Why Won’t My Site Convert? #MyBlogU

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We are well into #MBUstorm challenge and our participants have started emailing me asking what to do if their sites don’t seem to convert.

Before we go into that, please make sure you went through our previous lessons:

We’ve already talked about building a memorable blog, crafting titles that stand out, rank and get clicked, finding time for your new site, building your brand assets, lead generation, engaging your readers, crafting a great logo on the cheap…

What Is Your Traffic?

Estimating conversion rate is a tricky thing and you can only do it right if you have enough new visitors coming daily.

And not just that: social media traffic converts differently than search engine traffic and both are different from referral traffic (The latter is mostly the best, especially when it comes from a page recommending you, your site or your product).

The bottom line here is, you can start talking about conversion rate (and how to improve it) ONLY when you have at least ~50 new visitors a day. The more, the better, obviously.

It really depends the business and what the website is trying to accomplish. Email optin, sign up, purchase etc #MyBlogU

— Jessie Liu (@jessiecliu) December 10, 2015

Experiment With Calls-to-Actions

We’ve talked about various ways to generate leads: There’s no ONE way to get your call-to-action work. It’s so individual that all you can do is to test and test and then test some more.

The best routine is to tweak something once per two weeks and see how your audience reacts. I’ve seen stories that bloggers saw 200%-300% increase in sign-ups by implementing a form overlay or getting rid of a blog sidebar…

Come Up with More Ways to Monetize Your Sites

Another previous Twitter chat of ours lists lots of alternative ways to monetize your niche site: From affiliate marketing tips to creating and selling your own (digital) products.

In some industries (e.g. health) you can earn a lot by placing AdSense ads or affiliate links. In other industries (e.g. technology) that will be pennies even if you convert well, so start looking for more way to earn now.

Conversion factors: brand strength, quality traffic, good site usability, quality product. #myblogu

— Alex SEOer (@alexseoer) December 10, 2015

Look What Other Sites in Your Niche (and Beyond) Are Doing

This should probably go #1: Subscribe to prominent bloggers in your industry and their monetization methods will soon become obvious.

Moreover, look outside of your niche: You can find some undiscovered monetization and conversion methods this way. Sites within one niche tend to copy each other a lot until anything that used to work becomes abundant. Looking outside of your niche box will help you find something new.

Conversion. Always look for what you can deliver. And promote others. Works well for me. #myblogu

— Doyan Wilfred (@ThinkDoyan) December 10, 2015

What do you do when your site seems to fail to convert? Let us know in the comments!

Most failures I see are due to the lack of a clear goal for the page. You can't quantify what you don't specify. #myblogu

— Don Sturgill (@DonSturgill) December 10, 2015

Creating a site that converts is complex. There are many people qualified to advise on what to change or test to make improvements. #myblogu

— Gail Gardner (@GrowMap) December 10, 2015

Jon Morrow! GREAT at pushing his products in the newsletter RT @seosmarty: Have you seen great examples of monetizing email lists? #myblogu

— Anna Fox (@manifestcon) December 10, 2015