Home :
Tutorials
Website Improvement Crash Course Part 2 Getting More Of Your Website Visitors To Buy Or Get In Touch
Added by
David Coleman
on
16 August 2010
Right, so you’ve got some visitors to your website. How many of them are buying anything or calling you up?
If 3 out of every 100 visitors to your website buy something, your conversion rate is 3%. Conversions could also be someone filling in a contact form or signing up to your email newsletter.
Do you know what your conversion rate is? This is the number that needs to be improved to make your website more successful.
Improve conversion by making sure you have a clear and consistent message
When a visitor “lands” on your website, they need to be able to see instantly what it is you do or sell. From memory you have something like 8 seconds to convince a visitor they’re in the right place before they hit the back button.
In the offline world, you may have heard of an “elevator pitch”. That is, if you’re stuck in a lift with someone who asks what you do, you have 30 seconds to explain to them what you do or sell and why they should buy from you. Take this pitch and condense it into a headline, graphic, bullet points and or short paragraph.
Your website should grab your potential customer by the shoulders and shake them while screaming “It’s ok! You’re in the right place, we’ve got what you need, your problem is about to be solved!”
Do away with any “Welcome to XYZ, we hope you enjoy our website” text that doesn’t add to your message. It’s hard enough getting people to read anything on the internet, you don’t want to bore them to death if they start.
Overcome objections
Salesmen have all the answers. They’ve heard all the objections before...
Potential customers: “Hmm I can’t afford that right now”
Salesman: “Well madam, we can spread the payment out over a couple of months”
The main problem with website visitors is that you can’t hear their objections. Your website is a salesperson that needs to pre-empt and provide information to overcome as many objections as you can come up with. These could be addressed directly in the product or service description or you could create a Frequently Asked Questions section.
Include enough information
Similar to objections, some people may be willing to buy from you but are just short of a few key pieces of information to seal the deal.
• “How long will it take to receive my item?”
• “Will it work with my existing XYZ?”
• “Can I fit it myself or will I have to get a professional in?”
Make sure you include information that’s obvious to you, using as little jargon as possible. You work with your product and service day in, day out, but your potential customer is not you!
Make it easy to buy or contact you
Ensure that whatever the goal of your website, your visitors can reach it quickly and easily. That is to say make sure your contact information, or link to your contact page is very prominent, or make sure that the path from arriving on your website to entering their payment information is as short as possible. The more pages you have in the buying process, the more chance there is of a visitor “dropping out” either by getting distracted, bored, or angry at having to fill in so much information.
Make sure your website works as you think it does
Have you tried buying something or finding some information from your own website recently? Have you looked at it and used it in a different popular web browser like Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari?
Is anything on your website actually broken and not working as it should?
Does it look the same on different computers? Do you get any ugly errors? The latest version of Internet Explorer, version 8 is very sensitive to even the smallest JavaScript errors (a type of script popular on websites), giving the user a scary error box right in the middle of their screen.
Can you go through the checkout process easily, without getting any “security certificate” errors?
Each one of these tiny things can be a strike against your site in the mind of your visitor. Too many and they’ll go elsewhere.
User testing
You might think your website’s flawless, but you’re not the one that will be using it every day.
Say to your family and friends “I’m going to show you my website, and I want you to say out loud what goes through your head as you look at the page. I won’t be offended; I need to improve it as much as possible so say whatever comes to mind”.
You will be AMAZED at how often people will pick up on things you’d never even consider.
• “It looks a bit odd that most of the things at the top are questions and a few are statements”.
• “What is it you’re trying to sell?”
• “I’m sorry but that colour’s hideous!”
• “Where’s the buy button?”
No matter how much time you spend in the planning and design phase of your website you’ll never catch everything.
On the flipside everyone will have their own opinions and you don’t have to agree with them!
Testimonials
After every project, always ask every client for a testimonial. Most of them will be happy to give glowing ones, and those that don’t will give you something to improve on. Get the good ones onto your website as potential customers like to see they’re not the first to use you and that people are happy to recommend you.
Summary
I sincerely hope you’ve been able to take something of use from this short article. As you can imagine, everything mentioned here is a mere brushing of the surface.
If you need any more information on any of the subjects covered here give OffSight Web Design and Consultancy a call on 01543 426 142.
Alternatively, browse our
blog which lists all of the new articles and web advice added to the site.
Also, don't forget to sign up to our newsletter below to be the first to know of new information hot off the press!