Why should you care about conversion tuning? In most cases you must pay market rates to get significant volumes of quality traffic to your site. This is true of both pay-per-click "PPC" traffic (based on an open auction model) and cost-per-acquisition "CPA" traffic (most of which goes to the destinations with the highest earnings per click). If you want more traffic, you basically have to pay more. Cost-per-click ("CPC") prices and CPA bounties for established industries are usually trending upwards.

So how can you compete?

Let's take a closer look:

The economics of your online marketing program depend on your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) for a new client or prospect. This CPA depends on two factors: your cost-per-click (CPC) for getting traffic to your site, and the conversion rate (CR).

By increasing your conversion rate, you lower your cost per acquisition without changing what you pay for the traffic.

Another way of looking at conversion improvement is the impact on profitability. Even a small increase in conversion rate can have a dramatic profit impact.

Let's consider a simple example: Your program has a 25% return on investment (ROI) - for every $1.00 spent on buying traffic, $0.25 in profit is created.

BEFORE:
    Value - $1.25
    Cost - $1.00
    Profit - $0.25

Let's assume that you can increase your conversion rate by a modest 20%. What would be the impact on your profits?

AFTER:
    Value - $1.50 ($1.25 x 120%)
    Cost - $1.00 (Unchanged - same marketing activities)
    Profit - $0.50

The 20% increase in conversion rate will DOUBLE your profits!

If you fix the conversion rate of your website, everyone will benefit. Your in-house programs make more money, your affiliate network drives higher revenues, and your affiliates will love you because increases in conversion rate represent additional pure profits to them. Fixing your conversion rate allows you to pay affiliates more without raising your payout structure!

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