We all know the first step to success with customers is to get them to visit your site. Unless you get step 1 happening, nothing else follows. So let’s assume you’ve done your marketing and page design homework and the traffic starts clicking. Now comes the tricky part. Here is a website checklist of things to do.
You now want these visitors to do two things.
- Stay awhile
- Become a customer
This is where you get to convert more of your visitors into staying and paying. There are various things you can do to make this likely, if not more than likely. The first is to review your content with fresh eyes. Is it relevant? Is it easy to read? Remember visitors who only visit do nothing for your bottom line. Put your content under the microscope. User friendly is one goal; locked-in customer is a better one.
Navigate within
How easy is it for a visitor to move around inside your site? It should be a doddle. You won’t have everything on the same page. On your landing page you might have several links with each offering something unique. Does your site work easily allowing customers to go where their interest takes them?
Be proactive
Look on your website as a shop or store. A customer walks in and you are immediately proactive. You don’t wait for them to approach you; you approach them. That’s the thinking behind your creation of a call to action.
For many businesses it’s simply a Contact Us page. Hmmm. Fill in the boxes and await a reply. A generic form receives a generic reply. You can be far more friendly and effective than that. Open up a dialogue with your potential clients. Make your site welcoming as far as questions and requests are concerned. Offer reasons why visitors will want to make contact.
They can take part in a survey, download an eBook or request a quote. Remember getting visitors is great but unless they stay and pay, you’ve only got traffic.
Slow coach
One sure way to lose visitors even before they knock on your door is to have a slow-loading website. Re-jig even re-design your site to avoid such calamities. Work through your whole site because there might be a page within unlike the others which, for some reason, is a slow coach. Fix it.
Google analytics – it’s free
Having tons of traffic pouring into your site is great but how on earth do you monitor ths? Just like any good business would have core KPI’s, so too should your website. The answer is Google Analytics; a free tool created by Google that allows you to monitor overall activity levels on your website. Where are your leads coming from? At what time of the day or night? Have they come from pay-per-click networks, from email invitations, display ads or where? The more you know about your visitors behavior the better equipped you’ll be at fine tuning your website to convert more visitors on your website into customers.