Time to time, I get emails time to time from you my readers and most of my articles are actually an indirect response to the questions and enquiries people have about their businesses, blogging social media and other aspects of digital media. One of those consistent that you help their content go viral. Without trying to be smart or scientific, what people should be talking about are conversions. Beyond the niceties of how many people visit your website, conversions actually cuts beyond the numbers hype to follow up on questions is when people really ask how to get traffic to their website, in fact some request the metrics that matter.
Ok so pretend to ask me, what is a conversion? Conversions is one of the critical factors that help you gauge the performance of your website; it is getting them to do the most important activity you want them to do when they visit your website through adverts, social media and other online channels. A conversion can simply means the desired action a visitor takes a desired action they land on a website. It can be making them buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, register for a webinar, download a whitepaper, or fill out the contact us form. For example, to the eCommerce website, conversions are the number of people who add items to a cart out of the number of visitors to the website. Conversion Rate Optimization is an established method of using online analytics and user feedback to improve the performance of your website.
So you realise that there is a wide gap between a normal website and another that provides opportunities to turn website visitors to customers. Truth be told, what you really need is customers, not traffic or website visitors. Therefore when it comes to engaging your customers online, you need to be able to understand how you want to be found and engaged with online.
How can you ensure you are increasing the number of people who actually do something when they come to your website?
Identify your Customer’s Needs and Wants
Finding out what your customers want is the starting point of all online engagement, knowing what to use to connect with them is the starting point of leading them further the conversion funnel. Once you are able to identify where your product or service meets your customer’s pain points, you need to speak to that directly.
Most times company websites say about themselves but nothing to the consumer, this is the first gulf that separates websites that convert and the ones just put up online to serve the business not the consumer.
Make it your website’s one overriding goal
When a new visitor lands on your website, what’s their first impression? What message do you convey immediately they land on your website? Does it look professional or amateurish? Up-to-date or neglected? Popular or obscure? No prizes for guessing which qualities are more attractive to buyers.
While it is simple to give salesmen targets when going to the field, most businesses forget to define the primary objective of their website. If you are in the direct online shopping business getting them to add items to the cart is enough to jumpstart a marketing process; to those into the promotion of services, getting your customer to contact you or release their contact details is great for initiating a sales relationships.
Get a great copy, not articles
Most people when developing websites look for articles about the company, staff, history and resources all talking about how great they are and not what they can do in the life of their customers.
Do you want website visitors to call or order for your products, be clear and tell them that. Sentences like ‘welcome to our website, the largest producers of imported bags in Abuja looks nice but how about ‘we deliver the best quality bags in Nigeria to your doorstep, simply order yours and you can pay on delivery’.
Own a landing page
Apart from turning your website into a sales machine, you need to own a sales landing page. This is where your direct all offers, sales promotion, adverts Facebook offers and everything else lands. Most people spend money on online adverts but they end up losing the hard advert money by directing people to the website home page which does not directly speak to their offers.
Use internet tools to map consumer behaviour
Thanks to the world of web and social analytics, you can now track user behaviour online; you can check which pages are the most visited on your website, the pages people visited before coming to yours, where they leave when they leave your website and the kinds of actions people take when they land on your website. There are an abundance of internet tools to use in implementing this both on your website and on other people’s website in order to get your customers engaged online.
Ultimately, the battle for the internet is not just to get your website online, you also need to get it noticed, once noticed, you also need to create systems that ensure you continually engage your customers in a meaningful and profitable way.