Jimmy Rodela
Having a website for your business is one thing, making sure that it sells is another.
The fact is, there is more to creating a website than just making sure that it looks good; that is, if you’re goal for creating one is to get more sales and grow your business.
Sadly, not many business owners are aware of this. A good number of websites created aren’t optimized for getting more sales at all.
What’s worse? When marketers try to optimize their websites, about 63% of them use intuition alone according to Conversioner.com’s data.
Now don’t get me wrong, using intuition may be “OK”, but in today’s day and age where the competition online is cut-throat, you need more than just intuition to stay ahead of the pack; you need hard-cold-numbers.
In short… data.
If, however, you haven’t gathered any data for your website’s conversion optimization yet, then allow me to share with you some proven and tested tips to help you with optimizing your website for sales.
Here goes:
Note – It is always ideal to base your website’s conversion optimization on data that you’ve gathered on your actual site.
1) Make your contact info easy to find.
According to the data gathered by biakelsey.com on 2012, a whopping 60% of business owners fail to receive phone calls from their web visitors, because they are missing either their local, or toll-free number on their homepage.
This data, even though it was uncovered way back in 2012, gives us an idea of how a lot of people are missing out on even the most obvious of things when designing their websites.
And so, the question becomes… can your web visitors easily find your contact information on your website?
If your visitors are having to scroll endlessly, or they have to click 2 – 3 times just to find your contact info, then you need to change your website’s design right now.
One of the best things that you can do is to add your contact info on the top most part of every page of your website, and make the element floating. What this contact center did to their website is a good example.
Notice how their phone numbers are visible no matter what page you are at on their website?
This helps ascertain that their website visitors can call them immediately, should they decide to do so.
2) Make your promo offers visible.
There’s no doubt that promotional offers can make a huge impact on your sales. In fact, Rapidcampaign.com recently uncovered that a good number of UK online shoppers (all 60% of them), tend to change their buying habits based on promotions.
Because of your promo offers, there is a good chance that your customers might end up spending more, or, even buy the things they wouldn’t have bought without the promo offer.
A lot of business owners may be aware of how effective promo offers can be, however, not many are truly able to harness its power.
You’ll be amazed at how other websites are not vocal to their audience about their promotional offers. If I’d have known better, it would even seem like they’re trying to keep their promo offers a secret because of how small their banners are.
Why don’t you do this instead?
Why don’t you make your banners so prominent, that it becomes unmissable to every-single-website-visitor that lands on your page?
Check out what this auto parts website did. Once you land on their homepage, I’m sure that one of the first things that you will see is the massive “Save up to 45%” text on their banner. The text “Free Shipping” is also quite prominent which is also a huge plus.
If that’s the kind of first impression you’ll give to your website visitors, you can bet your family jewels that influencing them to buy from you becomes drastically easier.
3) Have a 24/7 live chat support feature on your website.
According to a survey conducted by Forrester, “44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a Web site can offer.”
What that means is that you need to have a 24/7 live chat support feature on your website; and you need it have it now!
Of course, aside from having the feature on your website, you need to make sure that your audience can find it easily (the explanation is pretty much similar with what I shared in point number 1).
A good trick would be to make sure that the live chat button is a floating element, and the color of the button is catchy.
Considering how 77% of people shopping online would like to chat with someone live first before buying (according to vivocha.com), it isn’t just a good idea for you to have a 24/7 chat support feature installed in your website – it’s common sense.
4) Write a comprehensive review about the different players in your industry.
The more your audience learns from you through your expert advice, the higher the chances of them buying from you. That’s exactly one of the reasons why businesses who take the time to blog, receive about 67% more leads than those who do not.
While blogging certainly has its uses, one of the things that you can do apart from blogging is to write a comprehensive and impartial review about the major players in your industry.
When you take the time to do this, your audience will come flocking to your website for information.
And as they consume your content, they will come to realize how much you have helped them. Instead of them having to scour the web for all these information, you have made the information readily available to them in one place – your website.
A key component of this strategy is to make sure that your review is in fact comprehensive. It needs to add as much value as it can to your readers. if your review is poorly crafted, then don’t even bother using this strategy, you’ll just be wasting your time.
A technique that experienced content writers use to ensure that they are writing a comprehensive review is to list down as many questions as they can about the company or the product. But before they even start listing down these questions, they first switch hats and put themselves in the shoes of their audience.
That way, the questions that they end up listing down becomes pertinent to their target audience, and not just to them – the writer.
This Zoomtrader review is a good example of how a comprehensive review looks like. Notice how the writer broke down the review into bite-size bits by adding multiple subheadings? The writer even added screenshots, facts, and even a sign-up button (among many others) so the readers can easily act on the content immediately after consuming it.
Conclusion
There are a plethora of things that you can do to make sure that your website sells. And the points that we shared above is a good start.
If you need more tips on how to get more sales online, you can also check out the article that I wrote about the internet marketing secret weapons that I use to get more sales.
Photo courtesy – © daviles / Dollar Photo Club
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