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.

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.

Answering Questions

by Elle Ray | Mar 15, 2015 | Website Content

It’s the One Purpose for Blogs and Websites

Don't disappoint your website visitors

Business blogs and websites have a specific purpose, but it’s not to sell your product or service. At least, not entirely. Your website needs to develop trust with your visitors. Your blog needs to attract those curious visitors to your site. And there is no better way to accomplish both those goals than to answer questions people have about your business, industry or town.

No matter what your business, no matter what product or service you provide, people will have questions about it:

What will it do for me?
Why is yours the better product/service?
How much will it cost me or save me?
How can I best use it?

The list goes on and on. You need to answer these questions. Only then will your visitors be open to buy.

Answering Questions in Your Blog

A business blog is a marketing tool. With it, you can reach out, using keywords and topics not directly related to your business, to attract more visitors to your site. Answering questions, both about your industry and about other topics, is a great way to attract readers.

For example, let say you’re a plumber. You can cover the obvious in your blog, such as “How to fix a leaky faucet” and “5 things to ask a plumber before he makes a house call.” But you can also answer related questions, such as “5 steps to winterize your home” and “Handling difficult clients.” These aren’t necessarily topics you’d expect from a plumber, but they fit right in and may attract readers you normally wouldn’t.

Answering Questions on Your Website

Your website absolutely has to answer as many of the obvious questions about your business as possible:

Where are you located?
What do you do, exactly?
Why do people need your product/service?
How are you different from anyone else?
How do I get in touch with you?

These are the easy ones, but if your business generates more obvious questions, answer those, too. In the process, you’re generating trust. You’re sharing information about your business and industry. If it’s unique enough, you’ll get noticed. If it’s truthful enough, you’ll become trusted. If your website is clear enough and friendly enough, you’ll earn the respect of those who visit.

And that’s where the magic happens. If people trust your company, they will like it. If you provide valuable information about your business or industry or even your location, people will remember you. They may not be ready to buy your product or service right then, but when the need arises, they’ll remember you and they’ll return. Because people like doing business with people or businesses they like.

Your Business Website

Yes, the ultimate purpose of a business website is to sell your product or service. But you don’t do that by talking sales and guarantees and price points and all that for page after page after page. You do it by building trust. You do it by sharing value on your site. If a visitor learns something new on your website, that’s gold; that’s more valuable than 10 commercials.

People get online to look for answers to questions. Your website’s job is to answer as many relevant questions as possible. That’s how you attract an audience. That’s the value of content marketing. And it’s not always as simple as it sounds. It takes work. But it’s exactly what we do at Ray Access. Let us help you reach more people with well-crafted website content and a targeted blog.

What Is Good Content?

by Mark Bloom | Feb 7, 2015 | Website Content

How Can Anyone Tell If Your Copy’s Any Good?

Everyone with a keyboard thinks she’s a writer.

The problem with being a writer or a painter is that anyone can do it. All it takes is a few strokes of the pen or brush (manually or digitally), and you’ve got something. So how can you tell if it’s any good? Given the state of art and literature today, you could realistically assume that “quality” is a totally subjective assessment.

Maybe that’s even true, but when it comes to writing online, for businesses, there are ways to determine whether the content on your website or in your blog reaches the heights reserved for the label “quality content.” Ultimately, it comes down to the objective question: Does it work?

Does It Work?

A website for a business is supposed to generate leads and convert visitors into customers. A business blog is supposed to attract people to your website, share insights into your industry, and tout you as a trusted professional. The goal of online content is to get your company noticed.

If it’s not working, you can tell. Traffic to your website is down. The people who do visit aren’t buying. If you have these problems, it could be that you don’t have the right content on your website. It’s possible that good content — content that’s useful to people doing searches, content that’s directed at your target market — can solve these problems.

How Does It Work?

Quality content attracts two distinct audiences: people and search engines. This order is important. Good content is written for people first (not for search engines). If people can’t read it and understand it, then search engines won’t like it either.

Web searches have to provide answers.

People are searching online for answers to questions (e.g., “How do I fix a leaking faucet?”), for specific information (e.g.,”Where can I buy a new faucet?”) and to find businesses (e.g., “Who’s the best plumber in town?”). If you’re a plumbing service, your website should answer all three questions. And more. By making your website useful to people, they’ll find you and remember you.

That in itself makes a website rank higher on a search engine results page. That in itself will help direct more traffic to your website and increase your business awareness and profits (both goals of quality online content). Remember, search engines have competition, too. They want to deliver the best websites to their customers.

How to Tell If Your Website Is Working

by Mark Bloom | Nov 17, 2014 | Website Content

Your Website Should Be Increasing Your Sales

Now that every business has a website, the competition for attention has become fierce. You’ve likely invested time and money (and sometimes a lot of both) into developing your website. Now you want to know if it measures up.

how to get your website noticed

It’s easy to count the sales that come directly from your website, but it’s more difficult to know if your site is aiding those sales or hindering more sales. Unless you’re willing to pay big bucks to an SEO firm to track traffic and conversions — which is a good idea if you can afford it — there used to be few alternatives. Until now.

Website Assessments Provide Perspective

Ray Access has begun offering a new service called “website assessments.” What that means is that we bring our expertise about effective website content, our knowledge about seamless website navigation and our wisdom of a website’s purpose to bear on your site. We pour through your site, page by page, to develop a report that analyzes just how effective your website is to a first-time visitor.

We’ve done many of these website assessments. Every one of the assessments was received with gratitude and accolades. One of our clients, Kudzu Branding, had this to say: “Thank you for your great feedback and comments on our website. I found them extremely useful. We are having a team meeting on Monday to discuss how we can implement some of your ideas.”

How It Works

what does your website look like to a visitor We look for language issues, like whether the content needs editing to more concisely hit your message. That’s a given, since we’re writers practiced in the art of developing website content. But we do more than that.

We look at a lot of websites. Every day, we are either writing website content or doing research for the blogs we write. As a result, we understand what websites are supposed to do and how they should ideally function. For example, your website should not be a sales pitch. Yes, you want to announce your company online. Yes, you want to claim your competitive advantage. Yes, you want visitors to choose your business. But if you hammer the sales pitch over and over, you will drive business away.

Your website should answer questions and help people. Your website should build trust and start a relationship. Anything less is a wasted opportunity.

For your website assessment, we will review your site, page by page, looking for what works and what can be improved. We will write it all down in a report and deliver it to you. All for one low price, based on the size of your website. What you do with the report is up to you. Often, we can help with an edit or a rewrite, but you’re under no obligation to hire us. A website assessment is a standalone service that we’re happy to provide.

It’s Time for Your Website Assessment

No one uses the Yellow Pages anymore; everyone is online and on the go. Search engines keep changing their formulas. A website design has about a five-year lifespan. Past its freshness date, it begins to look staid and dated. So before you begin a project to update your site, call us for a website assessment.

We can tell you where specifically your site needs improving. We can tell you what a first-time visitor sees when he arrives at your website. And we can advise you on ways to keep that visitor from leaving. The metrics show that the longer a visitor stays on your site, the better the chance that he will become a customer.

And that’s exactly what your website should do: build relationships to the point that visitors want to do business with you. And that’s exactly what a website assessment from Ray Access can help your website accomplish. Schedule your website assessment today.

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