Businesses and individuals build websites for different reasons. A blogger shares their experiences on travels, food, culture, fashion or any other area of interest they are passionate about. Businesses invest in a web presence to inform potential clients of their offering while serving their current base. However, the primary focus of every website owner (business or individual) should be the conversion rate resulting from the traffic they generate. How many of their web visitors become customers?
It’s one thing to get traffic to a website, but another to convert this traffic into paying customers or signed up members, depending on what your conversion goal is. Traffic (organic or paid) is important, but not everything. The conversion of your website traffic should be the goal. Take a brick-and-mortar shopping mall for an example. It generates lots of daily traffic, but individual stores still need to attract potential buyers through various marketing outreaches such as discounts, advertisements, creating an online presence etc.
Too often, businesses make the mistake of expecting conversions from their website traffic to happen without any additional effort. It’s no wonder many website projects get abandoned after a few years as the intended outcomes were not reached. So how can your online visitors become paying customers or signed up members?
Engage Your Visitors
Most website visitors would spend an average of 4 to 10 seconds on your website if there’s nothing interesting to see on it. Within this period, your website should be able to get the attention of a visitor and engage them well enough to stay longer. This increases the possibility of making a sale or getting a sign up. People are often undecided for the most part and need time to decide. Give them that time they need on your website with engaging information that gets their attention.
Coupons And Discounts
Everyone loves a good deal. Okay, maybe not everyone. But most people love to get a great bargain on goods and services. Is your website offering anything to its visitors? Visit any eCommerce store and you’ll always see a special, discount, deal or some form of incentive to get the visitors’ attention and ultimately a conversion. So, ask yourself the question, ‘am I offering anything to my potential customers?’.
Live Traffic Counter
Some businesses have gone a step further by integrating live traffic counters to their website. This basically shows any visitor the number of visitors currently on the website. People generally want to feel they are not alone, especially when being faced with making a purchase decision. So, if a website visitor sees that there are currently 15 other people on the same web page, it generates some form of trust that your goods or services could be the ideal buy.
Leads Generation
Don’t miss an opportunity to generate leads at every turn. There are various ways you can do this on your website. Some of the most commons ones are integrating a contact form, newsletter subscription system, call back notices or random reviews. These and more can generate good leads for your business which can become great sales conversion for you. Do bear in mind that the integration of some of the above to your current website could require the use of specific website building widgets.
Leads Generation Counter
You just don’t want to generate good leads, but also want to show other visitors to your website the number of people who are signing up to your mailing list. Again, people don’t want to feel they are alone when making important decisions. Giving them the assurance that ‘others are doing it’ creates a sense of security that they are in the right place and among great company.
Product/Service Sales Counter
A potential client loves to see that someone else just bought your products or services. What better way to help convert a website visitor to a paying customer when they can readily see that ‘others are using this’. Your sales counter will do a great marketing job for your business as it shows that ‘x number of people bought your product in the last x hours’.
Integrate Promotional Videos
Gone are the days when making a promotional video was a special preserve of big corporations. Today, anyone can make a short promo video highlighting a business’ goods and services. There are several platforms where you can create such videos for free or a small fee. Videos are known to be very engaging as what your product is about can be summarised in a 60-second clip. A visitor to your website would probably be compelled to watch a short video explaining what your business does.
Social Share Icons
Do you give your website visitors the option to share your content online? People often share content that impresses them within their network. This is a sure way of getting the word out about what your business does. Your ‘share’ icons or buttons should be strategically positioned for your website visitors to see these, and the links should be active for sharing to take place. Imagine how disappointing it would be to have non-functional social links on your website. An even worse scenario is having no social share links/icons.
Testimonials And Feedback
Testimonials are not just a section of a business website, but evidence to the credibility of your services or durability of your products. It should be dynamic and frequently updated. Real feedback from real people is extremely important to improve conversion rates. A good testimony can convince as many as 25 potential customers. This is marketing you haven’t really paid for, done by happy clients.
Receive Visitors’ Feedback
We sometimes don’t know what visitors to our websites think of the layout, products and services, or even our response time to queries. A sure way to know this is to add a simple but efficient feedback widget to it. Remember, you are not afforded all the time in the world to engage your website visitors as people are very busy and won’t linger longer than they should on your web page. So, the faster you can do this, the better it is for your conversion rates. An ideal and less complicated example is the use of the Emoji Feedback tool. Ask a simple question and allow the website visitor to pick which emoji best describes their disposition.
Install A Cookie Notification
Cookie notifications are a way of letting visitors to your website know you are transparent about their use of your web pages, and you always want to remember them should they return another time, which also helps improve their browsing experience. People need to know you care about the time they spend on your website. Should their experience and navigation be confusing, they will most likely not return.
Get Score Feedbacks
Much like the Emoji Feedback, a quick ‘mini’ survey can be integrated to your website allowing graded scores to be received from potential and returning customers. This is valuable feedback that can be useful for building on what already exists and encourage repeat business. An ideal situation for any business is to keep the communication lines open between them and the public.
Support Your Products
Show both your potential and current customer base that you are not only accessible, but that you also offer timely support for your products and services. No one wants to get stuck with a product they will never get support for. This is a key aftersales service that does not only ensure repeat business but convinces potential clients that you mean business and stand by your product.
The Countdown Effect
The sense of urgency you attach to your events, such as a webinar, by using an online digital counter makes visitors to your website see the need to register before the time runs out. This can be used for both potential or returning customers and is also applicable to your products, services or just an event to compliment what you do. You can use this to do a product trial, conduct training, or even offer special deals. Marketing these days take many forms and your business will determine which will be the best fit.
Running a website is more than having a beautifully designed layout. Traffic isn’t just enough. You’ll need to engage and convert this into paying customers for your business to stay above water. And in a very busy online world you will need to stand out from the crowd. How you do this becomes very crucial to your business growth.
For most businesses, especially small to medium scale enterprises, the issue of cost often discourages the suggestion to further engage in website traffic conversion projects. Some may see the need to use one or more of these strategies but could be weighed down by the possible cost involved. Building an eye-catching website is daunting enough for many let alone optimising this for great traffic conversion.
