Fellow authors – in addition to my career as a non-fiction author, I’ve spent close to 10 years doing website analysis for corporate, higher education, and personal websites.  Increasing your conversion rate (the number of people who purchase your book or service, rather than just looking) is a must for authors, whether self or traditionally published.

Below you’ll find the five steps I typically take to increase website conversion.  Try it – and let me know how this works for you.

1. Best Practices
Wikipedia states that best practices are the most efficient and effective way of accomplishing a task, based on procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people. In medicine, if you go into the Emergency Room with chest pain, best practices dictate you’ll receive an electrocardiogram (EKG).

On the web, best practices include adding meta data to your web pages, chunking your information into easy-to-read bites, and adding ALT tags to your images. Are you using unique meta data on each page or are you using the same title on every page throughout the site? Time to go back and start honing that meta data.

2. Clear Value Proposition
Why should I buy from you instead of the guy on the next website? What do you have that compels me to choose you from all others? A clearly-stated value proposition.

Your value proposition differentiates you from your competition, and clearly states how your offering is better than anyone else in the world. You offer three books and a 15 minute consultation. Your competitor offers two books and a 30 minute consultation. It’s up to you to clearly tell me why I should pick you.

3. What’s In It For Me?
The WIIFM chant never changes. Your website isn’t about you (unless you’re Barack Obama or Michael Phelps!) – - it’s about how the customer will benefit from buying your product or hiring your services.

For example, if you’re selling a new computer system with the fastest processor ever made, what’s in it for me is the ability to run multiple applications at the same time, or play computer games at a faster speed. Does your site focus on client benefits, or you?

4. Call to Action
I analyzed an author’s website to try and improve the non-existent book sales. Guess what? There wasn’t any BUY button on the site. Even if you wanted to buy the book, you couldn’t!

Don’t be shy about asking your site visitor to do what you want by having a clear call to action. Ask them to call you now, e-mail you within the next 24 hours, click to buy, or purchase at today’s discount. Use action verbs, and even if the call to action is obvious to YOU, make sure it’s obvious to your site visitor.

5. Usability
One of the best books written on usability is titled “Don’t Make Me Think“. That says it all. If your website visitor has to click through five levels of navigation before finding important information, you’ve got usability issues.

Keep your most important items no more than two clicks down in navigation, and remember – it’s more important to have clear and easy navigation than almost any other factor – - a site visitor who can’t find what they’re looking for because your navigation is fuzzy will never return.

What Next, Marketing Author?
View your site through new eyes. If you were a visitor to your website, could YOU easily find what you want? Do you know what to do? Would YOU choose YOU?

In the  years that I’ve coached authors and entrepreneurs, I’ve discovered that the majority of people think marketing their books is an expensive proposition – - particularly when it comes to selling on the Internet.

Truth is, it can cost a lot if you have the bad luck of working with an unscrupulous “publicist”, or spend thousands on an ineffective pay-per-click campaign.

There are good publicists out there, but even the best publicists in the business will tell you (or they SHOULD tell you) that their efforts will get you noticed, but that notice does not necessarily translate to sales. Additionally, you may get people to your website via pay-per-click, but traffic doesn’t always equal sales–particularly if you don’t write compelling sales copy.

In my experience–with my own coaching clients and with my own books–the best way to market your book is through grassroots or relationship marketing (building relationships with site visitors). When people KNOW you, they are much more willing to do business with you. Think of your own life experience re: buying from people you know and trust, and I think you’ll agree.

I invite you to “pick my brain”, and use these three no-cost ways of getting yourself noticed on the Internet – - all without squandering your kid’s college fund!

1. Blog

2. Publish on Amazon’s Kindle

3. Social networking

Blogging

For authors, blogging can be as second nature as breathing. After all, we ARE writers! But what benefits does blogging have, particularly when you’re just getting started?

First, search engines love blogs–particularly those that are updated at least a few times a week, and are filled with solid, no-B.S. content. Search engines swoop through blogs like bed bugs in the Bates Hotel–spidering content on a daily (or even more frequent) basis.

Don’t believe me? After doing keyword research for a client, I installed a blog for them on Tuesday and by Thursday they were already showing up on page #1 of Google for three of their keywords.

Savvy authors use blogs to build a solid fan base - – many have hundreds or thousands of fans even before they get a book contract. Think how much more effective your book proposal would be if you could say that you already have 1,000 avid fans who read your blog every day. Book proposal committees love a built-in audience.

Cost: Zero, if you use a free blog service like blogger.com

Amazon Kindle Publishing

Regardless of Sony and iPhone’s chest-beating about beating the Amazon Kindle in the digital reader wars, Amazon has one thing no one else has – access to more than 350,000 books and articles delivered wirelessly (immediately) to the Kindle.

Unfortunately, Amazon did NOT make it easy for people to convert their own books and articles to Kindle format, but it is doable. If you’re willing to do tech-stuff, you can do it yourself. I started converting my own work several months ago, and there is a learning curve.

The good news is, by converting your work to Kindle format, you can get your books, articles, and reports in front of Amazon’s 54.2 million monthly visitors for free. (If you need a referral to a trustworthy Kindle conversion guy, e-mail me)

Cost: Zero, if you convert the work yourself. About $100 if you use a service.

Social Networking

Millions of people have jumped on the social networking bandwagon over the past few years. In fact, one person I know brags that he’s on 34 different social networks. Don’t know about you, but I’d rather be writing than spending all day on 34 social networks.  Don’t get me wrong – social networking is a fabulous way to get noticed. However, you’ll have far more success if you concentrate on the social network where YOUR target demographic lives.

How can you tell where to find your audience? Take an afternoon and cruise through MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Twitter,  et al, and search for your target keywords. You’ll quickly discover which services house your audience; once discovered, devote your social networking time to that service only. Quality over quantity matters.

What next?

Regardless of your experience, background, or genre, chances are you’re already taking one of these crucial steps. The good news is, follow all three and you’ll soon have a marketing plan that costs you zero to under $100 bucks.

If you were browsing in a bookstore and the person next to you – - let’s call him Leo – -  picked up a book you had written, you’d probably tell him you were the author, and before long a full-blown conversation would be in the works.

Leo would ask you about writing the book, you’d ask Leo about his interests . . . and a connection between the two of you would be established.  This doesn’t guarantee Leo will buy your book, but it does guarantee he’ll remember you.

Answering potential client e-mails works the same way. While autoresponders are effective tools, I don’t believe they can replace a personalized e-mail when a “Leo” is inquiring about your services. I would rather cut and paste the “canned” info into a personalized e-mail rather than having everyone who asks about my services get an autoresponder response.

Getting personal is part of relationship marketing.

Relationship Marketing in Action

I got an e-mail a couple of days ago asking about my book-to-Kindle conversion and marketing services. Although my response contained the basic “canned” information about my services and fees, I looked for a way (as I always do) to make a more personal connection.

In this case, I noticed from his area code that he lived in a city I had recently visited. In the e-mail I told him that I had just been there, a few of the things I had seen, and how much I’d enjoyed the trip. Can you guess what his response was?

Yes, he signed up for my service . . . . but just as importantly he told me how much he appreciated my “friendly” e-mail. When he needs more Kindle or book marketing services, do you think he’ll come back to me?  I’d bet on it.

One Last Thought: Being Genuine

My “friendly”  response to potential clients is genuine; yes, I believe it’s good marketing, but I also think if you try to cram B.S. “warm and fuzzies” into these types of e-mails, the client will know it’s bogus. I’m pretty good at spotting an insincere salesman, aren’t you?

How do you handle those incoming letters of inquiry? Autoresponder or personal response.  Do you believe you can build rapport with an autoresponder?  Love to hear your thoughts.

Although getting your book on Amazon may seem like the Holy Grail of authordom, it’s really just the end of the writing stage and the first step of the marketing phase—an arena most authors shun with great dislike and/or disdain.

One of my recent clients (an entrepreneur selling a well-written how-to manual via the  Kindle Store), asked me for a few marketing ideas he could do on his own.  The easiest task, I told him (and one of the most effective) was getting several positive reviews for his Amazon Kindle book.  My suggestion was to send e-copies to colleagues and friends, asking them to give the book a run-through and then post a review.

Do your friends actually have to read the book to give it a review? Well, no.  But the plus of giving them a copy is:

1. They may catch some doofus mistake you made, saving you the embarrassment of a book buyer who revels in pointing out the dumb stuff they find in a review that will NEVER GO AWAY.
2. With a copy in hand, they can write a much more detailed review because they have all of the info at hand – not just the bits you tell them about
3. If your book is on a topic of interest to your friends, they’ll probably write a far more enthusiastic review because it’s something they actually care about.

Positive reviews – in my opinion – have accounted for dozens of my own book and article sales.  Think about it – if you’re unsure about buying a particular book, don’t YOU read the reviews?  I know I do.

Getting positive Amazon reviews is the least of your book marketing efforts – what else can you do? Stay tuned . . . and if you feel like commenting, I’d love to hear your Amazon book review technique suggestions.

If you’re like me, most of your Amazon purchases are completed only after reading other people’s reviews. We may not trust a publisher’s hype, but we do tend to trust the opinion of other readers.

Can you use this review system to market your own book?  You bet.  Here’s how.

Search Amazon for a book you’ve read that ranks high in your genre.  Then, register to be an Amazon reviewer (if you already have an account, you can review).   BUT, make sure you’ve set up a profile page that includes a link to your own website.

Next, write a review for the popular book.  Either in the review itself, or in your profile, be sure to mention you own book or website. If other readers perceive that you really know the topic, they’re more apt to go over and check out your book.