Traffic, Sales, and Conversions

We, in the online writing community, often talk about driving traffic to our websites and blogs, however when I was checking my stats this morning, I had an epiphany, which led me to write this post.

I have talked before about the fact that traffic alone is not the only thing you need to get sales.  I have also talked about the fact that numbers of visitors are a factor, and that you will get a percentage of your visitors to buy from you if you target them correctly.  However, I have not talked too much about sales conversions.

A sales conversion is when a customer goes through the complete process that ends up with them actually buying something.  In other words, you convert a visitor into a customer.  My Amazon affiliates account generally has about a 4% sales conversion all year long until the holiday shopping season.  It goes up and down, but averages out to 4%.  That means that if you take all the people who visit my various sites, and then click through to Amazon through an affiliate link, only 4% of the people who click through to Amazon buy something.  That conversion rate is pretty average, but it can give me some idea of how much I will sell in a given month.

What made me think about this topic, is that today I noticed that it is up to 6% for the month of July.  That is significantly higher than normal for me, and it is not November or December. (I do want to make a note that this conversion rate does not include any sales from Squidoo sales modules because they go through Squidoo’s affiliate link.)

Conversion rates are something important to be considered when you look at your sales figures.  For instance, if I can improve my sales conversion rate over a long period of time from 4% to 6%, that will mean that I get a lot more sales per visitor numbers.  With a site like Amazon, that also means that I reach the next tier payout % level sooner.  Part of this consideration goes back to driving the right traffic to your sites.  If the right people land on your pages, then more of them will be ready to buy.

Whether you realize it or not, sales of products and services is what drives the economy no matter where you live.  The taxes from sales pays our government civil service workers, and the profits from our sales pay the salaries of just about everyone else.  The more you understand how to get a higher conversion rate on your own pages, the easier it will be to get sales, which will then create profits not only for you but also for the companies that you are affiliated with.  It truly is a business food chain.

You can believe that I will spending some valuable time over the next few weeks figuring out why I am doing so much better.  Hopefully, I can continue to improve my conversion rate, and keep it higher.  I will be looking at what is selling, where it is selling, and who is buying it, and then try to repeat that pattern elsewhere.  I suggest that you also look at your conversion rates, and figure out what is working, and what is not as a prelude to trying to improve.  You might just be surprised at what you find.