Making Converts out of Your Website Guests

You wouldn’t use a Sunday evening dinner party as a platform for converting liberal-minded guests into hard-core gun-rights advocates. Your motive would be not only inappropriate (unless they knew what to expect before they arrived), but also unrealistic and probably unsuccessful. Making converts out of unwitting guests before you’ve set the groundwork for your pitch, while not totally impossible, is an uphill struggle.

Converting visitors into true believers is never an easy task. Conversion does not exist in a vacuum. To be successful, you need to have:

• A compelling story
• Hard, believable statistics
• Trustworthy testimonials
• Applicable features and benefits

What’s In It For Me?

Successful, consistent conversion requires proof that the unconverted will be better off in the long run if they adopt your way of thinking. And they must be in a receptive mood. Whether you are making converts for your political candidate, church or business, the basic rules of meeting human needs remain in play — and always trump the pitch.

To that end, you must find out what makes people tick. What your audience really wants needs to be front-of-mind before you begin making converts out of your visitors. Building a message, service, product or cause that’s designed specifically to meet those human needs while fulfilling other pressing desires leads you to successful conversions. Build it and they will come.

Web Conversions

Sometimes, the analytics of SEO (search engine optimization) can become mind-numbing for luddites and non-techies. In web analytic parlance, conversion simply means turning visitors to your website into paying customers. Conversion is the goal, the reason your website exists. Conversion is how you stay in business, grow your company and sustain your existence.

The rest of your SEO — keywords; fresh, unique copy; links and backlinks; long-form original articles and more — drive visitors to your website. You may be doing a bang-up job of getting them there, but now you have to concentrate your efforts on not just keeping them there, but making converts out of them.

Conversion Theory

So here are seven basic steps you can take, without a whole lot of energy or resources, for making converts out of your visitors to grow your business:

1. Spell it out. Don’t leave it to your visitors’ imaginations to figure out what you do, who you are, and how to make a purchase. Nice flowery, ambiguous copy may please your English teacher or your poetry club, but clear, straightforward language results in higher conversions.
     
2. Use calls to action. Leave no room for questions when making converts. “Buy now,” “Click here for more information,” “Call us today,” “Choose the best option for you” and/or “Hire Us” — all are calls to action that are at the core of conversion marketing.
     
3. Make it easy to convert visitors into customers. Provide online payment plans that are open to everyone. Whenever possible, avoid sign-ups and extra demands of customers before they are allowed to buy (unless you want to remain exclusive — then by all means create hoops).
     
4. Provide answers that are relevant to your customers without making them ask. Let them know how long delivery will take, for example, or when they can expect a returned call. Provide easy access to contact numbers and contact forms and then follow-up on those contacts.
     
5. Make your offers clear and easy to use. Keep options limited to two (three at the most) to prevent analysis paralysis. It’s usually best to display prices to individual consumers, but if you’re a B2B site that caters to small and medium-sized clients, provide a few special offers just to let visitors know that you’re competitive.
     
6. Display testimonials throughout your website. And yes, even on the front page. Testimonials help making converts out of visitors by reassuring them they are in good company. Drop names. Just like in job interviews, conversion tactics leave no room for humility.
     
7. Have your website assessed for ease of use. One of the services Ray Access offers is a web assessment. While you may have a new website that you can easily follow, you need to know how well the average Joe and Jane (or Mark and Linda) can navigate your site.

Still not convinced? Contact us today for more information. The longer your website isn’t making converts from your visitors, the more money you’re losing.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.