Most website traffic doesn’t equate to sales so if you’re wondering how to turn website traffic into sales, this post is for you. Remember that the internet is an information gathering tool, and not a shopping mall. So when someone visits a website their intent is usually to find out some information.
Problem solving content will often help people out with specific problems, such as how to unblock a sink, for example. But that content won’t lead to many sales because that information can be used without having to make a purchase.
So the large proportion of content online leads to nothing other than website hits, not sales. But certain content will lead to more sales than others. That’s the kind of content you want to be creating if you’re an affiliate selling products.
How To Turn Website Traffic Into Sales – Creating Content Which Attracts Buyers
So what content attracts buyers? Well reviews are a good place to start. With a review, someone is actively seeking information regarding a specific product. If you answer their questions satisfactorily, and lead them to the product (via your affiliate link), they are highly likely to buy that or some similar product which you have recommended.
Price comparison sites are a good option for affiliates too. With a price comparison website, consumers are looking for the best deals. When they find the cheapest deal, they buy something – ideally through your affiliate link.
Martin Lewis’s website moneysavingexpert.com is a price comparison site which attracts people looking to save money on their bills. It is also an affiliate website which makes money through its referrals.
How To Turn Website Traffic Into Sales -Giving Away Information
“How to” guides work well too if you lead website visitors to products which add extra value. For example, I have an affiliate guide for beginners here which you can grab a free copy of.
To turn website traffic into sales with a free guide, you can use a downloadable ebook in conjunction with an email list. Many website owners also use free courses, video tutorials and other methods to encourage website visitors to sign up to their email list.
If you don’t have an email list, (get one here), and you’re trying to make money from a website with content alone, it’s highly recommended you get one. An email list can make a huge difference to your bottom line as an affiliate marketer.
How To Turn Website Traffic Into Sales – Build An Email List From Your Website
Using a free giveaway product of some kind (a legitimate bribe) encourages website visitors to opt in to your email list. From the email list, you can send subscribers information and keep in touch with them over a longer period of time.
Studies have shown that most online consumers will need 6-8 touch points with a certain product or website before they make a decision to buy. On a website, you only have a few minutes for someone to make a purchase. But once you get them on your email list, this period of time is vastly extended.
I’ve recently sold an affiliate product to someone who joined my email list 5 years previously! This just wouldn’t be possible from a website because once someone leaves your website most will never return.
You can also build trust with your email subscribers by offering value driven email messages. Over time, your subscribers should come to know like and trust you, if you’re offering genuine value. If this happens they are much more likely to buy from you if your products match their needs.
How To Turn Website Traffic Into Sales – Understand Your Audience
Your perfect customer (aka the customer avatar) is the type of person who will buy all your products and become a life long fan! Once you get clear on who it is your want to attract to your affiliate offers, you can craft content which matches their needs much better.
Whereas if you’re randomly throwing out content without thought, you’ll attract a lot of people who don’t match the customer avatar criteria. If you want your content to convert, you must get to know your customer avatar and write content with them in mind. Ask yourself “what information do they seek?”, and provide it through your content marketing strategy.
By understanding your target audience (customer avatar) and writing with their needs in mind, your content will become more targeted towards those people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer.
How To Turn Website Traffic Into Sales – Use Pop Ups
We all know just how annoying popups are. But website owners continue to use them because they work at getting their visitors onto their email lists. Once you have built a large list of subscribers through your blog, you are in a much better position to sell an affiliate product because you’re in control of your traffic with a list.
If you’re just attracting visitors to your website, who leave and never return, you are expending huge effort for that traffic (creating more and more content).Likewise if you don’t get them to opt in to your email list, you have potentially lost a future customer who might buy something down the line. Popups, drop downs, ebook giveaways and video courses are all simple ways to give your website visitors more value in exchange for their email address.
If you use multiple options for them to opt in to your email list, you’re more likely to convert more visitors into subscribers. See also my post on how to increase sales conversion rate.
Re-engage Visitors Who Have Left Your Website
Most website visitors to your website will leave without having taken any action and only a small percentage will usually buy from your links or opt in to your email list.
This will of course depend on your content. On a review website, where you review specific products, there will likely be a larger number of sales per visitor due to the intent of your visitors. But if you have an information website, only a small percentage will likely opt in to your list.
However, there’s other ways of bringing back old visitors to your website who have previously seen your content. You can offer a web push notifications using Push Engage. This is a plugin which offers your visitors the ability to opt in to notifications for any newly published content you have to offer.
Whenever you publish a new post on your website, they will automatically receive a notification about it. This encourages a lot of your old visitors to come back to your website for newly published content. A returning visitor is also more likely to join your list and be more engaged.
Use Retargeting – Bring Back Your “Old” Traffic
Retargeting is a similar method as the web push notifications plugin. With retargeting, you use an advertising platform such as Google Adwords to “re-target” visitors who have left your website. By placing some code on your website, Google knows who has visited it already and you can “follow” them around the internet, advertising directly to them whenever they find a website which allows it.
Retargeting is a great and very cheap way to bring back old visitors to your website. You can send them to a specific page on your website too, such as an email capture page/landing page to encourage them to join your email list.
Meet The Needs Of Your Audience
If you’re spending a lot of time creating content on a website, to drive traffic to your affiliate offers, you need to make sure they are a good match. Use a high value offer which meets the needs of your website visitors/customer avatar.
Having a bad match between your content and your offer is going to result in your not selling many products. So no matter how hard you work at generating website traffic, if your audience doesn’t want or need what you’re offering, you’ll struggle to sell anything.
So before you create any content, ask yourself whether that content is something your customer avatar would want to read/watch. If not, create something more aligned with their interests and needs. You also want to find a product which offers huge value and that your audience can afford!
Communicate The Value Of Your Products
With certain products, especially digital training products, the value to the customer is often less tangible than a physical product. With a physical product, what you see is what you get.
But with certain digital products, such as training courses and software products, the value is more arbitrary. Unless you communicate the value of your products in your content, and lead your visitors to them, they won’t buy from you!
Communicating value and leading your visitors to your products can be done through various ways:
- In your written text
- Through banners and videos
- In your email marketing messages
- Through paid advertising campaigns
- In your ebooks, downloads and video training