In this article, I’m going to give you my most powerful website sales optimization tool.
But first, I need to tell you that there’s no silver bullet when it comes to optimizing your website to generate more sales. Typically, it’ll take multiple rounds of testing different variations of your webpage design, layout, offer and copy to find the magic combination.
And here’s the catch – no one (and I mean absolutely nobody) knows with certainty what the magic combination is going to be for your particular product or service. Sure, there are best practices to follow, but even the experts will admit they are often surprised by the results of some of their sales optimization tests.
Like almost everything else in life, the more you learn about improving website sales, the more you realize just how little you actually know. :) There’s a lot to learn, and if you’re just starting out it can be daunting.
Are you ready for the good news?
The Shortcut to Optimize Your Website for Sales
So far I’ve painted a pretty bleak picture for the process of optimizing your website for more sales. And if you approach it the wrong way, then it really can be discouraging. The problem is there are way too many options for where to focus.
Should you test a different website design? Is the layout of your webpages hurting sales? Do you need to change the main navigation to make it more intuitive? Do you have the wrong offer for your market? Is there too much copy on the pages? Is there too little copy on the pages? Do you need more images? Do you need less images? Do you need video?
The list goes on and on… But the good news is there’s a shortcut to identify the most important area to improve your website sales.
It’s called a Sales Funnel Flow Chart.
What Is a Sales Funnel Flow Chart?
A sales funnel flow chart is simply a flow chart that illustrates how a prospect transitions from a website visitor to a customer. For example, e-commerce websites usually have a clear path to make a purchase. There’s the “Add to cart” button on a product page, the shopping cart summary page, maybe an account creation page, and then a series of pages to complete the order. That’s the sales funnel, and each page is a step in the flow chart.
For a services business, the sales funnel might be the services overview page, a button to request a free consultation, a form to complete, a follow up email, an initial phone call, and then a sales presentation to close the deal. Again, each step should be laid out in the flow chart so you can visualize the entire sales path.
Now Identify Your Sales Bottleneck
The next step is to identify the bottleneck, or weakest link. If your sales funnel was a car assembly line, then where would you need to improve to make the assembly line move faster? There’s always a bottleneck in every process and improving that point will always give you the biggest bang for your buck.
So rather than focusing on a single page on your website, look at your entire sales funnel to find the area to focus on. I often find that a sales page is technically “working” because prospects are clicking through to another page, but then there’s another page further down the funnel that has a huge drop off. In this case, if all you do is try to improve the sales page, then you’ll likely never significantly improve sales on your site. You need to focus your energy on the page where you’re losing your prospects.
In other words, using a sales funnel flow chart will ensure you don’t miss the forest from the trees when you’re trying to improve your website.
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