads, unique content is valuable in driving traffic from search engines. If you want to read more about how you can optimise your website for search engines, you can read more in our previous post «SEO tips for affiliates».