In our earlier blog we talked about bringing quality visitors to your website rather than just looking to achieve a higher volume; a fundamental principle in converting clicks to customers.
This second principle of better website conversion is about getting those quality visitors to do more on your website, for longer. This is an area where you can really make a difference to how your website performs.
With more of the right type of visitors coming to your site, the next thing to worry about is whether they will like what they find when they get there. Why?
Reason 1: The more time visitors spend on your website, and the more pages viewed, the more relevant the search engines will judge your site. Therefore they will bump you up in the page rankings as a quality result for the searches that brought those visitors to your site.
Reason 2: The more time people spend on your website, the greater the chances of purchasing or making an enquiry. Give people enough reasons to stick around and you will start to notice an increase in clicks through to more pages, and on the calls to action you have placed. Pretty soon your site will start to yield a higher number of enquiries, even if visitor numbers haven’t changed much. This increase in conversion is the key to turning those visitors into paying customers.
Ways to keep people on your site longer
There are hundreds of things you can add, remove, relocate, tweak or change on your website that will affect its ability to convert, and you need to constantly test, measure and improve for optimum results. Here are some we have chosen that focus on ways to keep people engaged for longer.
- A clean, uncluttered website. Busy pages with too much information and multiple calls to action are a big turn-off, especially on home pages and other campaign-specific landing pages. Keep the noise level down or you will confuse people.
- Keyword placement in content. Your targeted search phrases brought people here, so it is important that you use those same key words to reinforce the message that this is the right website. Use them as pointers to the relevant information on other pages.
- Content that speaks to the human audience. Your visitors are people, not search engines. Use language that builds confidence in your brand and provides the right information in a way that speaks to your target market. That means making it more about them and less about you.
- Provide answers first. Nurture visitors with useful information that helps with the decision making process rather than bombarding them with aggressive sales messages. “Great, you’re here – now buy this!” is not going to win you much business. Key features and benefits are a good starting point.
- Direct the visitor. You know what you want people to do when they reach your site (or you should know). Make it easy for them with simple navigation through the site to the point of contact. Whichever route they take, use your content to guide them, with clear signposts at strategic points so they don’t get lost along the way.
- Ways to engage. Provide visitors with ways to engage with you. Websites are no longer a one-direction advertising platform; they are an interactive marketing tool. You want people to ask questions, sing your praises, and share experiences or concerns. Why? Because this gives you an opportunity to strengthen the relationship, before and after they buy.
Give your visitors a reason to stick around and you will soon find your website is working as hard as you are in bringing more business to your door.