On Wall Street, financial investors speak of CEOs improving their companies’ “top line” by increasing sales volume or their “bottom line” by reducing their expenses to expand the margins from their current sales volume.
For online businesses a similar “top line – bottom line” approach should be taken by business owners determining where to direct their improvement efforts.
Defining Top-Line versus Bottom-Line
An online business improves its “top line” by increasing the number of unique visitors to its website or its “bottom line” by increasing its “visitor-to-sale” or “visitor-to-lead” conversion rates.
Let me illustrate.
After an online business establishes its performance metrics, it is able to predict with confidence the expected results from its visitor traffic. For example, an online business’s performance metrics may show that for every 1,000 visitors received, 15 sales are completed – a sales conversion rate of 1.5 percent.
With this understanding, the business can increase its “top line” growth by driving more visitors to its website. For example, if the business invests money in traffic generation efforts to increase visitor traffic from 1,000 to 10,000, 150 sales will be achieved from the 1.5 percent sales conversion rate – a ten times growth rate.
Top-Line Improvements Focuses on Traffic Generation
What are “traffic generation efforts”?
In brief, traffic generation efforts are ways an online business attracts visitors to its website. They may include online efforts such as search engine optimization, pay-per-click search engines, affiliate marketing, email campaigns, and media or offline ones such as direct mail, television, radio, and public relations.
On the other hand, the business may decide to spend its money on improving its “bottom line” by concentrating efforts on website conversion strategies.
For example, if the above online business invests money in website conversion strategies to increase its sales conversion rate from 1.5 percent to 2 percent, then for the same 1,000 visitors, sales will increase from 15 to 20 – a 25 percent increase.
Bottom-Line Increases Focus on Website Conversion Strategies
So what are website conversion strategies?
Web site conversion strategies are website design changes that connect with your visitor's wants and persuade them to take action to achieve your goals as well as theirs. There are endless strategies to increase your bottom line, although some have greater significance than others.
Depending on your type of online business, different strategies may achieve greater results for your website and offer greater relevancy for your visitors.
If you manage a consumer or business product website, then website conversion strategies that focus on reducing shopping cart abandonment may provide the greatest website conversion improvement. While a service business’s lead generation website will find improvement from website conversion strategies focused on “contact us” form completion.
On the next page, Kevin Gold provides details on how to implement website conversion strategies and how to decide whether focusing on traffic generation or website conversion strategies will increase your online business's sales the most. Click to continue reading.
