I go a little crazy when I read forums and small business owners object to suggestions from experts to upgrade their sites. Sure, we understand that you’ve probably fallen for promises from “SEO experts” charging a small fortune to deliver millions of hits to your website. It happens all the time – people pay a lot of money for clicks, just to have the visitors leave the site, instead of clicking on to buy. Experienced web-owners know it already, but it’s always good to be reminded:
Lots of Traffic Does NOT (Necessarily) = Lots of Sales
In fact, you can have a million hits in one day and not make one single sale. Up to 98% of website visitors leave sites without buying, even if they are at least a little interested. You can reduce this percentage by ensuring that:
- your landing page is congruent with your inbound marketing efforts.
- your offer is strong enough.
- your website is simple and user-friendly.
- your landing page has a focal point.
- your pages load quickly.
So, back to your visitors… They are a little interested in your marketing efforts before they click on your link. Now they arrive at your site, but leave again without buying.
You need to add a step in between there to make sure that they come back to you when they are indeed ready to buy. You can do this by:
1. Ensuring that you have a great call-to-action
When you go to a website, you want to know, in as few words as possible, how to move from looking to buying. You need to be sure that your site has a logical flow and that visitors know exactly where to go.
Use quality calls-to-action and experiment with them until you get the one that works best.
2. Investing in a quality lead-capturing system
Add a free give-away to entice visitors to sign up to your newsletter. The key here is value, whether you’re offering a free webinar, e-course, or e-book. It has to offer immediate value and no fluff.
3. Using a quality email marketing system
Staying in touch with your leads via email marketing ensures that they know exactly who to turn to when they are ready to buy. However, it is crucial that you also offer value through your email newsletters, without sending more than one a week (this will vary depending on your newsletter style and content).
The Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is the process that turns strangers into visitors, visitors into leads, leads into customers and customers into promoters.
At each stage of the funnel, there’s something you can use to increase your success rates.
- Attraction Phase
Attract strangers to your site using your blog, social media, keywords, and quality sales pages.
- Conversion Phase
Convert your visitors into leads using great calls to action, quality landing pages, simple forms, and contact capturing devices.
- Closing Phase
Turn your leads into customers with email marketing and quality customer relations management integrations.
- Delight Phase
Sales is an ongoing process with the benefit of turning customers into promoters. Do this with fantastic social media campaigns and email marketing.
The most important part of sales, from lead acquisition to after-sales relationship management, is connecting with your visitors. Global access and the constantly changing marketplace made consumers extremely picky about where they spend their money. You have to ensure that you are a few steps ahead of the competition and that you go out of your way to connect with visitors.
I hope this post has been of great value to you. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions in comments below and to share your experiences.