You want to turn more website visitors into sales, but how?

By Simon Chapple – Head of Search Marketing

You want to turn more website visitors into sales, but how?

Any business owner with a website needs to ensure they are doing all they can to convert as much of their traffic into new enquiries and sales as possible.

It can feel like a minefield and many site owners struggle to know what to do to get the most out of their website, it is a common problem, but thankfully, help is at hand.

Below I have outlined some simple steps to improve how many of your visitors become leads and turn into sales.

1) Work out what you want a visitor to do when they come to your website, don’t be vague, be very clear on this, do you want them to leave their contact details, download a brochure or maybe make a purchase? Whatever it is, make sure you are very focused on this.

2) Once you know what action you want your visitors to take on the site, work out what you would like them to do if they don’t take this action, for example, you run an online shop, but the visitor is not ready to buy yet, so, if they don’t buy, you want to grab their email address instead so you can send promotional emails and stay front of mind for when the time comes for them to make a purchase from you.

3) Now you have established the primary and secondary visitor actions, you need to ensure your site is fully geared up to steer your visitors to take the action you want (a bit like herding sheep into a pen), if you want someone to download a PDF brochure, don’t hide it away in the corner! Make it appealing and stand out, ensure it is a download that will make the visitor think “I need that”! For example, an estate agency website might have a PDF download “10 things you must know – before you instruct an estate agent”, it has a really big hook and is very likely to result in a high download rate and plenty of new email addresses to use for future marketing.

4) Test and test again – it is vital to find the sweet spot, where your website is fulfilling the function you want, the only way to do this is to test different calls to action, different messages and design styles and work out which one gives you the results you need. Make sure you measure the results and analyse the data.

5) As you collect more and more email addresses, use a tool like Mailchimp (bulk email sending tool) to send email newsletters, but make sure what you send is interesting and worth reading, this will keep your name front of mind and your readers will start to perceive you as an expert in your field, so when the time comes that they are ready to buy or sign up, it is you they think of.

There are many other ways of improving how many website visitors turn into leads and sales and our team are on hand to help and offer advice that will make a real difference.

We also help many clients get their websites ranked high on page one of Google for keywords that are important to their business, if you would like to find out how your Google rankings can be improved, get a free website review at the top of this page.