To increase conversion rates, you need to be willing to make affiliate website improvements.
I know, this sounds technical.
But:
It’s quite easy if you’re using site building and design tools.
These two take the technical difficulties out of the affiliate website improvements. Most use drag-and-drop features to apply elements that will increase conversion rates such as stronger call-to-action buttons or a better email opt-in form.
What I’d like to do with this post is keep it simple (but effective).
I want to share some of the steps needed to boost those conversions on that affiliate site of yours so you’re earning more. Sound good? Let’s do this!
Why You’d Want to Increase Conversion Rates (Not Traffic)
Traffic generation is a hot topic whenever you come to sites like AffiliatePrograms.com because it’s fairly simple to understand. Affiliate marketers, and site owners alike, think “if I get more traffic then I can sell to more people”. Which is true, but traffic isn’t everything.
Imagine you get 10,000 visitors a month to your affiliate site…
…but it has a paltry 0.01% conversion rate.
Uh-oh, doesn’t look like you’re getting too much action there. Plus, you’re spending a good deal of time and money with the traffic growth.
Now imagine you’re getting those 10,000 visitors but that conversion rate bumps to 1.0%.
Now we’re talking.
The point of your efforts in affiliate marketing is to make money. Having boatloads of traffic coming to the site is nice but it’s not hitting the financial goals. Before long, you’ll get frustrated and abandon the project because it’s not worth the time and money.
You may reach your affiliated industry’s average with the right tweaks and conversion tracking.
Check out what WordStream found when they crunched the numbers:
The conversion optimization should work on all levels:
- Attraction
- Engagement
- Education
- Conversion
- Loyalty
The beauty of the efforts is found in the compounding benefits it adds to your affiliate website. A change at the “top” (attraction) will drive in more individuals – such as tweaking your headlines. A change to the “bottom” (loyalty) will develop repeat sales and advocacy which will refer others.
The benefits ripple through the channels.
Again, this sounds technical (it certainly is) but it doesn’t have to be so if you’re using simple tools and applying simple conversion rate strategies to make affiliate website changes.
The Affiliate Website Improvements that Need to Happen
There are two ways to go about making these improvements:
- Gut instinct where you make changes based on observations
- Using A/B testing to make changes based on data
We’d always advocate using split testing to make better decisions but honestly… gut instinct will work for now especially if you’re just starting the site, it’s in its early stages, or you haven’t done any tweaks since its launch.
Why?
Because we’ve rounded up the best practices and refined strategies others have used to increase conversion rates. The stuff that’s already shown a positive ROI.
You’ll want to do one, let it run, and measure the impact.
You can tweak these suggestions and strategies however you see fit for your affiliate website. Some will work while others fail to show promise. It’s a game but one worth playing.
If anything:
Do the big, sweeping changes at the start of the list if they’re not present on your affiliate website. Then, if you’ve got time and energy, move onto the smaller ones once you have that baseline established.
A Simplified Home Page
Web design has taken a big cue from minimalism – and it’s great.
It’s kind of funny how websites began as basic business cards and evolved into these massive hubs. Yet, now they’re returning to this simplified design. The sites are stripped down so visitors are hit with a hook and call-to-action (just look at the home page of AffiliatePrograms or any app site).
Increasing conversion rates with this include:
- Defining a goal for the page (sign-ups, clickthroughs, shares)
- A refined, focus using the main keyword, blurb, and eye-catching media
- Optimizing the hell out of the page for SEO
- A dead-simple navigation (only the essentials)
- Live chat options (if you do that sort of thing)
- Proof by sharing reviews or humble bragging brands you’ve worked with
- Vibrant call-to-action button
Removing all the unnecessary elements lets the visitor focus on your intended offer. They’ll either bounce or become addictively hooked. From there, you keep hitting them hard with great content and offers.
Learn more: 10 Website Redesign Tips for Better Results in 2017
Call-to-actions
The call-to-actions (for emails, affiliate promotions, or whatever) is the usual suspect in why your affiliate website fails to convert traffic. Everything else looks good – you’ve got them hooked – but there’s something off-putting about the button or link.
Here are a few pointers for CTAs:
- Use red buttons (they get more clicks)
- Test the wording on your CTA (ex. Buy now vs learn more)
- Make it bigger and more direct (just tell them what you want)
- Leverage images to draw attention (follow the eye-flow)
Every site is a bit different and there’s also, however, you’re presenting your brand and tone. But, why mess with what works especially if it’s something as simple as changing the color or text?
Learn a whole lot more: 31 Call To Action Button Case Studies to try with your first A/B Test today
Content Structure
Most people will spend about 10-20 seconds on a site before bouncing.
They may have already begun skimming through the content in that short amount of time. We all do it – you’re doing it now (probably) because we’re busy and we look for bullet points and headers.
We want everything up-front.
Hell, it would be awesome if we could just write a top 10 in a couple sentences and be done with it. But, Google wants long posts and we want to be thorough.
Structure matters when you’re creating money-making pages.
Pages should have elements like:
- Strong, frequent headers and subheaders
- Images and video embeds
- Quotes and call-outs
It seems like it makes the posts overwhelming but adding these elements keeps the visitor’s attention.
This is the “perfect blog post” by Social Triggers.
Even if you don’t like the rigid structure of using this with every post you have to agree that it does make it easy to skim and process information. Take a few cues from it and structure your next affiliate promotional post this way.
Dig into this: How to Write the Perfect Blog Post: A Complete Guide to Copy
Contact and About
A lot of you will use personas when operating your affiliate websites but that doesn’t mean you can’t inject some personal branding and flavor. In fact, you should be doing so already because this makes you relatable and that relationship will improve conversions.
It’s a reason why we’re a bit free form with the content.
It jumps around sometimes…Anyway.
The about page should tell a good story.
If you’ve found a niche based on what you enjoy, then there shouldn’t be a problem with sharing how and why you got into the space. If you’re out of your element, then you could always make a story via persona, so people feel connected.
This also applies to the contact.
The contact form should be as stripped down as possible because any extra fields require extra efforts. Don’t put these barriers in place – time is money, friend. Also, add some flavor to it by sharing why people should contact you.
Who knows.
The added personal branding on the about page and a better contact form could be the big change you needed to get people engaged. It’ll certainly reshape how you’re operating the site.
Get inspired: 25 Best Examples Of About Me Pages
Social Proof
This was touched on with the homepage improvements and is something super simple to add to build your brand and authority.
We call this the “authority by association” tweak.
Ever notice how you’ll see tons of sites (big and small) showing off where they’ve been featured (it’s almost always Forbes, BusinessInsider, and Huffpo for some reason). It’s not like these platforms are super exclusive but they carry enough authority that creates a perception.
People like to bandwagon.
When they see your success, they tend to hop on board. They want to be a part of the winning team.
It makes sense, though.
You want to follow people that are authorities in their space. A way people build this is through who they know and where they’ve been (aka. Sites they’re featured on).
It creates trust.
You can add these elements quite easily:
- Email customers and have them leave you a review (then feature it on the site)
- Display logos of places you’ve been featured or brands you’ve worked with
- Have social media buttons display share counts to show off your popularity
These affiliate website improvements are done with plugins, changing a few lines of code, or using code templates and plunking it into the desired areas.
Collaborate and listen: The Psychology of Marketing: 18 Ways to Use Social Proof to Boost Your Results
The Affiliate Website Improvements Extras
And here are all the little ones that are worth mentioning to increase conversions (again, without them becoming too technical):
- Add a search function using Google Site Search for better user accessibility
- Visualize a visitor funnel for the site and place offers in those key areas
- Use better photos from sites like Unsplash or Pixabay
- Display offers using three-tiered pricing via tables found through the Envato marketplace
- Flatten website UI elements so they’re easier on the eyes and less distracting
- Place a trust seal on the sales pages for added comfort with security
- Secure the site with HTTPS (which will also give it a nice SEO bump)
- Convert written content into videos since they’re more engaging
- Use a different color for your links for contrast (red is especially good)
- Tone it down a bit with the copy (don’t overhype or overpromise)
- Writer longer content which will let you use more keywords and phrases
- Use readability scores to bring the content to your readers level (Hemmingwayapp is good)
There’s plenty of others that’ll probably get added as time goes on. But, this should be more than enough to update and optimized your affiliate site.
The Tools to Get You There
Most (if not all) conversion optimization and affiliate website improvements can be done by your hands if you have the patience. Lots of tweaks are drag-and-drop or copy/pasting code. Others require a little finesse and commitment (like content creation) but overall, it’s not that hard.
But…
Why work harder when you could work smarter?
Optinmonster
This handy tool creates targeted messages to point visitors toward pages they’d enjoy. This keeps users on the site longer which will improve your chances of catching them with the right promotion. It also gives you simple design tools to add beautiful forms (popups, slide-ins, and opt-ins).
It’s not going to take care of all the other parts of making the affiliate website improvements. But, it’ll do the big ones that matter like growing your email list and keeping visitors engaged.
Hotjar
This is an awesome tool that will let you create and share heatmaps.
Heatmaps are a super simple way to understand how your visitor interacts with the site. It’s a tool anyone can use if they understand that red=hot and blue=cold. As in, areas that are lit up get the most attention so maybe you should focus on that area.
Envato
Envato is one of the largest online marketplaces to buy and sell design elements. Here you’ll discover plugins, media, templates, and all types of items that’ll go into the affiliate website improvements. You’ll even find relatively unknown conversation rate optimization tools that you buy one and done. It’s a favorite place of ours when we’re building affiliate sites and need good assets.
Enough Rambling, Get to Work!
There’s a lot in this post to process.
Your mind is racing, trying to figure out which to do first.
Stop it.
It doesn’t matter.
Pick one and roll with it.
Stage out these strategies to increase conversion rates one at a time. That way you can learn a bit about their topics and method while putting them into play. Plus, you’ll let them mature – getting enough traffic and data to see if it worked.
You see?
Making those affiliate website improvements isn’t so hard, after all, was it?
