Affiliate marketing conversion rates will vary according to traffic and products. An average, conversion rate ranges from 0.5% to 1%, but they can also be much higher. Conversions (sales) divided by website visits multiplied by 100 equals your conversion rate. So with 2000 visitors to a website (for example) and 10 sales, your conversion rate is 10 divided by 2000 multiplied by 100 (per cent) = 0.5%.
Getting a higher rate of sales can therefore be achieved by increasing your traffic or your conversion rate, or both.
Affiliate Marketing Conversion Rates
Before affiliate marketing, sales people would go door to door trying to sell their wares. Other than knocking on more doors to make more sales, sales people realised that if they change something in their sales approach or tactic, they could sell more products with fewer knocks on doors! Less effort would therefore be needed to increase sales if they became better persuaders/sales people.
The same is true of affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, people buy directly from websites or email lists. By altering certain elements of the customer journey, affiliates can increase their conversion rates even with the same amount of traffic. If they also increase their traffic volume, they can increase their sales even more dramatically.
Affiliate Marketing Conversion Rates – Increasing Conversions
So, the two elements for affiliates to consider when trying to increase their sales are:
- Traffic – more traffic equals more sales (providing conversion rate is above 0%!)
- The rate at which traffic converts into customers (conversion rate)
To improve conversion rate affiliates can alter some element of their sales process. This can be something on their website, or their email messages. There’s a few things you can change in order to increase your website conversion rate.
Increasing Conversion Rate On An Affiliate Website
- Build an email list – affiliates will usually offer something for free on their websites in exchange for subscribers email information. They can then build a longer term relationship with their email subscribers through email marketing campaigns. See the power of email marketing.
- Change an element of the offer. From a sales page, affiliates can cross test different headings, images, offers and text/copy to determine which ones perform the best across a significant number of visitors.
- Increase/decrease the number of emails sent out to subscribers. Many affiliates will testify to an increase in sales following an increase in email marketing messages sent out. By trying different strategies, you can compare and contrast to find better converting strategies.
- Offer more opt in offers – Often you will see multiple opt in offers on an affiliate website. This gives your visitors more options to opt in to your email list.
Content Congruency
Another important element of your affiliate marketing conversion rate is your traffic source. If your traffic comes from your content, you need to ensure your content brings the right kind of visitor to your website. If traffic comes from paid advertising, the same applies. It can be easy to overlook this issue and bring a tonne of traffic to your website, none of which is buyer traffic.
For example, if you create content which attracts freebie seekers, using “free” in your keywords, you’re much less likely to convert this traffic than content such as a product review. A product review attracts buyer traffic. People look for reviews to help them make a purchasing decision. People look for free stuff when they don’t intent to buy something, but rather they want something for free.
So, by paying attention to the content you create on your website, you can increase your conversion rate simply by understanding the search intent of your audience before writing/creating your content. To find content ideas and ideas for keywords in your ads, you can use Google’s keyword planner tool.
Unless you are careful in creating an advert, you can easily have your advert shown for keywords which may attract freebie seekers, instead of serious buyers. If you’re a content creator, choose keywords carefully and think about the search intent before creating content.
Cross Testing Website Elements
Cross testing is one of the best ways to improve your website’s conversion rates. You can cross test many elements of your website:
- Your Opt In offer – cross test images, headings and text
- Your website layout/theme
- Landing pages – from a paid marketing campaign
- Menus on your main landing page
To cross test a particular website element, you will want to record your conversion rate across a number of visits. If 1000 visitors only gives you a conversion rate of 0.5% in sales, you can change one small element and then record the difference in conversion rate across another 1000 visitors. By doing this consistently, you can build a picture of which element converts the best between the two. Then split test again with another element. One of the best ways to do this is with landing pages.
With a landing page, you have a specific web page designed to convert a visitor into a subscriber by offering them a free giveaway. When you cross test landing pages against each other, you learn which ones convert better across a certain number of visitors. Access a landing page software here.