Does your website have lots of traffic, but little to show for it?

Don’t beat yourself up – there are so many websites like this.

A conversion happens when a visitor takes action based on the content of your website.

The first thing you need to do is to define what a conversion is on your website. Automatically you may think a conversion is a sale, and yes, in many cases it is. But this may not be the case on your website. On your site a conversion may be any of the following:

• Ordering one of your products or services
• Booking a telephone appointment
• Filling out a contact form
• Signing up for a newsletter
• Downloading a document with more information
• Request a demonstration
• Request a brochure
• Picking up the phone and calling you

There are other things too, but these are a selection of the main ones. The action you want your visitors to take will be based on the objectives of your website, which will be based on your company objectives.

However, regardless of your objectives, your conversion rate (the percentage of the visitors to your site that complete your desired action) can be increased using the following techniques…

Landing Pages

Many websites fail to grab and convert visitors because they either haven’t created specific landing pages, or fail to direct traffic to the most appropriate landing page.

This results in a ‘bounce’ – the visitor quickly scans the page, doesn’t find information relevant to their search and bounces back to their search to select another indexed website and continues their search.

When you are designing the structure of your website it is crucial to include a topic specific landing page for each of your products, services and offerings.

The Golden Rule

The golden rule is that you discuss only one product or service per page.

Search engines can only search webpages; they do not search websites as such. Therefore, a search engine will examine the content of each webpage and decide what the theme of the page is.

Creating landing pages that are highly relevant to certain searches is key to getting your search engine optimisation and pay-per-click advertising to work, and is critical to maximising your chances of converting a website visitor.

Call to Action Copy

Another one of the most common failings of underperforming websites is that they have no specific call-to-action, beyond having a Contact Us page on their site.

If your objective is to generate sales leads, build your prospect database or get a sale online, then as you lay out your compelling reasons for choosing your product or service on each landing page, you must ask for the order.

You do this by asking your prospect to “fill in the form”, “contact us”, “sign up now”, “subscribe”, “request”, “buy now”, “order” or “telephone now” throughout your sales copy.

Many sites do this at the end of some pages, however results show that asking for the action throughout the copy maximises conversion.

Call to Action Banners

It will be no surprise to discover that some visitors won’t read your sales copy.

While good copy WILL turn ‘scanners’ into readers (and readers usually become buyers), some people come to your website ‘pre-sold’ or with such an urgent need that they are ready to take action right now.

The use of Graphic Banner and/or simple text-based links can be used with good effect to generate response.

These can be as simple as “Call Us Now on 01234 567890 – Lines Open 24 Hours” through to an ad promoting a White Paper or Buyer’s Guide.

Packaged Information

Buyers have two needs. The second is for the product or service that they may end up buying, but the first (and often most overlooked by marketers) need is for information.

What are my options, how do I choose, what should I look for, what should I avoid, how do I make a good decision, who can I trust? These are all common questions a potential buyer has in mind – their first need.

Most marketers sell the ‘second need’ (for the product or service) not realising that a significant majority of searchers are people looking for information – first need.

Think about your own searching activity and you will realise that you are almost always looking for some kind of information.

The readily available wealth of information on the Internet, indexed and organised by search engines, has created a vast pool of prospects that EXPECT to find information. You can tap into that urge to search by developing a powerful Packaged Information offer. Read our article on Packaging Your Industry Knowledge and Expertise to Create a Surge in Leads to see how.

Newsletter Sign-up

For some businesses, an offer to send a prospect your newsletter with latest product developments, hints and tips, case studies, articles and special offers, can generate significant conversion with many of your website visitors.

This allows you to identify and stay in touch with that, often large, proportion of website visitors who are not yet ready to buy from you but are willing to give you their email and contact details.

Marketing Automation

Research shows that it generally takes between 5 and 8 contacts before a prospect is willing to say yes to your offer.

This can be as significant as placing an order, or as subtle as moving to the next step in your sales funnel, such as agreeing to request your “more information” package, to phoning you or requesting an appointment.

A ‘constant contact’ campaign of well written and appropriately spaced email communications can increase top of mind awareness, educate the prospect, create a level of trust and relationship, and significantly increase your chances of ‘getting the order’.

Marketing automation can streamline this process and make it more effective. It uses a single marketing automation platform (and there are quite a lot to choose from, some better than others!) to manage every aspect of every campaign from the same place – including, but not limited to, email, social media marketing, mobile messaging, and managing ads.

A good marketing automation software will allow you to track and analyse your visitors behaviour, and this in turn, can be used to understand what your visitors want (and don’t want!). With this information, you will be able to tweak your messages to develop an even more positive experience for visitors going forward.