Getting more website traffic is at the top of every marketer’s mind right now.
It seems pretty straight-forward, too. There are thousands of articles and guides on how to drive your pageviews up.
The Problem
Getting more traffic to your site is great for awareness, but how many of those visitors are actually going to become paying customers (either now or in the future)?
Chances are, if you’re so focused on driving traffic to your site, you’ve forgotten about the other part of internet marketing: turning those visitors into users.
Most websites are built for exposure. They’re brochures. Last time I checked, people rarely buy products based solely on a brochure.
A brochure leads a prospect to talk to a salesperson and/or check out the product in a retail environment. Well, SEO is is like a brochure to a website.
If the website isn’t ready to convert (like a salesperson is trained to), you’re s*** of luck!
Without further ado (or rambling), here’s 3 quick (and easy to implement) ways to start converting more visitors to users and making more money:
1. Contact Information
This is pretty obvious, but an incredible number of websites that make it so difficult to contact a real, live person.
Website’s (especially the kind that don’t convert well) can be incredibly frustrating. If your visitor can’t get the information they need, they want the option of emailing or, better still, calling a real person to answer their question.
Not to mention that putting your phone number on your website makes you look SOOO much more real and trustworthy.
2. Shorter Forms
I hate to break it to you, but long forms turn people off. If your main contact form has 2918 fields, you’re definitely in trouble (actually even at 5 or 6 you’re in hot water).
Get the bare minimum of information that you need. You can always ask for more after the customer has made initial contact because guess what: you already have the user’s contact information.
Note: Also,
3. 404 Errors
It’s likely that at some point a page will be moved around on your website. Or maybe someone mis-typed a link to a page on your site. When this happens, they’re taken to a 404 error page (Page not found).
Either way, if your visitor is coming straight from Google, you’re likely to lose ’em. Smart tools to put on your 404 page include a search box, a sitemap, or even just a few links to popular posts and/or pages.
4. Social Proof
Humans are by nature social. The majority of consumers hate to be the first to try a new product, and especially if they’re paying for it. Showing them that others have bought into your offer will greatly help improve your conversion rates.
Note: This is only really effective if you actually have customers.
5. Offer Search
Consumers are becoming increasingly impatient. They want to find the information they’re looking for yesterday.
Placing a simple search box in a prominent position is a great strategy to help your visitors find that information quicker.
Bonus!
So I actually have a list of 131 conversion killers that I take clients through. Here’s a couple of bonus tips since I do have so many:
6. Call to Action
If you’ve been through sales training, you’ve heard of this concept: asking for the sale. The challenge is to do it without being pushy.
In some cases “Buy Now” works. In others, you’ll have to play around with your call to action to find what works.
7. Shut Up
One of the biggest problems I see (particularly in small business websites) is rambling. You’re so eager to talk about the “how” and the “why” of what you do that the “what” gets lost in the sea of words.
In the online copywriting world, brevity is key. Learn to be concise, and you’ll convert more visitors.
So there you have it: 7 easy ways to convert more visitors to customers. What are you waiting for?
Web traffic is very important in online business, suppose if a lot of users are going to visit your website and from them there is a high probability of purchase even only one percent of them make purchases, it will be a very healthy sign for the online sales.
I agree: heavy traffic is definitely important, but it’s more economical to convert a higher percentage of that traffic to users. Higher traffic with lower conversion rates (but more the same number of overall conversions) uses up more system resources.