3 Must-Have Website
Features that Convert Visitors into Customers
Recently I had a conversation with a voiceover expert who
had paid a good chunk of change to Google for his Adwords campaign. His
complaint? He got lots of traffic (and paid Google for lots of clicks)
but none of them turned into clients, or even into prospective clients,
for that matter. I took a quick look at his website and quickly realized
his problem -- a major website sin committed by online business owners
everywhere. He expected that the visitors to his site would take him up
on his invitation to contact him immediately to hire him upon learning
about his services.
What's wrong with that -- isn't that a reasonable call to action? The
fallacy in that line of thinking is that unless the visitor has already
been searching for exactly the service you offer (and I would estimate
that to be 1 in every 100 or so visitors to your site, but it's probably
closer to 1 in every 500), you're never going to see or hear from that
visitor again. Think about it -- how often do you buy someone's
services as an impulse purchase? So, if you expect visitors to go
immediately from meeting you to hiring you, you're going to be sorely
disappointed.
Instead of trying to immediately convert the visitor into a paying
customer, initiate a relationship with your visitor. This means that
you have a strategy to move him through your like, know, and trust
process so that he's well acquainted with you when he decides to he's
ready to purchase your service. What's the secret to this
relationship-building strategy? It's a simple process of including the
following 3 must-have features on your website:
1. A clear call to action. This is true whether you have a 1
page website or a 100 page site. Your primary call to action, or your
most desired response from your visitor, needs to be made crystal clear
on your site. I believe without a doubt that the call to action that
will earn you the most money in the long-term is to capture your
visitor's contact info in some way. Typically this happens
because you've created a form where the visitor is asked to input his
name and email address into that form. Why would someone willingly part
with his contact information? Because you have created a compelling
offer -- your client capturing device.
2. A client-capturing device. A client-capturing device is a
free giveway that is of value to your target market and serves as a
solution to a big problem that challenges your target market. Once upon
a time, the offer for a free ezine was sufficient to capture a visitor's
contact info. Alas, that is no longer the case, so you have to up the
ante and provide even greater value to your visitor. Your client
capturing device can take any of several formats -- a PDF ebook, a
recording of a teleclass, a 6- part ecourse, a short downloadable video.
In whatever form it might take, your client capturing device needs to
provide some solid information to help your target market solve a
pressing problem and not simply be a piece of fluff that advertises your
business. If your giveaway is all fluff and no substance, you will have
lost this prospective customer for good.
That's not to say that you shouldn't promote your business in this
giveaway. That's one of the purposes of the giveaway -- to tell your
prospect what action to take next, whether that's to buy a product,
subscribe to your membership website, call you for a free consultation,
or buy your service. Many times, the next action you ask the visitor to
take is to enroll in your-stay-in touch mechanism.
3. A stay-in-touch mechanism. Your stay-in-touch mechanism
enables you to "reach out and touch" your prospects on a regular basis.
This mechanism could take the form of a weekly email newsletter or a
daily podcast or regular blog postings or a series of autoresponders to
follow up with them. To move a prospect through your marketing funnel,
it's helpful to use multiple methods to stay in touch with them. So,
through a series of followup autoresponders, I ask my prospects to
subscribe to my email newsletter and point them to my blog, as well.
For best response from your visitors, you must use your stay-in-touch
mechanism at least once a week. The more frequently they hear from you,
the better they get to know you and the greater the likelihood that
they'll convert from prospect into customer.
Take a moment to assess your website for its client attraction factor.
Are you ready to receive visitors? Add these 3 features to your website
and watch your prospects turn into customers.
(c) 2008 Donna Gunter
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You
can, as long as you reprint the article in its entirety
and include this blurb with it:
Online Business Resource Queen
(TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service
professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise
on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift,
TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at
http://www.OnlineBizU.com.
Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at
http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com. Read about running an online biz at her blog,
http://www.GetMoreClientsOnlineblog.com.
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