Turning Website Visitors into Customers: 5 Easy Tips
Congratulations! You have more and more potential customers checking out your business’s website each day. It could be that your marketing strategy is working, and those creative Facebook posts or strategic targeting through Google Adwords is paying off. Or perhaps your SEO service provider’s hard work has started to really kick in and influence your search engine rankings. Regardless, it’s great news!
That being said, there is a possibility that interested people are reviewing your inventory or services but are leaving for an unidentified reason. Are you tracking your website’s conversion rates? If so, you might notice that they have dropped, or are otherwise lower than you’d like them to be. This, even despite an uptick in website traffic? If there were something you could be doing to to increase your conversion rates, would you take the time?
Here are some techniques to help ensure each website converts visitors into sales.
1- Build Your Email List
It’s a thing of beauty—people come to your website, then they hand you a way to reach out to them with future offers. Yet incredibly, there are small and medium businesses that don’t take advantage of this simple yet effective marketing method.
Email lists offer you a chance to send out an e-blast—an email promoting a product or service—to potential customers. E-blasts offer high rates of success, too: An average of 20 to 25% of e-blasts are opened, with 2 to 3% of those e-blasts being clicked. Not bad for an inexpensive advertising technique.
2- Clean Up Your Website
When you go shopping, it’s likely that you pay close attention to how nice your surroundings are. Shopping is an experience, and nothing leaves you with a poor experience like a cluttered store with no logical layout or helpful staff.
Well, imagine what your shoppers are thinking when they find your online store: Is your website neat and tidy? Is it modern, helpful, and easy to navigate? Is there a way to directly reach any staff or management? If not, this could be costing you customers.
3- Lead Your Customers Down A Path
Let’s pretend you’re a small business that sells gourmet varieties of ketchup. So one day, a potential customer sees your Facebook ad promoting a fantastic variety of spicy ketchup, and clicks the ad.
Unfortunately, when that person clicked the ad, he/she didn’t end up on a page for that particular variety of advertised ketchup. Instead, that person landed on the home page of the website, and clicked off. Maybe that person was disappointed, or upset, or just lazy and didn’t want to search for that specific product.
Now, imagine your ads, and your customers. Are they being lead in the right direction? Does your strategy make sense? If so, you’ll wind up selling way more ketchup.
4- Include User-Generated Content
This is sometimes hard for specific websites that offer services. But really, user-generated content can be anything that someone else has contributed to your website. This includes forums, comment sections, product and service ratings, testimonials, and even blogs or links to the outside World Wide Web.
By allowing someone else to contribute to your website, you’re communicating trust, honesty, openness, and confidence in your business. Allow someone else to say something nice about you—allow and encourage user-generated content.
5- Be Interesting to Your Customers
This one may go without saying, but it encompasses several key details. By this point, it should be safe to assume your website is up to par when it comes to design and functionality. Your visuals should be dazzling, your product images should be uniform and stellar, and your fonts and titles should suit your copy and branding.
The next step is to ensure your copy actually says something interesting. Sure, it’s essential to have informative copy that says the facts, but great copy spices up even the dullest of subjects.
Go over your website. Read through your copy, and check out your visuals. Are you really making an impression? Do your customers really “get” what you’re trying to communicate? Your current results should be a sign.
For more information on improving the content of your website or its user experience get in touch. Bellingham WP will help to setup the necessary conversion tracking to diagnose any potential issues. We can also offer advice on how your website’s SEO could be improved.
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Jamie A • February 18, 2016 •
Great tips! The email list especially is a great idea. Small businesses also shouldn’t forget about the power of social media. Including share buttons for facebook and twitter is a another easy way to get some easy publicity. User-generated content is a great idea as well! I like seeing other customers testimonials and comments about businesses.
Susan G. • May 19, 2016 •
#3 Leading your customers down a path is a good way to put it. Iv’e seen this be achieved with images relating to the content to help speak to several points in a natural order.