Most businesses simply use their website as a giant business card and not as part of their sales process.
In fact, 90% of people who visit your site leave within the first 4 seconds.
Why?
Because the information isn’t relevant.
If you want your website to convert sales and add revenue to your business, you must set it up to do exactly that… grab attention and convert.
Here are some tips.
1. Use Keyword Research and Reporting to Your Advantage
Does your website content match the search engine keywords that are bringing visitors in?
Website traffic reports are invaluable business intelligence tools. Read your website analytics reports and assess entry and exit points of visitors, and then walk through your site with your visitor’s eyes. Did the content on their entry page match their search keywords?
Did the page then lead them deeper into a sales process?
Keyword research tools will also help you create content that will attract the people who are online and ready to buy.
2. Create Compelling Content
A content-rich website will:
Keep traffic coming. The worst thing a website can do is be static. The longer the site sits unchanged, the less attention it will get from search engines. Every time you create a new page of content, search engine spiders crawl those pages, improving your ability to get new and targeted traffic.
Keep people on your site longer. By providing a content-rich site that’s geared to your target audience and filled with links connecting each page to further information geared to that visitor, you lead your prospects through a sales process. The longer they are on your site, the better the chance that they’ll buy.
3. Create a Sales Funnel
How many people arrived on your website yesterday and left without taking action?
Every website has a bounce rate (the number of visitors that leave the same page they first landed on). Websites that try to capture the e-mail address and permission to contact visitors have a better chance of reducing that bounce rate.
By getting permission to contact, you can insert prospects into a virtual sales funnel through automated communication tools. They enter it mildly interested and could leave as buyers.
Sales funnels cater to those who need a longer sales cycle, allowing you to maximize the potential of more website visitors becoming customers.
How do you get permission to contact?
Offer something of value. Some websites offer those who opt in an opportunity to receive further information, a coupon code for a discount, free shipping, a free e-course, or a white paper that’s jam-packed with valuable information.
Delivering that information will help you get closer to a sale with new subscribers. It will also help you sell additional prospects to existing subscribers.
4. Optimize Every Page of Your Site
Many companies optimize their home page and stop there. However, people will enter your site via any visible webpage.
Ensure that every page is optimized with information that matches the reason most visitors land on that page. And make sure each page has an opt-in box, such as a subscription offer, so that you can obtain permission to contact visitors who don’t buy today and insert them into your automated sales funnel.
Here’s to your success!
Courtney
