7 Tips for Converting Website Visitors

by Elle Ray | Apr 22, 2016 | Website Content

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.

Set the groundwork for your sales pitch

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.

Create customers by making them happy

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:

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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.

How Much Does Website Content Cost?

by Mark Bloom | Mar 19, 2016 | Website Content

What You Need to Know When Hiring Writers

You can find someone to write your website content for as little as five dollars a page. Even twenty dollars a page may seem reasonable to you if you’re a small business. But the content you end up with most likely will be worth only that much, and the costs to your business may run a lot higher.

What does website content cost?

Poor writing on your website reflects poorly on your business. Plus, and this is inarguably more important, badly written content doesn’t generate any leads. It has no ROI, a zero return on your investment.

No one is going to buy your products or services if your website doesn’t persuade them that you’re capable of delivering. We’re not just saying this because we’re in the business of writing website content. We want you to understand the difference between what most companies have on their websites and what successful companies have on their sites.

What Effective Website Content Does

Your website has three jobs, and the first two only exist to support the third:

Connect with your audience
Build trust in your brand
Generate leads and phone calls

If you’re not getting phone calls or emails from interested parties who found you online, your website isn’t working for you. If you pay for new website content, you should see an increase in traffic to your site and an increase in sales over time. Ultimately, that’s what your website is supposed to do.

So How Much Does Website Content Cost?

We could turn that question around and ask you: “How much is effective website content worth to you?” If you could increase your sales by five percent, what would that be worth? Ten percent? More? Of course, that’s not how prices are formulated. Content providers set a price, based on their experience in delivering a return on investment. They know what their service is worth.

Content providers know the value of their work

If you do any research into the issue, you’ll find that prices for website content vary greatly, running as high as $25,000 for a targeted landing page. If that sounds astronomical to you, then you don’t understand how well a tight, effective, urgent landing page can convert visitors into paying customers. Landing pages represent your online sales team. How much would you pay for a good salesperson?

In 2017, Ray Access charges a rate based on length and breadth. In other words, if you want a single 1,000-word web page, you pay $250. But if you want 50 pages — your entire site — you pay just $150 a page for 1,000-word web pages that are thoroughly researched and well crafted by American writers. That sounds like a bargain now, doesn’t it? Here’s an excellent article on website content prices, if you want a second opinion.

How Much Do Blog Posts Cost?

This is kind of a loaded question because for blog posts to work — for blog posts to attract not only a lot of people, but the right people, those motivated to buy your products or services — they need to include the right keywords. And keyword research itself can be costly, as anyone with any experience with an SEO firm can tell you. According to the article referenced above, blog posts can cost anywhere from $80 to $950 apiece.

Ray Access, in contrast, charges $100 for a standard 500-word blog post in 2017. These articles are well researched, well written and well edited. They’re also guaranteed original, meaning they are written from scratch, not copied from Wikipedia. In fact, Ray Access uses authoritative sites for its research, never eHow, About.com or any of those hit-or-miss information websites. You should follow this advice, too.

Why the Difference in Prices?

Among the reasons for varying website content prices, the key phrase is value. Can a piece of online writing prove its worth? Since websites attract visitors through a wide variety of ways (e.g., SEO, backlinks, organic searches, ads, etc.), it’s difficult to attribute a website’s success just to its content.

But conversion rates are strongly tied to content. Effective content persuades visitors to buy. Cheap content can’t convert anyone except the most highly motivated. Poor content may even drive visitors away. But exceptional content converts many visitors — and even gets others to at least inquire.

So website content has to have a return on investment that makes the investment worthwhile. This is business, after all.

When you understand the value professional, cost-effective blog and website content writers bring to your business, you’ll want to contact Ray Access to improve your online sales.

Ghostwriters Don’t Write Horror Stories

by Mark Bloom | Feb 5, 2016 | Content Provider

Ghostwriting Is About Something Else Entirely

Ray Access is in the business of writing for businesses. In particular, we craft effective web page content and engaging blog posts for our clients. When we hand off our work, we don’t sign it with our names. Once a blog post or web page is finished, delivered and paid for, our clients own it. They can even put their own names to it, if they like. That makes us ghostwriters.

Ray Access are ghostwriters

Ghostwriters write for other people. When a celebrity or political figure comes out with a new book, chances are very good that a ghostwriter actually did all the writing. Yet the celebrity or political figure gets to take all the credit. It doesn’t seem fair, but it is. That ghostwriter is well paid for the work, and the story still comes from the celebrity, who often can’t write as well or hasn’t the time to sit and write a whole book.

Ghostwriters Perform a Service

So when you visit our Portfolio page and click to view some of our past work, you may see our client’s name at the end of an article. You may see no name listed. Rarely will you see “Ray Access” attributed as the writer. This arrangement is by design. Our work benefits our clients. We don’t need (or want) to get in the way of their success.

We’re compensated in many ways, not the least of which is seeing clients increase their profits through the website. We’re proud of our work, and yes, we’re paid for our service, too. That definitely increases our profits. So ghostwriting, for us, is a win-win proposition.

But Why Not Take Credit?

when we win, you win too Honestly, the writers and editors at Ray Access don’t need the credit. We’ve been published in print and across the Internet. We’ve written every website page, every blog post and every press release listed and linked from our Portfolio page. We know it, and our clients know it. Moreover, our clients understand the value we bring to their websites, and they’re happy to recommend us. Just ask them!

And not to take anything away from those hard-working web designers and developers who put their names and links at the bottom of every page they build, we believe it’s more a ploy to gain SEO points than to trumpet their work. We believe our clients’ websites should be all about their business, not ours.

Ghostwriting Is a Means to an End

As ghostwriters, we’re able to capture a client’s voice well enough to give the business a distinct personality. If our client wants to come across as a serious professional, we can accommodate that. If a client want to be thought of as the friendly confidant, we can do that too. Ghostwriters need to write in a variety of styles and tones. Whatever the client wants, Ray Access can usually deliver.

But make no mistake about it: our goal is to help our clients succeed by generating phone calls — new business — through the website. It gives us great pleasure and satisfaction to see our clients succeed. That generates the customer loyalty we love and the word-of-mouth marketing we crave. Ghostwriting works — for us as well as for our clients.

Let us be your ghostwriters. Learn how we can help your business succeed through targeted online content. You can even put your name on it.

2016: The Year of the Writer

by Mark Bloom | Jan 8, 2016 | Content Provider

This Is the Year Writers Finally Earn Respect

Writers of everything, including website content, finally get their due.

Novelists have always been the rock stars of the writing world. Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, just to name a few American authors, remain famous even after death. Successful short story writers have also earned acclaim. Flannery O’Connor, Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka are all well-known names.

website content writers were once ignored

Screenwriters too have made a name for themselves, emerging as box office draws in their own right. Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) brings people to his movies by name recognition alone. Jonathan Nolan (Memento, Interstellar) writes for his brother, director Christopher Nolan. And of course, the Coen Brothers, Joel and Ethan (O Brother Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men), are known as much for their writing as their directing.

Website Content Writers Too?

As 2016 unfolds, we expect to see more recognition and regard for other types of writers as well. While novelists and screenwriters will continue to make the big money, storytellers in other fields are starting to gain the respect that has eluded them for years.

writing for fun and profit Writers of website content, for example, have been delegated for years to the back of the bus, in terms of both recognition and regard. The pay for creating website content reflected that disdain. But businesses are finally waking up to the value of quality content in their websites and in their blogs. And as a result, demand for that work is increasing, along with the pay scale.

Content Is a Difference Maker

A mere 10 years ago, not all businesses even realized they needed a website. They had a storefront or they had an established business in a vibrant neighborhood; they didn’t need anything more than an occasional TV ad to keep traffic coming. Today, every business knows the value of an online presence.

But with increased competition comes increased needs. When your business is no longer competing with just your rival across town, but with every other similar business in the entire country, you need to take advantage of every opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Enter quality content for your website and blogging for your business.

What That Difference Means

writing for the Web graphic

It’s no longer enough to have a website; your business needs an effective website, one that connects to your customers. Websites are no longer a necessary expense; they are part of a total marketing plan. As we say here at Ray Access: “If your website isn’t making you money, it’s costing you money.”

A business blog needs to attract potential customers to your website. Your website needs to convert random visitors into dedicated customers. Thoroughly researched, well crafted, targeted website content accomplishes these goals.

Writers Make That Difference Happen

A stunning twist of a phrase, fun word play and compelling storytelling will propel website writers to fame and fortune. Move over, Ray Bradbury! Well, maybe not, but at least a good writer and editor can attract and woo your customers — who will appreciate a website that provides real information without the marketing-speak they’re bombarded with daily.

So treat content writers with respect, and they will make your company money. Reward them for their efforts too, because writers will be in demand as the new year progresses. Here at Ray Access, our writers work hard for you to deliver the website content and blog posts that will make the difference for your company. Contact us today to find out how we can help your business grow in 2016.

Content in Context

by Mark Bloom | Dec 23, 2015 | Content Provider

Writing Online Content Isn’t Enough By Itself

Where you put your online content is just as important as where you hang your ornaments

Everyone by now should know how important content is to a website. It adds value, raises page rank, builds trust and generates sales. But the content on your website has to connect with your audience and it has be appropriate for its place. In other words: content has to work in context.

What does that mean? To the writers at Ray Access, writing content in context means crafting carefully researched blog posts that attract attention. It means creating website content that communicates your message in a way that turns visitors into customers. In short:

Blog posts, as an extension of your website, build depth while reaching out to your audience across the Internet. Your blog, when it’s working, becomes an online marketing engine.
Website content explains your unique business proposition — what makes you different and why anyone should choose you over your competitors.

Why It Works

When both are working together, website content contributes to lead generation, which adds to your bottom line. Yes, your website should be making you money, not costing you money. And it all comes down to high quality content in context.

The content on your website is the means for connecting with your customers. It’s your online sales force. You can’t be there 24/7, but your website can. It’s always open, and it’s always working. With the right content in context, along with an appropriate design and the necessary technology, your website — all by itself — can create and nurture a relationship with your visitors.

Your Website as a Sales Tool

Ray Access helps your website make you money Website content has to build trust in your business. Since people do business with people and companies they like, your website has to convey a likeable personality to visitors. It should demonstrate your expertise and knowledge in your field. It can enlighten, explain and coerce. While the ultimate goal of your website is to generate sales, the more immediate goal is to develop a relationship with your target market.

Your website accomplishes this with the right content in context. If your audience is 20-somethings, your website has to speak their language. If your audience is 50-somethings, you need content they can understand. Ray Access writes targeted, researched website content, no matter who your customers are.

Your Website as a Marketing Tool

But first your customers have to find you. And that’s why blog posts are so vital to your business. Blog posts can take advantage of keyword phrases that your website can’t cover. Your blog can tie your business to news events, celebrities and even other industries. Your blog posts reach out across the Internet to attract people — people looking for answers — to your website.

Business blog posts are written specifically to attract your clientele. They are meant to be interesting and shareable. They answer specific questions about your business or about your industry. They share your knowledge and educate your customers. Blog posts can help you find new customers. And the writers at Ray Access research, write and edit a tremendous variety of engaging blog posts.

For all this, you need expert online writing services. Contact Ray Access to discover the difference between just content and content in context.

Beyond Analytics

by Mark Bloom | Jun 2, 2015 | Website Content

Why Ray Access Provides Website Assessments

Our website assessment gives your site a human evaluation.

a website assessment helps make your blog easier to read

Website analytics (like Google Analytics) can show you all kinds of data:

How many unique visits your website attracts.
How long they stay on your site.
What pages they visit.
Where they came from or how they got there.

All this is really useful information, if you know how to decipher it and act upon it. To the content experts at Ray Access, however, there are two very simple computations that are meaningful:

Are you attracting enough visitors to your website, and
Are you converting those visitors into customers?

In plain language, is your website successful at bringing in new and repeat business? Is it working for you? If it is, you don’t need analytics to tell you; you can see it in your bottom line. If your website isn’t working, analytics may not tell you what’s wrong.

What’s Wrong with Your Website

No disrespect to analytics and those professionals who rely on the data they generate. Those numbers are real, they’re valid and they do reflect success or failure. But customer conversion is a subtle art. If it were simply a matter of numbers, every online venture would eventually succeed, given the plethora of search engine optimization (SEO) specialists out there.

Unfortunately, conversion relies on multiple factors, including the mood of the visitor when he reaches your website. Little things can erode his curiosity, his confidence and his desire to buy. For example:

Readers who see spelling or grammatical errors on your website lose faith in your credibility.
Visitors often give up after a few seconds if they don’t see what they need right away.
Your website content may actually say one thing when you meant another, causing visitor confusion and lost sales.
Poorly designed sites are notorious for pushing away visitors. If your website content is not easy to scan, your website’s not easy to use.
Website designs that look antiquated do not elicit feelings of confidence in visitors.
Big blocks of text turn readers off.
A bad experience, like a bad review, is impossible to delete. Once your reputation is tarnished, you can’t easily win back your audience.

Pet Peeves of Real People

don't make people angry about your website While responding to analytics can show you where your website issues lie, you can master the SEO requirements for the pages of your website and still not be able to convert the visitors you’re drawing. The problem could be that you’re so immersed in keyword research that you’ve forgotten that it’s real people who actually visit your site. Real consumers rely on those search engines to bring them the goods, services and information they seek. So you must direct your website content to answer real questions from those real human visitors.

One of the worst mistakes web developers make is to rely on cool graphics, hyped up verbiage and trendy videos. As a result, a first-time visitor to your site sees so much flash that by the time he finishes viewing all these distractions on your home page, he still doesn’t even know what your company does, what it sells or why it even has a website (other than to show off its trendiness).

Business owners often rely too heavily on website designers to create a site, and then don’t take the time to go over that site to ensure that it works for their target market. What ends up happening is you get a great-looking site that doesn’t actually work to convert visitors. And if you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it.

Another common flaw in website design is that the contact information is difficult to find. Putting it in small fonts at the bottom of your page is insulting to a visitor who may just need a phone number or email address to ask a question or make a purchase. Your contact information — an email address, phone number, physical address, hours of operation… whatever it is — may be the most important thing on your website.

Website Assessments to the Rescue

We started Ray Access because of our own experiences and frustrations with website design and poor content quality. Here was a niche we knew we could fill. But at the beginning, we just offered to write website content and blog posts. Soon after, we launched a service we hadn’t even considered at the beginning: website assessments. For every new client, we offered to review the existing website and point out problems, errors and opportunities. Then we provided ideas, options and solutions.

It turns out that website assessments held enormous value in and of themselves. So it became a standalone service. An affordable, no-obligation website assessment provides a snapshot of how effective your current website is from a content perspective. In other words, we examine your website as a first-time visitor might see it. We generate a page-by-page report that tells you what works, what doesn’t work, and even what’s missing.

Why Content Providers?

Ray Access provides website assessments Whether you are creating a new website or updating a current site, bring in an experienced team of website professionals to provide an outsider’s view of your content and design. While we’re not website designers or SEO pros here at Ray Access, we have visited thousands of websites and we are experts in content. We know what works.

We review your content to determine if it builds trust and answers questions. We check your design to see if it’s clear and east to navigate. We look at your graphical elements to find out if they add value or just get in the way. And since our website assessments come with no obligation, you can turn around and hire someone else to fix your problems. Adding value is our goal. Getting more business from you does not motivate us; earning your trust does.

It’s the Details that Count

A professional website assessment from Ray Access gives you:

An overall critique of your site, including how it looks and how it reads
In-depth line reading for grammar, spelling and context appropriateness
Review for clarity
Advice for where to place call-to-action elements
A check of all active links (you’d be surprised how many web pages are filled with broken links)
Questions that your customers may have that can’t be found easily on your site, if at all
Suggestions for additional pages
How well and how easy your website is to navigate (or not)
Critique of the photos and taglines
SEO options, such as keyword optimization
An honest appraisal of how a new visitor sees your site

With each new website assessment we do, we find areas that are confusing or conflicting that we never encountered before. Because your business is unique, your website should reflect it. You can find hundreds of really cool design templates out there. Many businesses try to stand out by relying on slang and non-business verbiage. That’s great. Have fun building your site.

But don’t trade trendiness for clarity. And don’t trade flash for conversions. The bottom line is that your website should be adding to your bottom line. If it’s not, contact Ray Access for a website assessment. We’ll find the real world answers for you.

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