The goal of your business website is to convert casual visitors into solid leads or purchasers. You’ve put a lot of time, effort and money into attracting people to your website, but far fewer are converting than you’d expected. What do you need to do to turn things around?
Two Types of Conversions
There are two primary conversion types, prospect-to-lead and lead-to-customer. Your website might focus on one or both types.
Prospect to Lead Conversions
These conversions occur near the top of the sales funnel. A visitor signs up for a mailing list, downloads an ebook or requests whatever freebie you’re offering.
Lead to Customer Conversions
Leads are invaluable, but customers put money in the bank. Your landing page brought you leads. Now you need to lead them further down the sales funnel.
Org Chart Planning Can Help Clarify Your Conversion Strategy
Whether your website is new or well-established, you need a clearly defined conversion strategy encouraging visitors through the sales funnel.
What pages are your visitors using? What changes should you make? You can use the familiar org chart layout to map your site and spot problems areas that can be confusing visitors.
Time is your enemy. Every second added to the time it takes a visitor to find what they were looking for increases the number of people who abandon the site.
Confusion = time = lost sales.
- Your home page is the top box.
- Navigation links to your blog, other resources, etc. connect to the home page but placed to the side.
- All your secondary pages are below and linked to the hope page.
- Secondary pages link to other pages and so on.
Offers That Increase Conversions
The trick is figuring out what you can offer that will attract quality leads. This takes research.
Product Demos or Free Software
Product demos are popular, as are free versions of software offered as lead-ins to upgraded versions. Automated email followups are most common. Offering one-on-one phone calls, where feasible, provides an opportunity to discuss any issues the prospect may have.
You’ll need to test to find out whether or not requiring a credit card on file will increase conversions.
Ebooks/PDF Files
Free ebooks/pdf files will only be successful if you identify the pain point and provide a solution. Google’s Keyword Planner can help you find topics people are searching on. Log into your Google account, search for new keywords for your product or business, click on “Get Ideas” and you’ll see suggestions for possible ebook/pdf topics. Sort by “average monthly searches” to find the most popular topics.
Once you’ve identified popular problems, write quality content that offers a solution. After all, this is your area of expertise. You’ll be gaining a level of trust as an authority that will increase interest in you and your business.
Title Optimization
Great titles for your landing page and opt-in forms highlight the primary benefit the customer receives.
- Be specific and brief
- Focus on one important, very desirable benefit
- Focus on one unique benefit
- Try adding “without …” to the end of the headline
- Reflect the visitor’s expectations
Short or Long Opt-in Forms
Often, an opt-in form with only one box to fill in (email) will outperform an opt-in form with two boxes (name and email). However, in certain cases, much longer opt-in forms can result in higher conversions.
Your website, products and services are unique. Once again, the only way to know for sure which will work best for you is A/B testing.
Privacy Statements
You often see privacy statements (we won’t sell your data, etc.) added to opt-ins. While you’d think everyone would like to know that before signing up, this can occasionally decrease conversions. Test and find out.
Exit Intent Pop-Ups
Exit intent pop-ups are triggered when the cursor is dragged toward the “close” button. Offer the visitor one more thing before leaving:
- Newsletter signups
- Links to social media
- Access to exclusive content
- Discounts
- Freebies
Live Chat
People appreciate the opportunity to get immediate answers to questions without the hassle of a phone call. Live chat expands customer service and can dramatically increase conversions by as much as 45%.
Track Your Visitors Using Google Analytics with Leadfeeder
Google Analytics provides stats on traffic, but Leadfeeder will tell you who the visitors were or what companies they’re with.
Leadfeeder alerts can be set to trigger on repeat visitors or specific companies, followed up with automated emails or assignments to sales personnel.
There are many strategies for increasing conversions, but every situation is different.
The BXP Creative marketing team is laser-focused on conversions. We’ll work with you to design and implement a conversion strategy based on your brand’s unique benefits and strengths.
We can handle all aspects of your marketing for you or collaborate with your in-house team on special projects when you have too few people and impossible deadlines.
How can we help you? Let’s connect today.
