6 ms·

Offer HN: Advice on how to increase sales and conversions on your website

30 points by paraschopra 16y ago

I'm the founder of Visual Website Optimizer and since last year have had the privileged of studying and analyzing 100s of A/B split tests to learn what makes a particular website convert visitors into customers. If you have website (or a landing page) and you have traffic but are struggling with your conversion rate, contact me. Would love to advice how you can go about increasing sales and conversions. My contact details: paras@wingify.com PS: I'm loving the new phenomenon of Offer HN and in past few days actually contacted some amazing HNers for advice so thought of giving back to this awesome community. As a bonus, I expect to learn about many great HNers.

danvoell 16y ago
We don't have major traffic, around 25% of visitors signup for a free alert. We would love to hear your thoughts. www.gobuzz.com.
- paraschopra 16y ago
  Your page is well-built and has an informative headline too. However, I think following changes may increase conversions: a) Removing examples and (centering) and increasing size of the main dropdowns b) Selecting an option in dropdowns by default c) Removing 'preview' link d) Changing the color of button to red (yes, this can really work) Essentially, try to highlight the dropdown section in the middle of the page. You can have all "extra" stuff as a separate section below it. PS: You can also test a headline like "Google Alerts on Steroids" -- I am assuming most of your visitors would know what Google Alerts is
  - danvoell 16y ago
    Awesome, I appreciate your help. Good Luck! Let me know if I can be of assistance in return.
iworkforthem 16y ago
I am launching www.tradesalerts.com in a few days.. would love some advice on how I can go about increasing conversions? I will drop you an email separately. Thanks in advance.
- paraschopra 16y ago
  Well, obviously, first get rid of "Just another WordPress site". Your image is confusing (to me, at least) and I think you could use a professional designer there. Also the subheadline (below image) sounds like you are shouting so maybe you can decrease the size a bit. And yes, put "$9 only for limited time. Only X spots left" right below your 'Subscribe' button. All in all, I think the page lacks "visual appeal" which creates trustworthiness. So, perhaps you can invest in some design.
  - iworkforthem 16y ago
    Thank you for the advices. Once the website starts to make some form of profit, top of the todo list is to hire a professional designer. Other cheaper options I have explored so far include; - Buy a theme from ThemeForest or WooThemes and Mod it. ($40) - Hire a designer to create the PSD, then use PSD to HTML/WordPress service. ($200) - Use crowd sourcing websites such as crowdspring/99designs (min $500) But to hire a designer at such a early stage could set me back at least $200, for a new gig it's hard for me to justify the cost, especially when design is so subjective. One might like it, others might now.
themansion 16y ago
I've worked with Paras on few occasions and cannot begin to tell you how helpful he has been. VWO is a stellar product that if you're not using it, confidently know you are loosing a lot of business. Our conversion ratio has increased substantially over course of 6 weeks with all the testing and implementations that we have done. Thank you, amir g. | executive director the mansion group.
- pinksoda 16y ago
  Visual Website Optimizer is a fantastic product and Paras is a great guy. If you run a website, you need to be using VWO. You will easily make your money back within one use. Pull the trigger. Buy it. You won't regret it.
- jasonc88911 16y ago
  I have seen Paras's posts the past year around the internet about Visualwebsiteoptimizer. I am very impresssed with him and his company. If you own a website and are looking to take your business to the next level greatly consider VWO as you will not be disappointed by the results.
paraschopra 16y ago
Wow got 6 emails already. Replying to every one of them now!
- paraschopra 16y ago
  Got 50+ emails by now. Will reply to all but it is already 12:30 am here :) Will try to reply as many I can do today, rest tomorrow. The biggest learning from looking at HNers' sites has been this: they are text-heavy without any clear call-to-actions and usually lack a concise, descriptive headline.
tony584 16y ago
I own http://www.chicagoteagarden.com http://www.chicagoteagarden.com - I'm using Ubercart for the checkout page. We don't have a huge amount of cart abandonment but I'm wondering if you see room for improvement as far as the UI goes. Thanks! My email is tony@chicagoteagarden.com
- aresant 16y ago
  I'd throw in a couple of comments on this one - I'm looking specifically at cart/checkout: a) Including the product picture again in the "Cart Contents" overlay provides better process continuity, and that usually results in better conversion. b) Push all of your fields to the left side of the page in "Delivery Info" and "Billing Info" - that will put those fields directly into the hot-zone of attention where users spend the most time looking - the less you make your users work the higher your conversion rate. c) The page width is a little off in IE8 and FF creating a horizontal scroll bar in 1024x768 at the bottom of the page, this is one of those tiny little professionalism issues that people can subconsciously pick up on and ruins a sale - even if you're only seeing <10% of visitors in that resolution. d) Under payment method you have a floating radio button but no options - I'd remove the radio button, and position the VISA / MC / etc logos into the cart box. e) Showing an SSL certificate and reinforcing security heavily around where users are actually entering credit card info can result in huge gains - more on that here http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placement-of-trust-logos-can-make-a-huge-difference-in-conversion-rate/ http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placement-of... Good luck!
  - tony584 16y ago
    Thanks a lot! This is really helpful. You are right, I will definitely look into the 1024x768 scrollbar issue I did not know about that one. All of the other issues are also now on my to-do list. Thanks for the great advice. Cheers to better conversion rates!
- paraschopra 16y ago
  Your checkout page looks nice and simple. I only have a few tips: a) you can emphasize the total price (by perhaps increasing font or having it in a different color). Also, research has shown that #1 reason of cart abandonment is extra shipping costs. Visitors generally prefer to pay only what they think products costs. So, perhaps you can make that clear on the product pages itself (to set the right expectation). Also, perhaps you can minimize 'Coupon Code' tab and 'Newsletter' tab by default as it is not relevant to checkout.
mattblalock 16y ago
I co-founded http://www.myticklespot.com http://www.myticklespot.com - we use Magento and have a ton of cart abandonment... our conversion rate is 1.34% and won't budge. Where do you see room for improvement? Thank you so much for this offer!
- paraschopra 16y ago
  Well, I found in incredibly hard to find 'Add to Cart' button your site. On your product pages, you should move it to top and make it really prominent on the page (maybe a different color, how about red?). Plus, your product pages lack brief one line description. Ideally, I would like to see what a product is just below the product name. You have paragraphs and videos but not brief description. ou should emphasize the discount given. For now, I have to mentally calculate how much I am saving. Why can't you tell that directly on a page? You are also underplaying 'Free Shipping' aspect. It is a big, big advantage and should be written right next to the price. After I add product to a basket, you should swap the order of buttons in the popup. The checkout button should be displayed above the continue shopping button. Lastly, your checkout page: if possible, add tax in the price itself. Visitors don't prefer surprises on the checkout page. No where it was obvious to me that you were going to do that. Please avoid that or mention in price something like 10% tax extra (or better still, add in the price and say all inclusive). Then you ask users to register with the site but you do have a express checkout as well. I would test eliminating that step. You should be able to detect a repeat visitor from cookie or something, so ideally should show that step only to those visitors. Lastly, try to take all information in a single step (that is shown to increase conversions). Hope that helps!
  - mattblalock 16y ago
    WOW! Thank you so much! I've never considered a single of these things, thank you so much for the time and ideas. I've just added all of these things to my to-do list for AB testing!
jbstevens6 16y ago
I've been managing the website http://www.lakerestoration.com http://www.lakerestoration.com for a little under a year now. In that time I've managed to get the conversion rate up from 1.26% to about 1.78%. Any advice you could give me on further improvements would be awesome!
- paraschopra 16y ago
  I didn't realize that you were actually selling something on the site (and that's bad if you are actually selling something). I think you need a large headline on the homepage saying 'Buy Lake Weed Control Products' and then list 2-3 products (with images) and just below it 'See our full catalogue'.
natgordon 16y ago
I've working on http://toeflnow.com http://toeflnow.com. The primary market is ESL (English as a Second Language) aged 17-24. We are not converting. We actually had a much uglier out-of-the-box wordpress site that was converting better than this website. What's your advice about how we can improve conversions for our paid products?
webjoe 16y ago
Because of this offer, I'm signing up for Visual Website Optimizer. What a great way to share!
laed 16y ago
I own an educational video site and we just launched a subscription product for teachers that is getting traffic but no conversion. Any thoughts?http://www.studybeat.com/signup/instructors/ http://www.studybeat.com/signup/instructors/ My email is ed@studybeat.com Thanks!
jasonc88911 16y ago
I have seen Paras's posts the past year around the internet about Visualwebsiteoptimizer. I am very impresssed with him and his company. If you own a website and are looking to take your business to the next level greatly consider VWO as you will not be disappointed by the results.

30 points by paraschopra 16y ago

danvoell 16y ago

We don't have major traffic, around 25% of visitors signup for a free alert. We would love to hear your thoughts. www.gobuzz.com.

paraschopra 16y ago
Your page is well-built and has an informative headline too. However, I think following changes may increase conversions: a) Removing examples and (centering) and increasing size of the main dropdowns b) Selecting an option in dropdowns by default c) Removing 'preview' link d) Changing the color of button to red (yes, this can really work) Essentially, try to highlight the dropdown section in the middle of the page. You can have all "extra" stuff as a separate section below it. PS: You can also test a headline like "Google Alerts on Steroids" -- I am assuming most of your visitors would know what Google Alerts is
- danvoell 16y ago
  Awesome, I appreciate your help. Good Luck! Let me know if I can be of assistance in return.

iworkforthem 16y ago

I am launching www.tradesalerts.com in a few days.. would love some advice on how I can go about increasing conversions? I will drop you an email separately. Thanks in advance.

paraschopra 16y ago
Well, obviously, first get rid of "Just another WordPress site". Your image is confusing (to me, at least) and I think you could use a professional designer there. Also the subheadline (below image) sounds like you are shouting so maybe you can decrease the size a bit. And yes, put "$9 only for limited time. Only X spots left" right below your 'Subscribe' button. All in all, I think the page lacks "visual appeal" which creates trustworthiness. So, perhaps you can invest in some design.
- iworkforthem 16y ago
  Thank you for the advices. Once the website starts to make some form of profit, top of the todo list is to hire a professional designer. Other cheaper options I have explored so far include; - Buy a theme from ThemeForest or WooThemes and Mod it. ($40) - Hire a designer to create the PSD, then use PSD to HTML/WordPress service. ($200) - Use crowd sourcing websites such as crowdspring/99designs (min $500) But to hire a designer at such a early stage could set me back at least $200, for a new gig it's hard for me to justify the cost, especially when design is so subjective. One might like it, others might now.

themansion 16y ago

I've worked with Paras on few occasions and cannot begin to tell you how helpful he has been. VWO is a stellar product that if you're not using it, confidently know you are loosing a lot of business. Our conversion ratio has increased substantially over course of 6 weeks with all the testing and implementations that we have done. Thank you, amir g. | executive director the mansion group.

pinksoda 16y ago
Visual Website Optimizer is a fantastic product and Paras is a great guy. If you run a website, you need to be using VWO. You will easily make your money back within one use. Pull the trigger. Buy it. You won't regret it.
jasonc88911 16y ago
I have seen Paras's posts the past year around the internet about Visualwebsiteoptimizer. I am very impresssed with him and his company. If you own a website and are looking to take your business to the next level greatly consider VWO as you will not be disappointed by the results.

paraschopra 16y ago

Wow got 6 emails already. Replying to every one of them now!

paraschopra 16y ago
Got 50+ emails by now. Will reply to all but it is already 12:30 am here :) Will try to reply as many I can do today, rest tomorrow. The biggest learning from looking at HNers' sites has been this: they are text-heavy without any clear call-to-actions and usually lack a concise, descriptive headline.

tony584 16y ago

I own http://www.chicagoteagarden.com http://www.chicagoteagarden.com - I'm using Ubercart for the checkout page. We don't have a huge amount of cart abandonment but I'm wondering if you see room for improvement as far as the UI goes. Thanks! My email is tony@chicagoteagarden.com

aresant 16y ago
I'd throw in a couple of comments on this one - I'm looking specifically at cart/checkout: a) Including the product picture again in the "Cart Contents" overlay provides better process continuity, and that usually results in better conversion. b) Push all of your fields to the left side of the page in "Delivery Info" and "Billing Info" - that will put those fields directly into the hot-zone of attention where users spend the most time looking - the less you make your users work the higher your conversion rate. c) The page width is a little off in IE8 and FF creating a horizontal scroll bar in 1024x768 at the bottom of the page, this is one of those tiny little professionalism issues that people can subconsciously pick up on and ruins a sale - even if you're only seeing <10% of visitors in that resolution. d) Under payment method you have a floating radio button but no options - I'd remove the radio button, and position the VISA / MC / etc logos into the cart box. e) Showing an SSL certificate and reinforcing security heavily around where users are actually entering credit card info can result in huge gains - more on that here http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placement-of-trust-logos-can-make-a-huge-difference-in-conversion-rate/ http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placement-of... Good luck!
- tony584 16y ago
  Thanks a lot! This is really helpful. You are right, I will definitely look into the 1024x768 scrollbar issue I did not know about that one. All of the other issues are also now on my to-do list. Thanks for the great advice. Cheers to better conversion rates!
paraschopra 16y ago
Your checkout page looks nice and simple. I only have a few tips: a) you can emphasize the total price (by perhaps increasing font or having it in a different color). Also, research has shown that #1 reason of cart abandonment is extra shipping costs. Visitors generally prefer to pay only what they think products costs. So, perhaps you can make that clear on the product pages itself (to set the right expectation). Also, perhaps you can minimize 'Coupon Code' tab and 'Newsletter' tab by default as it is not relevant to checkout.

mattblalock 16y ago

I co-founded http://www.myticklespot.com http://www.myticklespot.com - we use Magento and have a ton of cart abandonment... our conversion rate is 1.34% and won't budge. Where do you see room for improvement? Thank you so much for this offer!

paraschopra 16y ago
Well, I found in incredibly hard to find 'Add to Cart' button your site. On your product pages, you should move it to top and make it really prominent on the page (maybe a different color, how about red?). Plus, your product pages lack brief one line description. Ideally, I would like to see what a product is just below the product name. You have paragraphs and videos but not brief description. ou should emphasize the discount given. For now, I have to mentally calculate how much I am saving. Why can't you tell that directly on a page? You are also underplaying 'Free Shipping' aspect. It is a big, big advantage and should be written right next to the price. After I add product to a basket, you should swap the order of buttons in the popup. The checkout button should be displayed above the continue shopping button. Lastly, your checkout page: if possible, add tax in the price itself. Visitors don't prefer surprises on the checkout page. No where it was obvious to me that you were going to do that. Please avoid that or mention in price something like 10% tax extra (or better still, add in the price and say all inclusive). Then you ask users to register with the site but you do have a express checkout as well. I would test eliminating that step. You should be able to detect a repeat visitor from cookie or something, so ideally should show that step only to those visitors. Lastly, try to take all information in a single step (that is shown to increase conversions). Hope that helps!
- mattblalock 16y ago
  WOW! Thank you so much! I've never considered a single of these things, thank you so much for the time and ideas. I've just added all of these things to my to-do list for AB testing!

jbstevens6 16y ago

I've been managing the website http://www.lakerestoration.com http://www.lakerestoration.com for a little under a year now. In that time I've managed to get the conversion rate up from 1.26% to about 1.78%. Any advice you could give me on further improvements would be awesome!

paraschopra 16y ago
I didn't realize that you were actually selling something on the site (and that's bad if you are actually selling something). I think you need a large headline on the homepage saying 'Buy Lake Weed Control Products' and then list 2-3 products (with images) and just below it 'See our full catalogue'.

natgordon 16y ago

I've working on http://toeflnow.com http://toeflnow.com. The primary market is ESL (English as a Second Language) aged 17-24. We are not converting. We actually had a much uglier out-of-the-box wordpress site that was converting better than this website. What's your advice about how we can improve conversions for our paid products?

webjoe 16y ago

Because of this offer, I'm signing up for Visual Website Optimizer. What a great way to share!

laed 16y ago

I own an educational video site and we just launched a subscription product for teachers that is getting traffic but no conversion. Any thoughts?http://www.studybeat.com/signup/instructors/ http://www.studybeat.com/signup/instructors/ My email is ed@studybeat.com Thanks!

jasonc88911 16y ago

I have seen Paras's posts the past year around the internet about Visualwebsiteoptimizer. I am very impresssed with him and his company. If you own a website and are looking to take your business to the next level greatly consider VWO as you will not be disappointed by the results.