Most websites fail to convert visitors into buyers most of the time; this is particularly true of B2B sites where the sale might be more complex and include a higher price tag!
Getting plenty of visitors to the site of the first step to success; but more important than that is getting your traffic to make that all important buying decision whilst they are on your site.
Remember that lots more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll massively increase the rate of conversion; to do that you need to remove a number of barriers to purchase, they are:
1. Make Your Website Easy to Use It stands to reason that when someone visits your site it needs to present itself correctly and be easy to use.
a) Evaluate the accessibility of your website (does it work with different browsers at different resolutions for example)
b) Is navigation clear and concise
c) Ensure the call-to-action button on your website is clearly visible
Each of these tweaks on their own seems simple enough but you need to ensure that you are making the right changes for your target market.
2. Focus on Getting Quality Traffic Some sites that I have seen and had the pleasure to work on do not attract the right type of traffic; the sort of visitors that are really keen to buy whatever it is you sell.
The fact is a simple one …. in order to increase the number of online sales, you need to promote your products or services to the right people.
Find out who your target audience is and locate the sources where you can connect with them. In fact this is probably the most important strategy!
3. Enhance the Quality of Landing Pages Landing page should be clean and simple in order to convert the most amount of visitors; do not think that this means very little content on the page, you need to put enough words on the page so that your proposition and benefits of your product/service is crystal clear.
Remember you can always test a couple of version of your landing pages to see which has the best impact.
3. Talk About Visitor Benefits NEVER highlight the features of your offerings, already focus on the benefits and how you can help your visitors. What pain do they have and how can you solve it?
Visitors tend not to be too interested in your company, they have been attracted to your site, all you need to do is to convince them to buy, and talking about benefits will do just that.
I remember when I first qualified as a marketer, we were taught ‘Features and Benefits’ (FaB), this is no longer true!
4. Create an Urgent Demand Anyone trained in copywriting will have been taught to ensure that that to compel your readers to take action and take action quickly you should try to create urgency.
Mentioning a time limit or a stock limit can quickly infuse urgency into visitors, but also getting across the point that the benefit of your offering is that they can ease their pain quicker!
5. Demonstrate Credibility No matter what you sell you must earn trust, this is the same when selling stuff on line and it is in person; if you are not trustworthy then you will not sell anything!
This is a huge challenge for many businesses as they fail to show credibility. Some of the most useful ways of establishing credibility includes sharing customer success stories, media mentions and security verification, add contact details (including telephone number, email address and postal address) for added credibility.
6. Build Your Brand Conversion rates will improve as your brand grows. (yet another useful fact).
The more people know about your brand, the more sales you will make. So, make sure your day-to-day activities include an element of brand building, it’s also true that better known brands find it easy to sell things and so become more profitable!
If you’re not using social media then try it today to help your brand; Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all great for getting yourself known.
7. Keep Your Word All wrapped up with your brand and building a great brand image is ensuring that you deliver what you promise; in fact I believe that delivering on a promise is exactly what a brand is.
Always ensure your customers get what they were promised in the first place.
If you need help on any of this then just get in touch with me (
andrew@andrewscaife.com)
