Every business wants to succeed with good sales and a customer stamp of approval. As a processor, Payline can improve online business tremendously with keeping your sales and credit card processing running smoothly, but to do that, you first need traffic. Your company website could be great, but it won’t matter if nobody can find it.
The way to ensure a plentiful amount of traffic to your business website is through your organic click rate, and also following that, your conversion rate. Before assuming, be aware that they are not the same thing. When you think about click-through rate vs. conversion rate, think of it as impression vs. action.
The click-through rate is the percentage of impressions from amount of clicks that advertisements websites receive due to people using search terms that bring them to a business. The conversion rate is the measure of the actions taken upon those impressions, like making a purchase or downloading content. Entrepreneur offers ways in which you can increase your organic click-through rate and increase your conversion rate.
Click-Through Rate to Improve Online Business
Don’t Forget Those Headlines: While Entrepreneur does not discount the usefulness of driving keywords and backlinking, they more effective when used in conjunction with a great emotionally charged headline. It may make sense to keep headlines somewhat neutral to attract clicks from a wider audience of people, but lack of emotion in a headline will do the exact opposite. Payline Tip: Don’t be bland, be bold.
Moving Meta Descriptions: Meta descriptions should be three things; rich, short, and sweet. Since this is the brief description appearing under the URL, you have to make a big impact in a small space. Try to keep the Twitter model in mind and keep the meta descriptions between 140-160 characters, as much longer will have to be automatically cut off by Google which could dilute your original meta message. A well written meta description will encourage clicks.
Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Clicks: When the focus becomes so much so on written content, it can be easy to forget the powerful impact of visuals. If you haven’t considered incorporating the images on your website into your SEO strategy, it is time to now. Sometimes, potential clicking customers aren’t searching for words but for images, so you can tag your images appropriately to link back to your site using an ALT tag including the keyword phrase on your site.
Conversion Rate to Improve Online Business
Now that you’re getting the organic clicks, it’s time to take the next step. With the traffic increased, take a look at what you can do to keep that up with your conversion rate. These are just a few of several strategies Entrepreneur offers to improve your conversion rate.
Simple Succinct Forms: When offering an email opt-in form or checkout forms, do not ask for more information than necessary, or make some fields optional. Studies show that cart abandonments happen more frequently with excessive information requests, and this can hurt your conversion rate.
Customers Expect Reviews: Like most people, customer reviews are gold when buying a product online. Your website tells the consumer why they need it, but reviews will tell consumers if it was worth it. Being transparent with reviews will increase your conversion rate following clicks.
Don’t Be More Hype than Skill: Too much flashy, in-your-face content and high stakes promises can dilute the credibility of your website. Customers are looking for clear paths to information and purchasing, so don’t overdo it with hype-based copy. Clear and compelling copy is the way to go.
SEO offers many ways to boost traffic and sales for your business website, but starting with improvements to build the organic click-through rate will create a solid foundation. Without traffic there won’t be conversion, so taking stock of your current strategy for clicks will be a big benefit in the long run.
Experience Payments Differently
This piece was written by Lauren Minning, Content Specialist for Payline.
