If you have a website for your business, it’s not enough to simply drive traffic. Without people actually taking action on your website and making a purchase, you’re left with visitors instead of customers. Luckily, with some quick optimization, you can transform those visitors into long-term customers.
As long as you’re willing to put in a bit of effort, your website can be in top shape to perform well for your customers. Aside from setting up a professional website that users can easily interact with, the right planning will go a long way. Here are 7 simple ways to convert your visitors into customers with your website.
1. Invest in Design
First, you need quality design. While the saying goes that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that’s actually not the case when it comes to websites. In fact, it only takes less than one second for users to form an opinion about your website that will decide whether or not they stay or leave.
Quality design starts with the user experience. Making sure your website is easy to navigate and adheres to a clear brand theme are the most important parts of investing in design. This is especially true for ecommerce websites that utilize Woocommerce. This article about WooCommerce Support by Bright Vessel shows the best ways to invest in design for your own ecommerce website.
By adding smart search functionality, streamlining the checkout process, and optimizing the mobile experience, they saw an 83% increase in the conversion rate of one of their key clients. As you can see from this case study, ensuring your website is easy to use and user-friendly is more important than ever.
2. Improve Website Speed
Next, once you’ve invested in quality design, it’s time to boost your website performance. The two things go hand-in-hand to increasing your sales. A delay of even a few seconds reads as unprofessional to your audience, and they’ll quickly quick away to a competitor.
A one-second delay can cost you 7% of sales, so you can already imagine what a longer delay will do. Luckily, you don’t have to accept your website speed for what it is. Working with a web developer is a great first step, but you can also take matters into your own hands with these tips below:
Reduce Images – Large image sizes slow down the overall load time.
- Minimize Your Requests – When you have excessive HTTP requests from CSS, HTML, and Java files, these all have to be loaded individually. Are there any you can combine?
- Hosting – Your hosting plan might not be able to handle your influx of traffic. Upgrading to a dedicated hosting plan will give you more flexibility.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) – A CDN saves a version of your website files at different server locations across the globe. This means when someone accesses your website, they’ll receive a version of your website from the closest location, reducing the load time.
3. Build Your Blog
Many new businesses think they don’t need to invest time in content marketing or blogging. Because they’re focusing on selling products or services, why bother creating additional online content? The reality of the matter is that people trust blogs. They’re a chance to share your authority, whether you’re talking about fashion, design, or plumbing services.
Investing in creating engaging content will attract more customers to your website. Not convinced? Take a look at Hubspot, one of the biggest digital marketing platforms on the internet. Hubspot sells customer management, sales, and marketing software for businesses of all sizes. With such a huge reputation, you’d think they need to invest in some expensive, complicated ad campaigns.
“In reality, the Hubspot blog is what drives the majority of their traffic. They blog about marketing, service, sales, and more, and this is how they build trust. They’re now known as one of the leading marketing blogs, and this is an easy, inexpensive way to build their conversion rate without investing in pricey campaigns. Content marketing is king, and a blog lets you publish content with ease. ”
4. Use a Landing Page
Next, let’s talk about how to convert your visitors if you have a specific product or service you’re trying to sell. Landing pages are single, direct pages that encourage users to take a specific action. They can be built directly into your WordPress website, so they’re easy to get started with and monitor.
When used with favorite business applications to track projects and analytics, a landing page is an effective way to encourage your customers to take a specific action. Whether you’re trying to increase email list signups, social sharing, or even just selling a single product, a landing page will be more effective than trying to share too much information on a website.
To see this in action, let’s take a closer look at a recent launch by Creative Revolt. The blogger behind Creative Revolt creating a landing page specifically for her latest online course about cold emailing. Her entire landing page is dedicated to sharing the value of her course to potential customers.
It’s full of stats, testimonials, and real-life success stories from past students. Her landing page makes it simple for new students to sign up without getting distracted by other pages of her website.
5. Work on Your CTAs
Speaking of landing pages, you can’t have a successful landing page without a successful CTA. A CTA is another word for a call to action, and it’s how you encourage users to actually take action on a website. There’s a science behind these CTAs, and it’s not as simple as it seems to get users to do what you want.
The problem with too many CTAs is that they’re not specific enough. For instance, you write “Click here to download” instead of anything engaging. While there’s nothing wrong with the example CTA above, it’s simply not compelling. Instead, using a phrase like “Click here for your discount code” is much more specific. Users know exactly what’s in it for them, and they’re more likely to take real action. These hyper-specific CTAs work wonders on blog posts, landing pages, and even your sales page.
6. Increase Your Customer Support
Doing all of the above ways to convert your customers wouldn’t get you very far without having some system for customer support. When users have questions, these get in the way of the buying process. If it takes too long to get these questions addressed, they’ll simply move on to someone else.
Aside from clear contact methods, using a chatbot is a great way to solve this problem. Chatbots are a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can handle many customer concerns like shipping questions or even making a purchase. For instance, Casper, a leading online mattress retailer, uses chatbots on their website to cut down on customer concerns. Chatbots can help with anything from placing an order to shipping, and customers will get an answer in minutes. This kind of attention to customer service has led to Casper becoming one of the most widely trusted mattress retailers in the past few years.
7. Use Remarketing
Finally, make peace with the fact that you won’t convert everyone. Luckily, it’s possible to target those users who didn’t make a purchase the first time around with remarketing tactics. This means you continue to make your brand known to online shoppers after your first interaction with them on your website.
The most popular way to do this is with Facebook ads. By using a Facebook Pixel on your website, you’re able to directly target those users who visited your website without making a purchase. Repeated exposure to a brand is one of the most effective ways to make more sales, and it doesn’t take much time to set up. Remember, you’re trying to build a relationship with potential customers.
They have to travel through their own customer journey before they’re in a place to make a purchase. They might start by reading one of your blog posts, then they might enter their email for your mailing list via a landing page. Next, they’ll read another blog post they were sent in an email. Finally, they’ll stumble upon a targeted Facebook ad with your latest sale and decide today is the day to make that purchase.
The customer journey isn’t always a racetrack, but slow and steady can win at the end of the day. Below, see two Facebook remarketing campaigns as they appear in the feed. They might not stick out to everyone, but to a customer who’s been on the fence about a purchase, this might be the straw the breaks the camels back.
Convert Visitors with Confidence
As you can see from the ideas above, there’s a world of options for converting those visitors into customers. None of these exist in a vacuum. They need to be used together and strategically to match your customer journey from introduction to sale.
Your users are just getting to know you the first time to find your website. Make sure that the first impression is a good one, and that your content brings them back for another visit. If you don’t convert your customers on the first visit, don’t fret. It takes dedication and time to build worthwhile, long-term relationships. That’s what running an online business is all about.