It’s one thing to get site visitors. We all want millions of people visiting our websites. But site visits are, in many ways, not the right way to judge whether or not a site is successful. If visitors click on your site, view your content, and leave, then those visitors did not matter.
Every website has a goal. Online presence is important, but using that to bring in new leads for your business makes a website your most important marketing tool. It’s more important to have 10 visitors and 10 new customers than it is to have 1000 visitors and 5 new customers. For you to do that, you need to focus heavily on not only SEO, but also conversions.
What Is Conversion?
When a person clicks onto your website and then performs whichever action you want them to take, that’s conversion. You have converted them from a reader into an engaged user. A potential client coming onto your website should take an action you want them to take, such as:
- Purchase an item.
- Fill out your contact form.
- Give you a phone call.
- Sign up for an email newsletter.
- Share your site on social media.
- Click on an ad.
In the long run, you might want to get more out of your users. For instance, if they fill out your contact form for a quote, you probably want them to hire you and pay for services. But for the purposes of conversions on your website, the goal you use needs to be trackable and directly related to visits.
Tracking and Improving Conversions
Now that you’ve established what you want your site visitors to do, we can come up with data to show how successful your call to action is. Traffic is the number of visitors to your website. Use the number of sales, contact form submissions, Facebook likes, etc. as your metric of successful conversions.
In a perfect world, the conversion ratio would be one to one. More realistically, we just want it as high as you can get it. For e-commerce sites that sell a product online, the average conversion is just under 3%, although other websites can be higher.
If your conversion rate is not as high as you want, here are some techniques to improve conversion:
- Write Strong Content – Your website needs to represent your brand. It should look professional, indicate the value, and build trust. If your website lacks information or isn’t engaging, customers will click away.
- Call to Action – A call to action lets your viewers know what action they should take on your site. Yours should be in a prominent location and clear, often within the text and possibly elsewhere on the site.
- Make It Easier – If customers should call you or fill out a contact form, make it easy as possible to do so. Place your phone number on every site page, make your form accessible, and remove unnecessary fields from your form that may cause people to give up.
- Give Value – In addition to your overall site showing value, indicate the direct value to the customer of taking the action you want. Maybe by calling you, they get a quick fix to their pest control problem. Or if they sign up for your newsletter, they get a coupon.
Barriers to conversion or a missing call to action can be a reason that your conversion rate is low. But more often, it is your website content that does not entice visitors to take the next step.
When your website has traffic but few conversions, consider hiring a professional content writer. We write content that engages the reader, builds their trust in your value, and provides a clear call to action, so you can see increased conversions. Fill out our contact form or give us a call to learn how.
