Double Your Online Wine Sales?

How would you like to double your online sales numbers?

It's easy, IF you can raise the conversion rate on your winery Web site from 1 percent to 2 percent (a typical retail site conversion rate).

There are just two little problems in doubling your conversion rate.  First, you need to know your current conversion rate, i.e. what percentage of visitors to your site make a purchase.  Second, you have to do something about it, which means understanding how to test.

Internet Retailer reports that 76 percent of all online retailers don't test the impact of changes to Web site content and design on their conversion rate (which probably means *at least* 76 percent of all winery Web sites).

In that light, I offer you a free excerpt (PDF) from Always Be Testing: the complete guide to Google Website Optimizer.   Here's a taste:

Whether you are pursuing sales, securing leads, or encouraging subscriptions, your website is out there interacting with your potential customers, trying to persuade them to take action. It’s the connective tissue that binds all aspects of your marketing. In theory you can fire it, but you can’t intimidate or shame it into better performance.

What you can do is test it.

The excerpt contains Chapters 1 (Always Be Testing), 36 (Headlines) and 43 (Website Optimizer Scripts).

For those of you you haven't heard of it before, here's a two-minute video tour of Google Website Optimizer, a free tool from the Googleplex which allows you to test the content and appearance of your winery Web site.  

Anyone care to share their conversion rates and/or experience?  Anyone used Google Website Optimizer on their winery Web site? Post a comment.