Conversion Rate Low; What To Change?

[DebraLloyd]

Bob - I see you became an Elite already, but just wanted to add that I became an Elite after attending the old free tuesday sessions and have gained so much from the Elite sessions. Lynn is indeed extremely dedicated and gives her all to 'her Elites' but the group itself is also very giving. The feedback and knowledge that is freely shared in the Private forum is also incredibly valuable, we all have different skills and skill levels so there's something for all, always good to have another voice and perspective on board.

[Bob White]

What is "LP"? What do you mean by lead captcher above the fold??

I swore I already answered this, but LP means Landing Page and putting your lead capture above the fold means it should look like this. That way you see it when you first visit the site, without having to scroll down first.

[tomstark]

Hmm, don't remember seeing that, but I guess I should've known what it meant... Ok, so you're basically saying move the form that's below the post to the top of the sidebar?

[Bob White]

Hmm, don't remember seeing that, but I guess I should've known what it meant... Ok, so you're basically saying move the form that's below the post to the top of the sidebar?

Tom:

Sorry, I didn't mean you missed it. It isn't there. Maybe it's caught in moderation land.

And yes, you want the things that are most important to show when they come to the site. Let's say you managed to get a great Motocross guy to autograph a helmet. You might want to use that as an incentive to get people to sign up for your newsletter.

Having a picture of that helmet with the guy standing next to you as he holds it might be a great reason to sign up -- assuming you are giving it away to one of the next 100 to sign up. But it would do little good if it was at the bottom of the page. Very few people might scroll down.

With a photo like that at the top of the page, along with your signup form, you'd do much better.

[tomstark]

Ok, yeah I know what you're saying. I'll put it up top and see how it goes.

[tomstark]

Well the form in the sidebar has done next to nothing. I've also tried changing one or two things at a time with adsense ads, but my CTR is still only .5-1%...... Does anyone have experience with adsense??

[Bob White]

What sort of traffic are you getting to the site? One thing I've noticed is that until you get good traffic, ratios just don't work out.

For example, I have a CTR of 25% on one of my sites for the past week. Pretty good, huh?!?
Until you see that I only have 1 click on 4 views for the month. Great "CTR". Lousy "C".

For the entire month of June, my biggest moneymaker site for AdSense had a CTR of .61%. Pretty low. But it was on 5,588 page views.

My next biggest moneymaker had a CTR of 8.49%. Pretty high. But I only had 377 page views for that site.

.61% versus 8.49%, yet I made nearly 33% more on the .61% CTR site.

[tomstark]

Last month was about 9000 visitors and 30k pageviews.

[Bob White]

That's some really nice traffic!

The next thing I'd ask is, "Is your site product based or info based?"

I'm noticing that, with my Smoothie Recipe site, I get a lot of clicks. But because it is info based, I get very few AdSense clicks, and even fewer Amazon clicks. People come to read free recipes, not to buy.

In the other hand, I have a Sun Awnings site that gets great AdSense clicks and has a super Amazon volume. But the site is built around selling products. People come there to buy.

You may need to make sure you are building well SEO'd pages around products -- "The 5 Safety Helmets for Kids", and such. People who follow those links will be in the helmet-buying mood.

[tomstark]

It is a little of both. I'd say the info-to-product based article is 3:1. Right now I'm just putting adsense ads on the info articles because I thought it may take away clicks from amazon (resulting in less sales). Do you think I should try putting adsense on the product review articles?