Are you attracting a lot of “fish” to your small business website but not catching them? Think of your website as a fishing rod and online marketing (Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, online advertising, etc) as your bait. Online marketing attracts fish to bite your bait. But what reels them in? Leave that to page optimization or website conversion techniques.
What are conversions? Conversions are the action of a random visitor “converting” to a lead, sale, phone call, or registration. Conversion rate is the metrics used to determine how often visitors turn into sales or leads.
Conversion rates vary in every industry, but typical conversion rates are between 0.5 and 8 percent, with the norm running between 0.5 and 2 percent. So, if you aren’t converting 50 percent of your traffic, don’t panic. No one is.
While your small business website that is not “Amazonian” in magnitude, you can still have a major impact on tracking and improving its performance, or “conversion rate,” of visitors once they come to your website.
The first step to catching these fish is observing them. There are two key ways to watch what people do on your site. The first is to ask people (friends or family) to go to your site, and observe what they do. What do they click on? Do they have a hard time finding the links or actions you want them to take? This will help you with any potential redesigns that may be necessary in order to increase conversions.
The next priority is to create a click stream analysis. A Click stream analysis allows you to determine what pages people are finding by conducting searches (entry pages), and where they go once they visit your website, and where they leave (exit pages). Google Analytics (a free tool from Google Inc.) is critical for small website owners to use and review to look at their site statistics. This will give you a huge amount of information to determine what pages people are finding, and where they are leaving.
You can then ask yourself, “Why do they leave once they get to my services page?” Then you can research and work on improving that page.
The second step to catching a lot of fish is to think like them. Get in the mind of your clients and try to figure out what they look for, what’s important to them, and what other sites they compare you to.
Does your site’s unique selling proposition (USP) stand out from your competition? Can they easily find testimonials? What do you want your prospect to do? Do you want them to register for your newsletter? Do you want them to purchase your product? Do you want them to call or fill out a lead form? As simple as it sounds, once you determine the best course of action that will lead to the most sales, then you can gear your website towards this objective.
If you want your clients to fill out a lead form, I’d recommend putting a simple lead form on every page. If you want them to purchase your product, lead them to the pages that show your product or service and show that you have the best pricing, service, and product. Be wary of trying to drive your customers directly to the order form. Just because they are online, doesn’t mean that they will buy without some research.
You must lead people to do what you want them to do, and it must be simple and easy to find. If someone has to look for more than 3 seconds to determine what you do, they’ll steal your bait and swim. A significant challenge for any company is balancing design aesthetics with functionality and conversion performance. Sometimes, a button may be ugly, but if people are clicking on it and converting, then it may be worth the distraction.
Here are some obvious, yet easily overlooked tips for every website:
1) Ensure your company’s phone number is prominently placed on every page. Our company underestimated the number of sales driven via telephone. People want to talk to the companies they are about to give their business to.
2) Put a lead form on your home page. Be sure to capture the user’s name, e-mail, phone number and possible interests.
3) Get to the point—let people know your products and/or services, and how it will help them, and why you are better than your competition within the first 2 sentences on your website.
4) Include EXTRA buttons for the pages you want people to visit in addition to the navigation at the top or left. Give people multiple paths to go to the pages you want them to go to, and keep them “above the fold.”
5) Prominently feature the items or services you want to sell.
6) Keep your website fresh. Give people a reason to come back and visit regularly. Think about creating a blog for your site.
This is our final article of three covering basic internet strategies for small and local businesses. The first article discussed building your website, the second article covered the basics of search engine optimization, and this article we discusses way to increase conversions once someone has visited your website.
Joe Witte is a partner at Logo Design Guru and WebbyGuru, and has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.