One thing that I think gets overlooked on affiliate sites is the ability to change offers presented to the visitor over the course of a session - or even subsequent sessions. After a visitor has been presented with an offer a couple of times the chance to convert that particular offer drops considerably. The visitor obviously isn’t finding that offer attractive.

Rather that write that visitor off as one that isn’t going to generate revenue, you should consider changing the offer to try again during the same session. I currently do this on my leads sites but the origins go back to when I was selling products a few years ago. Back then I had noticed that most buyers had placed a product in their shopping cart within 3 page views of landing on the site. Those who hadn’t put anything in a shopping cart within that time frame probably weren’t going to end up buying anything. Now this isn’t a scientific conclusion and was probably based on the fact that I wasn’t a price leader in the market. It also might be affected by how informational your pages are. I would guess that the more informational your site the more pageviews you might get on average prior to a purchase.

But for me the three page view rule worked pretty well for my setup. My solution was to start offering a coupon or discount after 3 page views. Essentially I was trying to pick-up the price shoppers who might still be hanging around. I was also sure to make the discounts accessible from the beginning of the session, but it wouldn’t have been immediately obvious and thus most shoppers didn’t find the discount unless they were looking fairly hard. But once they had been on the site for awhile the discount would become more prominent in hopes I would have a better chance of converting these lingering visitors. There is no question that this technique increased my conversions.

Today, when most of my revenue is generated from lead generation, I still haven’t forgotten that lesson about changing offers. My sites are far more informational now and visitors will stay through more page views while being constantly exposed to offers in the niche. However, if they have viewed several pages, or even leave the site and later return, I am serving them different offers throughout the visits. Of course I start with my most profitable offers, but if they don’t seem inclined to click on an offer after 3-4 page views, I try a different one that might be of more interest.

This really isn’t difficult from the programming side and is something you should consider. Get some statistics from your site about your page view to lead conversion rate over the course of a user session. You will probably find that after several page views by a visitor your conversion rate falls. If that is the case, try something else to catch their attention.

I view it about the same as fishing. If you have cast your line into an area where you know there are fish but aren’t catching any, don’t sit there all day doing the same thing over and over. The fish obviously aren’t attracted to your bait. Change bait and you just might get a bite.