You’ve heard the quote that Mark Twain supposedly made famous: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Well, statistics don’t lie, but they can overwhelm us to the point that numbers attack us in our nightmares.
But if you’re going to succeed as an affiliate, you need to pay attention to certain statistics and work toward improving them.
One such statistic, the click-through rate, is the percentage of ad impressions on a website that result in click-throughs. I.e., someone sees the ad on the site and is intrigued enough to click on the ad to see where the link takes him or her. The visitor may click on the ad either with a purpose that could eventually lead to a sale, or merely out of curiosity. Either way, the visitor’s clicking on the ad constitutes a click-through and improves the ad’s click-through rate.
An even more important statistic, as it pertains to the profitability of your affiliate business, is the conversion rate – the percentage of click-throughs that lead to sales or other intended actions (such as, for instance, a visitor signing up for your opt-in list).
A high click-through rate does not necessarily lead to a high conversion rate. So why care about the click-through rate? Simple – because a low click-through rate guarantees a low conversion rate.
So the question you have to answer is not just “How do I improve my click-through rate?” It’s also “How do I persuade people who click on the ad to buy the product once they click through?” After all, the more serious a visitor is about buying what’s being sold on the other side of your ad, the more likely a sale will result and thus earn you a commission for the sale.
You can shape your web content to enable the visitor to become more serious, too. Preparing substantive content, such as reports, white papers, product reviews, interviews, and the like, does more to convince the visitor about a product than just the attention-grabbing graphic that screams “CLICK HERE.”
Many other statistics can inform and enlighten (as well as confuse and frustrate) affiliate marketers. But when you get down to brass tacks, the click-through rate and the conversion rate are the two fundamental ones. They give you the low-down on how effective you are at driving sales to the merchant’s website.