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Increasing
Conversions Why is it that some affiliates seem to be very successful while others struggle to get any sales? In most cases, you may be just a few "tweaks" away from dramatically increasing your commissions. Here's some valuable tips that will help you do just that. |
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Most affiliates use
one or all of the following methodologies in their business
model: For specific help with your PPC campaigns, please see our section on pay-per-click which deals exclusively with that topic. We'll address the first two site types in this guide. Specialty Sites
Typically these sites do not receive a tremendous amount of traffic, unless you are very good at SEO, have LOTS of content, or spend significant sums on PPC ads. Regardless, a specialty or niche type site is perfect for providing valuable information, product reviews, and how-to tips for your visitors. It's critical that you have clear site navigation and categories, if relevant, to help your visitors quickly find what they are looking for. Specialty sites integrate datafeeds well, and afford you the opportunity to provide personalized product reviews to help you "pre-sell" the products. You don't need a lot of products in your content site - limit your selection to a handful of really good products. The more choices you give your visitors, the more difficult it will be for you to convincingly say "this is the best," and the more likely they will become confused or indecisive and leave. Your job is to provide category and product information to the visitor, pre-sell them on a product, and send them to the merchant site. Once they arrive at the merchant site, we can provide a larger selection of similar products (variations in size, color, features, etc.) without fear of overwhelming them - because if you've done your job, they'll have a good feel for what they're looking for already, and are more likely to buy.If your site is about outdoor furniture and you have a section for patio umbrellas, subdivide that section into specific umbrella types - such as wooden, offset, and beach umbrellas. Have pictures to help your visitors visualize what you're describing to them. If they've just finished reading your review of offset umbrellas, take them to the offset umbrellas aisle page on the PatioUmbrellas.com website through your affiliate link. Or you can take it a step further and feature specific offset umbrellas within that subcategory, and direct customers to that exact umbrella on the merchant site. You don't have to get this detailed - but the more work you do to qualify and pre-sell your potential customer, the higher your conversion rates will be - which is crucial if you receive limited traffic.
It's a lie that people aren't interested in reading your content. Many of them will read an entire article, many more will skim through the highlights, and some won't read at all. You've got to provide something for each of these people. If they're going to leave your site, you want them to do so via an affiliate link or some other revenue-producing channel - like Google AdSense. If you integrate Google AdSense (or similar) into your site for additional revenue, make sure it doesn't take up the most valuable real estate. Visitors to your site don't want to read Google ads - they want to read your content and/or look at pictures of the items they want to buy. Place your AdSense boxes above the fold of the page, but apart from the content that you want them to read. Here's another tip - the more Google ads you display, the less likely your visitors are to click on them. Choose the small vertical or horizontal boxes that only display two ads. These are the highest-paying ads, and visitors are more likely to click if they aren't overwhelmed with choices. If you must drop the AdSense ad in the body of your content, use the smallest ad block sizes that display one or two ads only. The snapshot to the left is an example of how not to do it.
A simple restructuring of the site will open up more real-estate, and cutting the AdSense ads down to two, small ads still affords good revenue opportunities. This frees up more room for product reviews, banners and affiliate links. The image to the right is an example of how to accomplish this. One of the most successful sites is one that plays the role of a product reviewer. By comparing 2 or 3 products within a certain category, and providing personal endorsement language to the review, you will dramatically improve your conversion rates on those items. Click here for an example of what this type of website looks like. Specialty sites can be very lucrative for affiliates. A little extra attention to detail and some quality time and effort on your part devoted to content development will set your site apart from the competition. Regardless of how many or how few visitors arrive at your site, if you don't provide what they're looking for, they'll simply hit the back button and choose another site. Shopping Malls Another site structure popular among many affiliates is the shopping mall, which allows you to feature a broad selection of product categories within one site. There are many advantages and also drawbacks to this choice (see the chart). One of the most effective malls you can build is one that focuses on a specific category, such as furniture, games, toys, etc. Selling both bicycles and croutons on the same site probably won't work - try to pick a common theme. We recommend a furniture theme, which will enable you to promote products from over a dozen NetShops stores! You can divide your mall into categories such as patio furniture, bedroom furniture, chairs, etc.
Many mall sites receive very high traffic levels once they've established themselves on the web. Because of the broader categories, they can receive many times the traffic of a specialty site. To be effective, however, the site must have a strong, logical navigation structure. Avoid the temptation to become a "banner farm." While some affiliates claim these work, most people will not stay long at an ugly site consisting of nothing but banners for contact lenses, satellite dishes, and pre-paid long distance cards. If your mall site receives high levels of traffic and is targetted to a particular theme as discussed above, you can make fairly good commissions from the buttons and banners on your site, without any pre-selling whatsoever. Your conversion rate will be lower than average (because you're not pre-selling or endorsing specific products), but your sheer volume will make up for it. Some of our top affiliates have the lowest conversion rates because of their mall-site structure, but they earn hundreds to thousands of dollars in commission each month simply by sending us hundreds of visitors who are even remotely interested in furniture, games...whatever. To take your mall site to the next level, consider adding datafeeds of our products to each site category. See our help section on datafeeds for more info on this valuable marketing tool. And if you haven't already, place small buttons or full-sized banners above the fold of your home page and other popular landing pages. Regardless of which site structure you prefer, feel free to contact us if you'd like our recommendations. We're happy to make suggestions on how to improve your site for your users, and increase your click-thru's and conversion rates!
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