We all want our website to send us tons of business, right?
But achieving this can be a frustratingly elusive goal for many business owners.
Fortunately I'm here to tell you there are proven tactics to work toward achieving it and some of them are contained in this post.
Conversion Optimisation is the name of the game
When you get someone to do something on your website – download an eBook, buy something, fill in a form or otherwise get in touch with you, it is called a 'conversion'.
And your 'conversion rate' is the number of people that take this desired action as a percentage of the number of visitors you get to your site.
So obviously, increasing this rate is something you want to achieve.
Ok, so how do you do it?
1. Get the right kind of visitor
First off, the visitors you get have to be:
- The right people – those who need and want what you offer
- At the right time – those who are ready to buy
- In the right place – if you service a set geographic location, then visitors need to be in the same place as you
There is no point having hundreds of visitors to your site if they are all spammers or originating in India, Russia or Brazil (unless you are there also!).
If you think you have a problem here, you might find How to get more people to visit your website or How to Increase your website traffic by focusing on referrals useful.
2. You can only manage what you measure
If you have your main (and possibly only) phone number on your website and your one (and main) email address then you can't differentiate between enquiries that come from the site and those that came from somewhere else like the yellow pages.
We recommend you use a separate number and separate email addresses.
Web analytics like Google Analytics (that we put on all our client sites) is essential for knowing where your visits come from and what they do when they get there. You can also add tracking to see how many people click certain links. You should certainly know which pages are the most popular, and which ones have the highest bounce rate (which is when people leave without going anywhere else). Does anyone actually click on that 'special offer' link?
If you don't have (or don't look at) whatever measurement tools you have, then you don't know what is working and what is not.
3. Get them to know, like and trust you
This is the three steps people will go through before they are emotionally ready to engage with your brand or business. If they don't 'like' the tone of what you say they'll probably go no further.
So, here is some ways to help them along:
People do business with People
Not faceless organisations – include plenty of information about your team, your company, what you stand for and what you believe. Don't put it pride of place on the home page though – just make it easy to find. I prefer images of key team members which put a human face to the business.
Blogs are a great way to convey what you stand for on specific topics.
I'm amazed how many websites have the latest parallax scrolling pages, flat design and trendy encircled images but give you NO idea who they are and what they are about. I always ask – what are they hiding?
Make it all about them.
Focus on the reader and what you can do for them. Don't include information that is all about you. If most of your paragraphs start with 'We' then there is probably something wrong. If your site is made up of pages like 'who we are', 'what we are about', 'our mission', 'our processes' etc. then the balance is wrong.
Taking Payments?
If you are taking payments, many people are understandably cautious. So it's especially important to give them reason to trust you.
Along with information about who you are, include where you are (a real physical address preferably), a phone number, and your return/refund and shipping policies.
Include testimonials, customer feedback and other social proof items (see below).
Include social proof
Social proof are ways of letting others (specifically, your customer base) speak for you. It's easy to say "I'm good". But it's better if others say it for you.
Include testimonials and put them in more than one place, e.g. next to or inside of, the content about a product or service.
Customer case studies are a powerful way to say “Here's an example of how we solved this customers problem”.
If you can, include “trust” logos or seals, such as those for security firms like Verisign, or your local business and professional industry bodies.
Tell people how many people have liked, tweeted or shared content or downloaded a certain document - although to be fair this will only work if people do actually like, comment, download or share your content!
4. Poor Design = Poor impression
The visual design plays a part in building trust. A poor design gives an unprofessional impression.
If a business won't spend money on or put effort into a good website how can a potential customer be sure they will be given any time and attention?
But what does 'good' design really mean anyway? Not the latest web design trend, that's for sure.
What it does mean is things like:
- Clear, easy to read content – so good contrast between page colour and font
- Text that is big and clear enough to read easily
- A page for each service so the visitors doesn't have to hunt for them
- Quality images – not small, grainy ones they have to squint at.
- Space around each piece of content so it's easy to focus on.
- Limited distractions (ads, unrelated content, video, images or links etc.)
- Important content dominates the page or is highlighted so it's easy to spot
- Visual harmony – hard to describe exactly what this means, but you know bad visual design by your reaction. It's normally “ugh”.
- Advertising is not intrusive – i.e. it doesn't interrupt the content. One kind of advertising that I think is particularly problematic is the kind that you click on by accident, thinking you are going to navigate to the next page.
Web design does follow trends, and you don't necessarily need to follow them – but you do want to look current.
Older websites that have not been reviewed for a while have some tell-tell signs – although visual aesthetic is a bit hard to pin down, you will likely see some or all of these on older sites:
- Look a bit like a brochure – heavy on images but no calls to action and text is often contained within the images themselves
- Won't have any sign of social engagement – no links, no sharing.
- Content that hasn't been updated for years
- Tend to have smaller font sizes
- Tend to have narrow and/or crowded pages – recently design has favoured lots of space to give content room to breath, and bigger text
- Errors – broken links, non existent images or computer generated error messages
- Splash pages – i.e a page that precedes the homepage – especially if it's animated
- Novelty navigation
- Moving, rainbow text – actually moving, rainbow anything that isn't video
- Music that starts automatically
- Copyright information dated some years ago
- Visible hit counters – again, just ugh
- They are not responsive and don't work on mobile devices. To be fair, many businesses are (understandably) taking their time to understand their mobile audience and develop a quality product rather than leaping into a quick and dirty solution just to tick a check box.
Getting a good site re-design may be the single most important thing you can do to increase enquiries if you haven't reviewed or refreshed the site for a few years.
Before you say it, yes I know this page is narrow. Like plumbers with a leaky tap - our new website is in the works!
5. Content is still king
Keep it up to date
If the content is out of date – three year old news for example – what does that say about the kind of attention and care your customers will be given? Not much.
Have content that meets their needs
A good site will include lots of relevant information that help the visitor early in their buying process, not just when they are ready to buy. People start with research online – if they get a favourable impression early, there is a good chance that they will come back and buy from you when they are finally ready to make a purchase.
Include the most important information they will want:
- It sounds simple but makes sure your 'buy' or 'enquire' links and buttons are obvious
- If you have a product out of stock, say so.
- Include your prices if they are fixed. Don't make them contact you to find out.
- Put the areas you work – if you only service clients within a certain radius of where you are – say so
- Put delivery and shipping prices where they are easy to find
- If you only deal with certain brands or technologies say so
- If you only deal in certain colours or styles – say so
- If you only deliver in a certain geographic area - say so. Alternatively if you deliver to the whole country - say that to!
- Deal with common objections upfront by answering them with benefits of what you offer
- FAQ's to cover off the most common questions
Frustration at not finding critical information is a certain conversion killer.
Get only what you need
Don’t ask for more information than what you truly need on your forms. And nobody should have to enter their physical address to subscribe to a newsletter.
Think carefully about forcing people to register. Common on ECommerce sites, it is also a main barrier for many. Consider a guest checkout.
6. Speak their language
Jargon is a way that people inside an industry business (especially corporates) can communicate quite complicated concepts quickly.
For example, "Conversion Optimisation" is a piece of jargon for marketing folk to mean a whole pile of actions designed to get a website to generate more business. But it means nothing to anyone else.
If you are in an industry that has jargon – break it down to plain English, or if really necessary provide a glossary.
There are also words that are used instead of saying it like it is. When it comes to your benefit statements try and avoid phrases like:
- solutions – as opposed to what - causing problems?
- paradigm – shifting or otherwise
- best practice – best for who?
- professional – your audience expects nothing less so why say it
- collaborative – why not say “work together”?
Be careful to use words that your audience understands – and if they are just new to the topic at hand, chances are they won't understand even those terms that you find quite basic or easy.
A visitor should be able to get what you do within seconds of landing on your homepage - or any other page on your site for that matter. Remember any page on your site could be the page they land on.
7. Bigger purchases need more.
More time. More information. More proof. More interaction.
For bigger purchases, the more time customers spends on your website and in the process of reading your content and/or interacting with you, the more likely they are to buy.
So, rather than trying to quickly get them to make a decision, it is even more important to engage them early and assist them in their buying decision. Let them get a little bit of skin in the game before asking them to commit their whole self.
Downloadable content like eBooks can be used to get their email address so you can follow up with a sales email or more information.
They will also need more evidence that they can trust you. In addition to references and badges, case studies with return-on-investment calculations are good. Include statistics and research to back up your claims.
Have an online chat function so they can easily ask questions. Demonstrations of your product in action are also good.
Try and give them something other than 'call for a no obligation quote'. Believe it or not this doesn't make it easier. Some people won't contact you unless they are 100% sure because of concerns they will have to fend off a hard sales pitch.
8. Test Alternatives
Most conversion optimisation guru's will tell you to do A/B or split testing of some kind.
This is because you don't know definitively which page layout or copy is better unless you test it. And it can be done easily with Google Analytics' Content Experiments.
However - you do need to have a minimum amount of data to be statistically relevant. The recommended minimum is 100 conversions per variant set - more is preferable. So if your site only gets 500 visits a month total, you'd have to take the results with a bit of caution. If your visitor volume is low, you are almost better off changing something quite dramatically and see if the phone rings more often!
At the very least, try things out to see what happens.
9. Why YOU
Finally, the most important point of all - your Unique Selling Point (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from your competition.
Answering the question "why should they buy from you?" is probably the single bit of conversion optimisation that small businesses fail to do.
It's almost as if, too scared to alienate any potential business, they try and get it all. It doesn't work.
And 'Good service' is NOT a USP – anyone can say that.
Also ask “Why should customers buy from me versus doing nothing at all?”
List the benefits – not just the features of your product or service. And in the age of internet based DIY it may be a why should they get you to do it rather than trying to do it themselves!
10. Don't make the mistake of saying your website doesn't matter
I meet a lot of people who say their website is just a brochure, and they get all their work via referrals. Occasionally, I even believe them.
There's a good chance their website doesn't generate leads for them because the website is ineffective. It doesn't mean that any website won't effectively support your business to become more profitable.
Even if you do get all your business via referrals – you can be sure they check out your website first.
And it also suggests that your business is highly specialised and/or you are a sole trader or micro business. Which means your website could fulfil a slightly different role, like taking some of the load off you in the form of FAQs and other pieces of information you no doubt give people all the time.
