buy.at’s Jeannine Crooks visited the Conversion Conference in San Francisco last week, which covered methods that advertisers and site owners can use to increase conversion rates.

One of the show highlights was an opening keynote from conversion expert Tim Ash – recognized for helping companies such as Verizon, Canon and 1-800-flowers improve their online conversion rates.  His speech focused on ways to generate consumer commitment through micro-conversions, and Jeannine pulled out several helpful takeaways for affiliates.

Main Takeaway: A critical step in maintaining repeat buyers is commitment
A powerful way to lock in repeat customers is to get them to commit to your site.  The best kind of commitment is voluntary, public, and small.

• - Voluntary: invite the action, but let the consumer make the decision – they’ll enjoy the control and the participation
• - Public: once posted publicly there is no going back, but it’s such a tiny commitment to merely “like” something
• - Small: something that hardly requires a thought, so it is very easy to do

Once you’ve achieved this goal, you’ve already won – as consumers are now committed to the product, even if that commitment seems very small.  The most important point to remember is the direction they are pointing, not the magnitude of the commitment.

Examples
Chances are that you’ve seen this strategy employed on sites already – asking people to “like” something on Facebook, tweet about their latest purchase, or rate their experience.  Each action is small, voluntary and public.  All of these require involvement, and thus commitment, even at only the tiniest level. …which leads us to micro-conversion – a tiny act of commitment with broad implications. Once someone has publicly said they like your site, they are easier to convert again because they have already said they are behind you and your products.

Implementing the Idea
Make sure that sharing is easy for consumers – give them a simple, fast way to make a commitment.  Sure, people may not announce on Facebook that they just bought a picture frame or dog toy, but maybe they will give a thumbs up for the product on your site. Determine which response is most likely, and set up a mechanism to encourage this action.  Not only will this type of endorsement encourage newcomers visiting the site to make a purchase, it will help to secure the original buyer’s position as a repeat customer.  Embrace the concept of the micro-conversion to help your site grow.

Up Next….
Stay tuned for more takeaways from the Conversion Conference in future posts!

-Jeannine Crooks, buy.at US

This entry was posted by Amy on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Events, Tips & Advice, US. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.