10 ways to turn website visitors into customers

Something we often see in our line of work is so much money and time being spent on increasing website traffic only for it to fizzle at the finish line and not progress any further. When visitor details aren't captured, the opportunity to nurture website visitors into sales leads and ultimately paying customers is lost.

10 ways to boost website conversions

In our experience, the process of boosting onsite conversions and ultimately creating sales leads falls into a few simple categories. We've taken the time to document these below, but it's important to note that this should be the final part of your overall strategic marketing plan. i.e. You've already attracted the right customers to your website using a well thought out marketing mix and content strategy. So in essence, this is the icing on the cake. The final piece of the puzzle that encourages curious visitors to want to know more of what you have to say. Enough so that they are willing to share their valuable personal details with you in exchange for it. 

1.Premium Content

It all starts with compelling downloadable content. It's also called 'gated content' because to access it, your website visitor needs to fill out a form and provide you with their contact information to access it. By doing so, you have now transformed your visitor into a contact. This affords you the ability to retarget them in the future with useful information, which can help nurture them towards becoming a sales lead you can handover to your sales team.

When producing premium content, we approach it from the customer's point of view and 'what can we provide that is enticing and useful enough to deserve a person's email or phone number?' It should also be an outcome of your overall content strategy. So, think about what other blogs and content you have and what you plan to produce in the future. Ask yourself, where does this piece fit in the mix?

Premium content should be well written, beautifully designed, and something that is going to be useful. It could be step by step guides, industry analysis, quarterly reports, research and statistics, eBooks, calendars etc. Ultimately it is a value exchange, so it needs to be valuable.

Pop-ups are often under-utilised. But they are a proven and super-effective way to capture contact information. They can be subtle in their design and highly contextual so that they are less about pestering your visitor and more about being useful and helpful. Start small and begin with one pop up; it doesn't even have to be on your homepage. Think of it as a call to action button on steroids. Remember you know your website intimately. But for new visitors, there can be a lot of information to process and paths to go down. So pop-ups are an excellent way of calling attention to your gated content or newsletter and are a more straightforward way to fill out a form for easy access. If you're fortunate enough to have a CRM and technology platform like HubSpot underpinning your website, you can stipulate smart pop up rules to manage who does and doesn't see them. For example, there's no point showing a pop-up about a piece of premium content to a user who has already downloaded it so you can set exclusion rules.

3. Landing pages

Landing pages are specific pages on your website created for a user to take action. They often relate to a campaign or piece of content. Landing pages should be single-minded, simple and have one clear and focussed call to action. If you give too many follow up options, you can overwhelm your user, and they end up picking none. Think of choosing one CTA and keep it simple - either 'Download now', 'Request a call back' 'or Sign up now'. 

This can be where you win or lose your conversions.

Did you know only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates? (HubSpot, 2020) So why not create two versions of your landing page and monitor the results over a month. You can test the design, messaging, and CTA. The page that converts more visitors can then become your primary landing page, and you will gain valuable insights about why this page converted better than the other which you can apply more broadly across your website.

Email nurturing is a vital part of the process of nurturing a contact into a sales lead and ultimately turning a website visitor into a potential customer. It's an exercise in relationship building and timing. By sharing useful content via email, you can better position your brand as an authority and gain the added benefit of seeing who is interested and engaged with your content over time. It allows you to identify one-off visitors from engaged prospects and you can build up a picture of content interest so you can share more targeted content in the future. 

Chatbots are another excellent conversion tool because they allow your website visitor to get immediate answers to their questions. Chatbots can be contextual and in the same way as pop-ups, can have rules applied to make them highly targeted and useful. You can pre-fill known questions and answers and even better give your user the option to talk to a member of your team whilst they are most interested. Either via chat or by requesting a call-back, booking a meeting or requesting an email reply. Chatbots are such a great way of converting visitors that are highly interested in the moment.

CTA is short for 'Call To Action' and are the buttons that appear on your webpages. They might be 'read more', 'find out how', 'sign up,' or 'contact us'. It's essential to use CTAs strategically across your website and make them clear, contextually relevant and helpful. Keep in mind the look of your CTAs, the language you use in them and the location of them. Use them thoughtfully to direct traffic and take action. CTA's are a great way to capture user information by driving users to a landing page, gated content or your contact page.

Your website must have a robust customer relationship management database (CRM). At a minimum, it should capture basic user information such as their name, email and phone number. Still, it adds so much value to your marketing efforts if it can record information like content interests, page visits, CTA clicks and downloads. This allows you to build a better profile of your contact, their interests, engagement and likelihood to become a lead worth handing over to your sales team. It is also an important place to note if your contact does not want following up. I.e. if they have unsubscribed from your emails or are a poor fit. This is not just common sense but a legal requirement according to the 2003 Spam act that you filter out unsubscribed contacts when sending emails to your database.

As we have alluded, the better you can segment your data and match them with relevant content, the higher your conversion rates will be. Aim to provide tailored, curated content so that you are relevant and helpful. This builds trust, authority and a greater likelihood of being a preferred service provider of your future customer.

Having the right technology underpinning your website can add enormous value. Using a system like HubSpot, but there are many great technology providers out there, you can automate these conversion strategies. A/B testing, progressive forms, Smart CTAs, chatbots, pop-ups and email nurturing. Automation allows you to think out all scenarios and put plans in place. It's incredibly efficient, but we still encourage regular reviews of any automation to be confident it is working well and delivering the right leads to your sales teams.

Give it a try

Our top ten tips to help turn your website visitors into customers. There are so many opportunities to boost website conversion rates, so now it's a case of getting started. Then test, measure and learn.

Poignand Consulting is a strategic marketing and sales enablement consultancy that exists to unlock customer value for your business. We do this by helping enrich the customer experience at every point of contact – from the first seed of awareness to enquiry to opportunity, purchase, the post-sale relationship and repeat purchases. 

If you would like help with your marketing and sales, please contact us.