Converting your web pages into sales should be the overall goal of the web
developer when sitting down with you to discuss your web based business. All to
many times I have seen the focus placed on the design of the site or getting
something up with copy to make the clients happy. The goal of a webmaster should
be to not only create the website as appeasing to the target audience as
possible but to also make sure that the website produces the results that are
expected when establishing the internet presence. With that said, there are many
factors that are out of the control of the website developer and those instances
have to be taken into consideration. I never promise my clients results because
of the factors that go into making a web campaign successful. However, I do
guarantee that everything that is within my control will be done correctly with
conversion of a sale in mind. In this article I will talk about a few techniques and the conversion ability of your website.
There are many aspects to a website that the general public are not aware of.
It IS the job of a webmaster to go over all aspects of website design, web
development, SEO and Internet Marketing and all your options pertaining to each. In this article we are going to skip to
the end steps which is optimizing your web pages for the search engines and
preparing your web pages for conversions.
To read about the initial steps of starting a
successful web site please read the following article written by
Rodney Liber
who is a Webmaster and Search Engine Optimization Specialist.
Step 1)
Website Design and Development - Getting the most for your dollar
Other valuable articles written by Rodney Liber can be found here:
Lets Get Started
Web Page Conversion
After step one has been successfully completed it is now time to focus on
driving traffic to your website. WAIT!!! This is where the main focus of most
SEO specialists stop. It used to be that a website was successful because it was
getting a large amount of hits each day, month and year. I am hear to tell you
that getting traffic is only the first step, actually converting them to
purchasing your product or service is even better.
With so many websites on the internet with one and two keyword search results, and those results
pulling up hundreds of thousands of queries, how could I possibly compete with
that? I hear this question all to often. The most practical answer that I can
give to this relevant question is
developing websites with the following practices of Direct Focus, Strategic Application and Timed
Evaluation are key components to the success of your website.
Direct Focus
You have built your website, developed it on a sound platform and have
implemented your basic SEO rules and techniques. Getting to this point will make
all the difference between a failed internet presence and a successful one.
The Turn Group, a website design and development firm located in Kansas
City, MO has time-proven results at building top quality web presences for their
clients. Lets take a look at what Direct Focus really is.
The first steps of your web project should determine the following two
questions:
- Defining who your exact target market is
- Defining who your exact competition is
Once we have this information we can then begin to focus on driving not only
large amounts of traffic to your site but hot leads that will produce your
overall sales goals. What good does it do to drive one million visitors to your
website if they don't do anything once they get there? Your bounce rate for
visitors leaving your pages will be very impressive if they have no direction
once they arrive or if finding what they really need is not easily assessable.
"Providing information is good, providing
information with direction is even better".
When building your web pages you must present your information in a way that
intrigues your target audience to want to continue reading with an action that
follows. This is done by qualified
SEO Copy Writers
that know how to engage the audience.
Any good sales person will tell you they have more success making a sale by
asking for the commitment to buy then by providing information in hopes that
they will take the next step to purchase on their own. I am sure that you have
heard the words "Niche Market" and that refers to focusing on a
particular niche in your field providing only products or services in that
specific area. Direct Focus on what you do and providing the information to
those that are looking is what we are talking about here.
Here is an example: If your website sells a service that you offer,
your site is brand new and you have many competitors in your specific field,
your immediate focus depending on the service that you provide would more than
likely be local or regional versus global audience. What do I mean by this? Simple, if
you are a new
web site development company and you wanted to compete for the
keyword "website design" (which would be a global term) you would fail and be
filing for bankruptcy as quickly as you started. Why? Because there are
1,000,000+ website competing for that same keyword. Your only hope of survival
is to direct your focus of advertising to a specific niche of web design and or
if you focused in one geographical area.
Directing all your energy, marketing and focus to the potential consumers
that you specifically target guarantees a higher conversion rate from those that
just access your site either by accident or by elaborate schemes used to drive
traffic to your web pages. By direct focus on your target market your bounce
rate will decline and your conversion rate will increase.
How do we do this?
Strategic Application
There are many ways to go about this process. Many choices that you make will
have allot to do with your budget and time. Throughout the entire process of
web design having a clear grasp of who your target audience is impacts many
of the decisions that you have made up to this point. Alright, lets roll our
sleeves up and get to work because this stage is the most aggressive. Below are
JUST A FEW ideas on how to produce a better conversation ratio versus bounce.
Again, the goal is to bring qualified traffic to your site who are looking for
what you have to offer versus unqualified non-converting traffic.
- Establishing and offering a Value Proposition
- The first step in the application process is the creation of your
Value Proposition. If you have 10 choices for the exact same product or
service your choice will generally boil down to who offers the best
customer service, value, discount, warranty and
guarantee. The focus here is to be honest and at a minimum to offer
the exact same Value Proposition as your competitors with the goal being
to out do them. You have to give a reason to your potential customers as
to why they need to purchase from you versus anyone else. You must make
that process a clean, simple and secure process. One the purchase is
complete, you might also want to think about offering them reasons to
come back and purchase from you again.
- Getting your pages ready for conversion
- Now that we know who we are targeting we need to make the
necessary adjustments to the layout, images,
copy editing and most important direction that you want your readers
to take. Providing information to them as I said before is fine, but
providing them with the information they are looking for and directing
them to the next step is even better. Depending on the product or
service that you offer will greatly depend on how you direct your
potential customers.
- For example: Lets say you sell blue suede shoes. Your title and
description tags of your web page will want to display this type of
information. Then you will want to provide information on your page
to your site viewers in regards to your product and as many images
as you can displaying that product. Then, and this is the most
important part, you need to give them a reason/incentive to purchase
from you by directing them to purchase the item and maybe even going
so far as to tell them why they need to buy it. Converting their
initial inquiry to a sale can be very easy or difficult depending on
how you do it. Direct them to your sales page, offering the product
they are interested in giving them a reason to buy it and making the
purchase process as easy as possible.
- Setting up landing pages and blogs with conversion tracking
- A landing page is a page created for your product or service that
really only references one or two of your items. For example, you may
have several lines of shoes that you carry but you really want to target
sales to your most popular brand or type. You would create a landing
page that is similar to your website that is hosted on the same server
or someplace else that talks only about that one shoe. This page will be
designed to display this one particular item, grab your target audiences
attention and then to drive them to your sales page. A blog can do the
same by giving you the ability to drive traffic to any page on your
website that you want. A
blog also allows for more elaborate descriptions of your products
and services.
- Conversion tracking is code you can get from Google that will
allow you to track how many people are hitting your landing pages
and to track all the way to the sale. This is an excellent tool to
monitor your bounce rate versus conversion so that you can monitor
what is working and what is not.
- Setting up Social Networking and Connecting with your Audience
- Following a well charted
process is a key aspect to a successful internet campaign. With the
onslaught of Web 2.0 and the drive towards instant connection with
family, friends and colleagues, social networking provides two great
means of driving traffic to your site. First and I must say, common
sense tells us that if you have a website, the more doors that open up
and lead to that website the better. So with that said, setting up as
many social networks that you can successfully manage is a great avenue
to drive traffic. You also get the added benefit of having the power of
that social networks established page rank to help build trust.
Establishing a well balanced, structured, integrated and connected
network of websites as well as communicating with your potential buyers
is always a good start and good practice. Setting up accounts like
MySpace service as an additional website representing your product or
service. These are valuable steps to take to drive traffic.
- When selling a product or service its invaluable to join "like"
groups to talk about your products and services at the same time
providing links back to your sites through forums and communication
portals.
-
Marketing your product and service through ad campaigns, pay per
click, and video
- I say this lightly, but once you have exhausted your efforts in
setting up social networks, blogging and forums the next step is to
advertise in places you know your target audience visits. This well help
to drive immediate traffic to your landing pages or sales page.
Depending on your budget this can have an immediate impact on your
sales. HOWEVER, allot of business that I know like to skip the steps
listed above and go straight to pay per click advertising. I don't
recommend this because if you forgo the above mentioned steps and your
pages are not ready you inevitably are paying for your bounce rate and
will not see the results that you want.
-
Video advertising is the next evolution in advertising. With
everyone having access to a video camera sites like YouTube and
Google Video are pioneering the market for internet sales. Lets face
it, we are a site oriented culture. We want to see what we are
buying! What better way to grasp that attention of those that are
driven by the stimulus of video advertising? All of these methods
mentioned are ways to get in front of your potential customers to
interact with them to garner trust, to provide more qualified
traffic to your site and to establish yourself on the internet as
either a leader or trusted source for your consumers needs.
Timed Evaluation
The important thing to remember is that no matter what you do it will take
time. Now you may start seeing immediate results but its important to note here
that if you are a page rank watcher it could take upwards of three months or
more to see any significant changes in your ranking within the search engines.
As important as that is, because we all know that the higher your rank the more
people will potentially find you, you should see a marked improvement of the
quality of your visits then what you had before. Conversion and SEO practices
are not an exact science. So its through time, patience and trial and error
that will eventually pay off in the end.
- Constantly evaluate what you have done and what seems to be working or
not
- Update your pages consistently - (Search Engines love new content)
- Constantly monitor what your competition is doing. (Often times
mimicking them pays off, especially when they spend all the money to try
marketing ideas. See what works for them and duplicate it).
- Make slight changes and keep track of those changes. Record what changes
worked and what didn't.
- and remember, the more doors you have that open up to your website that
better off you are. Get out there and let everyone know what you have to
offer and why they need it!
Get a Free Quote
We couldn't finish this page without offering you a
free web
quote for your project. When searching for a web provider you need more then
just a web shop, you need a dedicated partner that understands what it takes to
make it in an ever changing internet world. We just don't build websites, we are
the architects of the internet building long term relationships with all of our
clients. Your success is our success.
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