Web sites are not automatic selling machines
Most of us know it as a fact!
Not all website traffic is created equally and just because you have one does not mean you have an automatic selling machine that gets you more clients while you sleep.
A website is a tool that needs constant work and even when it receives visitors, this does not necessarily mean that this traffic will convert to customers.
Some people just visit a website to look around, check out the design, the colors, the competition etc. Others just like the pretty graphics, and still others want to read what you have to say, but don’t necessarily want to buy from you. So how do you get more customers from your website?
When your site is not selling it just takes up space, and that can be very frustrating. Not to worry though! An existing website can be turned around. It can become a powerful selling machine, and it may not take much to turn it into this fantastic sales tool.
Your website may only need a few slight modifications to enhance the user experience, get people to like and trust your business – and ultimately, buy from you. The following are a few things that can turn a good website to an excellent one.
Offer The Attractors
Every website needs to give people a reason to visit. It needs to encourage visitors and offer links that provide something valuable to the readers. A vital factor of all websites should be the Attractors. What are those? Attractors are things that interest people and keep them on your website. These features can be almost anything. It depends on your site and your business. Books and products can be an attractor. Blogs and articles, checklists, guides, reviews, and giveaways can work. Again this is something that should be unique to your business and something that is of interest to your readers.
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Pay Close Attention to The Words On Your Website
The copy you use on the website is critical and in many cases, it is often overlooked. Most business owners write their content and don’t understand how to compel a reader, or even how to weave a call to action into the narrative. Your readers don’t really care whether you make the sale or not. They want to know how your product or service will help them. They want to know what they receive when they buy from you. What is the awesomeness that they receive?
In the web industry, we understand that content is king, but compelling, engaging and fascinating content is the absolute master of all. However, creating this type of content is not always easy. You need good ideas, and you need to continue to invent new topics. The best way to do that is to:
- Read industry newsletters
- Read books (especially in your niche)
- Webinars
- Q&A Sessions with Audiences
Just remember people don’t want to be sold any longer, they want to interact, be socially engaged and educated. This is what will get you the sale. But if you don’t create that engagement, you won’t get anything.
If you feel like you have a great website but still aren’t selling, it could be your website copy. I analyze hundreds of sites, and in almost 90 percent of the cases, the reason a site isn’t converting a visitor to a customer is because of the copy.
Calls to Action
To make your website an effective sales tool, you need a few well thought out and strong call to actions. You want more than one to pull visitors in. Here are some of the most popular CTAs:
- Contact Us
- Call Now
- Take Our Survey
- Sign Up Today
- Apply Now
- Ask The Expert
Pricing
My suggestion is to offer a sliding scale of prices and vary your products. You can even offer things for free. A varied scale of prices in your website design gives you something to offer for every budget. And if you offer a free product, you show your readers why they need to buy from you. If you are offering something for free, you can get an email address in exchange, and this can help grow your email list and market to them directly.
Offer Reminders
We now know that consumers are rarely first-time buyers, especially if they don’t know your business. But if you want to have that person come back to your website and become a buyer on the second, third or consecutive visit, you need to get his permission to send him information. That’s where a newsletter can come in handily. Share your valuable content in a newsletter and gain your customer’s loyalty and trust.
Test, Measure and Modify
Web sites can be works of art, and those that are the most attractive are uncluttered, easy on the eyes and simple to navigate, but you can also have a beautiful book with nothing inside – or nothing that is any good, nothing of real value. As we’ve mentioned before you need good content but you also need to know what your readers think of your content, and you can understand that without having to run surveys or ask readers. You just need to dive into the data and review the analytics. This information is essential in determining the success of your website and the metrics you should be checking include:
1. Visitors and Their Source
One of the critical metrics to check are the number of visitors your site gets each month. Keep an eye on the spikes in traffic and the sudden declines as well. You want to know where this sudden traffic came from and why you have the drop-off. Are people finding your site and how are they getting there? If you see a big decline in visitors, you’ll want to figure out as quickly as possible how or why it happened. Also, look at how the visitors are getting to your site. What is the source they are coming in from? Are they finding your site through a Google organic search, from social media channels or from a referral link?
2. Bounce Rate
This is the percentage of visits that go to just one page before exiting. This includes visitors who:
- Leave by clicking an external link
- Press the browser back button
- Type in another URL
- Close the browser window or tab
- Don’t interact with the web page for a long time and go to a “session timeout.”
Understand whether the visitors are staying or leaving right away and fix problems that cause too high a bounce rate. A high bounce rate means visitors are not sticking around.
3. Average Time on Page
Improve your website so that visitors will want to hang out on the pages. Do you get your point across? Are your visitors watching your videos? Your stats will reflect all of this.
4. Click Through Rate
The call to action is a critical part of the web page. Direct your visitors to flow towards the conversion. If your CTAs are not being clicked you need to make changes and test to see if there is a better placement, color or wording of these phrases that you can use.
5. Conversion Rate
If your website is an e-commerce site, then you probably pay a great deal of attention to conversion rates. However, in most other cases, conversions are different for different websites. Conversion rates may refer to your website, email conversion rate, visitor-to-lead conversions, lead-to-customer conversions and more. Despite the different types of conversions available you need to pay attention and measure the conversion rates to get an idea of your customers and the revenue you make online.
Meet Your Goals
No matter the stage of your website, you should always be asking yourself, “What are my goals? And how am I meeting them? All website goals should be progressive and realistic. They need to be specific, measurable and attainable. Don’t worry! It is possible to set, maintain and measure your goals. There are tons of tools and data at your fingertips.
After All is Said and Done
I have to say that when potential clients come to me, I always ask them what the objective of their website is going to be. If it is simply a presence on business documentation, then you don’t have to worry about putting too much additional effort into your website. However, if you are interested in making your website into a sales tool, you must put the work into making it an effective sales tool to help your business.
