What do you do when you get lots of visitors coming to your web site but none of them buy your product or even leave their details? How do you convert those visitors to actions that you want them to take?
Well the honest truth is that there is no silver bullet, but this is where research, analysis and testing, all of which will move you closer to the truth.
Most websites do a poor job of converting their visitors into business and this can be for a number of reasons:
- The nature of the business is such that prospects need to be educated about the business and this takes time
- The industry is very competitive and your price range is far off the norm and you have not done a good job in persuading people of your core benefits
- You don’t have a unique proposition
- Your web site is just poor at converting business
- Your bounce rate is extremely high
- The wrong type of person arrives at your web site.
The reasons may be numerous and these all fall under the main banner of website conversion. The ultimate goal of any web site is to persuade your prospects to carry out the action that most benefits your business1.
When conversion is the problem then your only option is analysis and testing. This is the action plan that we would follow to determine your next best course of action:
- Determine whether this industry is a search-to-sale or research based industry. So we ask the question – do we expect people to contact us for a quote or buy our product? Do our competitors get leads or sales at this point during the online interaction and are we missing out?
- Next we analyse the actual search terms that are being used to drive traffic to this site – or the terms that people are using to arrive at this site. Then we ask the following questions:
- i. Are these terms going to convert into enquiries or sales?
- ii. Have these search terms been tested in any way to determine whether they will turn into enquiries or sales?
- iii. Do we believe from our experience of this type of industry that these terms should result in sales or enquiries?
- iv. Does the web site cover the main aspects of what is required to make a conversion?
- v. Is there a compelling reason for the prospect to make an enquiry or sale?
- Then we consider the web site and the way it implements the basic persuasion tenets – to convert a suspect from browsing to enquiring.
The above core questions give us a starting position. They indicate what may be wrong and what should be tested. Once this is determined we devise tests, make changes based on our experience and test. Then we start to see an increase in conversion. Often you can increase conversion by doing a few very simple things that we will spot immediately. And naturally, we’ll do them. We call them quick wins.
So if you are struggling with conversion on your web site carry out the above actions or call us for a consultation.
