5 Website Ingredients to Boost Your Conversion Rates

Your website has just one job: to sell.

Sounds simple, but there’s a catch. Not every visitor to your website is ready to buy. In fact, the vast majority of your website visitors are not ready.

Think about that for a minute…

Let’s say you’re a salesman and you have 100 people in a room interested in your product or service, but only 2 of them are ready to buy right now. What would you do?

Obviously you don’t want to miss out on the 2 easy sales. But you also don’t want to ignore or turn off the other 98 interested prospects that could turn into customers days, weeks, or months down the road.

That’s a tricky situation and it’s the exact same position your website is in every single day!

What’s the Solution?

How do you cater to both “hot” prospects ready to buy and to “warm” prospects that require some more TLC?

The answer is to give your visitors the ability to self select. In other words, let your visitors pick the path they want to go down and then match the copy on those pages to the audience you know is reading them.

I’ll use our website, www.mainstreetroi.com, as an example.

If you’re a “hot” prospect ready to sign up for one of our services, then where would you go? Most likely to one of our Services pages. From there you can request a quote and talk to a Marketing Advisor.

If you’re a “warm” prospect not ready to sign up, then where would you go? You might request our Internet Marketing Survival Guide or review some of the articles on our blog. See the difference?

The pages geared toward “hot” prospects are designed to sell and have a strong call to action to take the next step in the buying process. The pages geared toward “warm” prospects are designed to get contact information so we can follow up via email to nurture, educate, and eventually convert into customers.

Now that you understand this critical concept it’s time to dive into the 5 website ingredients to boost your conversion rates. Every business can and should use these ingredients regardless of which industry you’re in.

I’ll start with the 3 ingredients you need to convert the “hot” prospects…

#1: Offer & CTA

Every good sales person knows you need a great offer and you must ask for the sale (aka include a call to action or CTA). The same is true with your website when you know you’re talking to a “hot” prospect.

You need to address the question on every prospect’s mind, “Is this a good deal?” That doesn’t mean your product or service is the cheapest! Consider other factors like speed of delivery, quality, and time savings when answering this important question.

#2: Benefit-Focused Copy

Next, you need to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?” How is your product or service going to make your customer’s life better?

One trick to ensure you address all of the benefits is to first list the features of your product or service. This is typically easy since you’re living and breathing your product or service. After you’ve listed the features ask yourself, “How does this help the customer?” or “What result does this feature product?” and then write down the answers for every single feature. Those are the benefits that you need to highlight on your sales pages!

#3: Social Proof

Lastly, you need to answer the question, “Has anyone else tried this and did it work?”

Let’s face it, nobody wants to be the guinea pig with your products or services. Plus, nobody wants to risk getting ripped off. That’s why social proof is so important in digital marketing. Every single prospect comes to your website skeptical and it’s your job to prove him or her wrong with overwhelming social proof.

Again, the 3 ingredients listed above are geared toward your “hot” prospects. The next 2 ingredients are required to convert all the “warm” prospects that visit your website…

#4: Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a free offer designed to capture contact information from your “warm” prospects before they leave your website (and likely never return).

For example, our SEO checklist, AdWords checklist, and Analytics checklist are all lead magnets we use on our website. In addition to free reports and tools, discount coupons can be great lead magnets. Essentially, anything you know your prospects would find valuable enough to give you their email qualifies as a lead magnet.

Of course, collecting contact information is not enough… you also need to follow up!

#5: Email Follow-Up

The final ingredient is email follow-up. As I mentioned above, only a small percentage of your website visitors will buy right away. That means the majority, close to 98%, will require consistent follow up before converting into customers.

By using lead magnets, you’ll automatically collect contact information from visitors that you can use to follow up via email newsletters, promotions, and autoresponders.

Don’t let the media fool you… email is not dead! It’s very much alive and one of the best tools businesses can use to nurture, educate, and generate sales.