Reviews and E-Commerce Conversion Rates
January 21, 2010
While many web marketers focus on getting more traffic to their respective sites another important concept is conversion. You can have all of the traffic in the world, but without conversion it will be tough to fund all of your traffic getting endeavors.
In terms of e-commerce often times this is when a product is sold. In order to make the sale from your specific site the person buying has to think that given the amount of time they want to spend searching for an item that your site is currently the best option. In other words, they have to trust you and feel confident that additional searches will not be necessary as any additional web surfing will result in sites that are not as good of a total value as your site. They may think that a better alternative is out there, but that takes time to find. As long as you can convince them that yours is a good enough option you will make the sale.
One way to persuade people that you are the best option is through social proof. Social proof is when another customer makes a comment about your product offering. Testimonials and reviews are good examples. With social proof what others say is true even if it isn’t really true. By providing good service and providing ways for your existing customers to interact with you it becomes easier for new customers to see what it is like dealing with you.
For newer websites providing reviews like on this site that sells a fire pit for every occasion, you can see how they have integrated a star rating system. Existing customers can rate the product and leave feedback. It makes it much easier for others to know about the product.
Additional ideas include the use of a Facebook fan page. This allows for a high level of interaction as users can post rich media and quickly share details with friends.
Reviews and other social interactions are a great way to provide social proof for websites looking to increase conversion rates.
Article Marketing
January 19, 2010
A common tactic is the use of article marketing to help promote your website. People publish articles on sits like ezinearticles.com or articlebase.com. Once published the footer or resource section of the article contains info about one of your websites. Other sites looking for content for there own site may come and pick up the article. That is called syndication. If your article gets picked up on another site it is one more place on the Internet someone can find out more information about you and provide a way to getting to your site via a link.
If your article is of very high quality you may find that the one article could be syndicated many many times or lots of people may link to the original article. All of which are excellent for helping to promote your site.
If you have a favorite article marketing technique that works for you post a comment and tell us about it.
