Click Them Good Bye

I remember the first time I sat down with a “Guru” of the internet.  He never saw himself as a guru, just some business man who had learned the ins and outs of Internet Marketing and ended up retiring early.  But his words were amazing to a newbie to this world.

We were first introduced to each other casually at a party.  He had seen my website before and asked if he could offer some pointers that may help me make a few more sales.  I immediately raced home and implemented his “pointers” and saw my conversion rates go through the roof. SO I knew I had to meet him professionally.

He was one of those types who would give lessons in simple questions.  After talking like he was a customer on my site, he would ask “Does this make sense?”  and I would sheepishly say “no”…    Most changes were back office, things the customer would never see, yet had an impact on their experience while looking around my website(s).

One of the first things he explained to me was that every time you make a visitor click, 20% will click out.  So every time you make them click to finish reading a story, or click to go to another page, you lose one out of five customers.  That’s a lot of people!

Now you have my pet peeve, having to register before I am allowed to give you my money.  Several reports put that say 23%  of shoppers will abandon the site when it comes time to pay and they have to register first. For one major retailer, the clicks cost over $300,000,000 in business!  Once they stopped forcing people to register, their sales shot up.  Registering became an option. (read article)

So the next time you look at your numbers and see that the conversion rate is low (number of people who visit and become customers), look at the path to final payment and how many clicks are involved in the process.   Make it easy for them to buy from you and they will!