Welcome back to another installment of website pitfalls from your favorite web design company in Melbourne, FL. We are your favorite, aren’t we? Well, if not… then you need to come by the office so I can bribe you with coffee and snacks. Then, surely, we will be your favorite! Anyways, enough nonsense… let’s get to the real meat and potatoes (oh man, now I’m hungry).
We talked about the need for directing traffic with call to actions, but now it’s time to convert them into a lead, sale, subscriber, etc. and do it with purpose!
This is one of my favorite points to illustrate during a speaking engagement. I’ll be presenting to a room full of business professionals and I’ll come to this point and I will tell them to imagine they all desperately want to buy a “widget”, an imaginary product and that I am a “widget” salesman. I tell them that after I finish my sales pitch, I want them to agree to buy my “widget”. Then I start… “Hi! Have you been looking for the perfect widget? One that works day and night and never breaks? The best of the best? Well, I just so happen to sell widgets. See, here is all kinds of information about widgets (I show them a blank sheet of paper). Aren’t our widgets amazing? You probably want to buy one or two or a thousand.” then I immediately turn tail and walk out of the room! I even shut the door if there is one. I know the point has hit them when I hear the roar of laughter.
It’s a fun way to drive home a point and to get a few good laughs. I came back in and ask what I did wrong. “You didn’t let us answer” or “You didn’t finish” is typically the response I get. What I didn’t do is I didn’t give them a chance to buy. I didn’t close… I didn’t go for the conversion. Sales 101… ask for the sale!
I see tons of great websites that forgot to ask for the sale, that forget to close the deal. They present great content, good navigation and call to actions to drive visitors to the right pages, but then make it so hard to buy, sign up, register or whatever it is that visitors leave without doing anything!
This is remedied quite easily; make sure you have a call to action that asks the user to take that final action you want them to take. Maybe it’s to fill out a form to request more information, maybe it’s for them to use an online scheduler to schedule a call or consultation, maybe it’s for them to click “buy now!” or to subscribe for something… maybe the whole goal is just to get a Facebook like. Whatever the goal, don’t forget to have an easy and obvious way for the visitor to become a conversion!
If your website is designed with the idea to sell or generate leads, but has no real method to do so… you cannot expect it to meet its goals! Many business owners build a website, put up their information and expect the leads to flow in.
Common methods to convert would be to have a contact form, perhaps an email newsletter signup, an eBook download (in exchange for email), a product shopping cart, a registration form or even a quote request form. There are many ways to convert a visitor; make sure you have several setup.
We’ve got another blog post that goes into real detail about lead capture methods (click here to check it out).
