converting vistors to buyers

[rezzy]

Ok, so you have a site. SEO is optimized and perfect. Blog is spitting out more posts then you even knew it could. Page Rank is through the roof.

How do you convert all this energy to the actual purpose of the site?

Increased Business.

What are some methods to convert visitors in clients/customers? I am also wondering in helping my clients improve their conversion rates as well as myself .

[vangogh]

Not a question with a simple answer so first I'll point you to a couple of sites that talk about conversions a lot

grokdotcom - If you see anyone writing about conversions the thought probably originated here. Read the blog, look though the site, buy their books. They talk about what they call persuasion architecture. All good stuff.

Invesp - Khalid, the person behind this site is a friend I met through the old forum. Their whole site deals with conversions and is also all good stuff.

The first thing I would ask is what do you consider a conversion? Is it adding something to a shopping cart of getting someone to email you to contact you about your services? Is it someone subscribing to your blog or clicking to view a specific page? There are many things that can be a conversion so the first step is defining what that conversion is.

For some things it might be as simple as trying a different color on a button or making a button more visible. Maybe changing the text on the button. Usually if you want someone to take an action you need to tell them what that action is. It's why you see 'click here' everywhere. By giving the command to click you get more clicks.

Some of it is understanding that different people respond to different things. Some people need to know others have used your services so for them it's important to have testimonials on the site. Other people could care less what others have done and just want to know the details of what you have.

Some is understanding people and what makes them take action. People generally don't care why you want them to do something. They want to know what's in it for them. It's where the talk of benefits over features comes from. Your visitor doesn't really care that your websites are coded well. They want to know that your code makes the page load quicker and keeps people on their site. Give people the reasons why your services/products helps them in a way they want to be helped.

People act more on emotion than logic. One powerful emotion is fear of loss. That's why you'll see offers with deadlines or limited offers. People don't want to miss out and the nature of the offer says if they don't act now or soon they will miss out.

Greed is a powerful emotion. If you can convince someone that hiring you will make them more money it can convince them to buy from you.

I've certainly only scratched the surface. Do check the blogs I linked to above and let them lead you to more info. I definitely recommend the books written by the Eiesnberg brothers at grokdotcom. Click on the Resources link in the menu. All their books are available at any bookstore and Amazon.

[cbscreative]

Since your question is most likely about sales, and since you are in a service business, then becoming an expert (or getting known as one) is a large part of getting conversions. The term "pre-selling" is often used, and I like that term because it describes a process that often gets missed in marketing, especially online marketing with an often unhealthy emphasis on SEO.

All the things you described are great for SEO, but the problem with SEO is first time visitors usually don't know anything about you. The task of building trust is very difficult in this situation. Just getting them to stay for more than 8 seconds is a challenge.

Enter pre-selling. This forum is one of many ways of doing that. Let me use vangogh as an example. Anyone here needing web programming, WordPress help, or several other things would know he is an expert. They would arrive at his site already pre-sold, and that is far more powerful than the best SEO you could possibly create.

[eborg9]

The only way that I see service providers converting more, without spending the mortgage every month on marketing, is PR.

Writing articles, getting published on other blogs and online newspapers, helping in forums..maybe even performing web work for charities, and churches for the free PR.

You have to get yourself out there (online), and put your name on as many things related to your industry as possible. like Steve said..."Pre-sell" but you have to do it without "selling".

Let's face it, we all love what we do, and we think we are the best at it, but what separates how many clients we get online from the next guy is how many other places our names and businesses are seen outside of our website...either paid advertisement or PR work.

[billbenson]

One thing worth mentioning is getting visitors that are actually prospects. As has been said in other posts quality is better than quantity. Some sites really need to play the numbers game, but they are few and far between.

I just took a quick look at my adwords vs orders stats. Right now I'm at about a 11% ctr. Last week I was at 17%. I haven't done anything to the add campaign in that timeframe, so I'm not sure why the change. I still get the same add placement. My clicks per order is at about 25 clicks per order. I think that is a good ratio, but I don't really know anybody else who relies heavily on adwords for a similar ad campaign to compare it with.

Just took a look at my stats. I only had about 3k uniques per month which is about normal for the site. Its a very niche product line. The bulk of those clicks are for obscure products. 4 clicks here, two there. I also had 2k plus clicks for my main search term which pops up 2 in the natural SERPS.

I don't really know what to make of all of that. Just tossing it out as a point of reference. The site can us a lot of improvement which I'm working on.

I'm redoing the site. We'll see if that helps my closure rate.

Oh, the other thing is the site generates a lot of phone calls as its a complex product line. I improve closure rates by knowing the product and getting quotes to the customer within seconds. That really helps. If its an ecommerce site, a good online quote generator may improve conversions a lot?

[cbscreative]

You have to get yourself out there (online), and put your name on as many things related to your industry as possible. like Steve said..."Pre-sell" but you have to do it without "selling".

Good point. I'm glad you helped clarify that. Even though I used the term pre-sell, I did not mean selling in the normal sense. Getting your name out to build trust is what helps drive sales. Being self-promotional would be counter productive in the types of pre-selling I had in mind.

[vangogh]

Let me use vangogh as an example. Anyone here needing web programming, WordPress help, or several other things would know he is an expert.

It's interesting you mention that since I have had people get in touch with me because they searched, found something I said on a forum, and decided to contact me about work. They may never have seen my site other than to get the contact info. I even wrote a post about the concept a year or so ago on how to build your brand through social media. You can pick up business by having a brand presence in places other than your site.

I see a few mentions of doing things off site. One thing is definitely getting more targeted traffic. Sometimes the emphasis seems to be all on how much traffic instead of what kind of traffic. If you can work on picking up traffic more likely to be interested in what you offer that greatly helps increase conversions.

Still there's a lot you can do on your site. Since Steve used me as an example, I'll also use myself as an example. When I redesigned my site last year I asked some of my clients why they hired me and why they stick with me. One of the things I gathered from the feedback was many of them liked me. I tend to get into idle chat with clients and I think of many of them as friends more than clients. They liked the personal. When I rewrote my content I stopped referring to myself in the third person or by company name. I switched the language to 'I' and 'me' and wrote things in a much more personal and informal way. I think it's had a great impact because I'm tailoring the site more to the type of people who have hired me in the past.

Some of conversion theory is simply trying different things. Move a button from the left to the right. Change a color of a heading. Change one word in a page title or a heading or your call to action. And all the time be measuring which works best. There is a lot you can do on your site to increase conversions. Combine that with generating targeted traffic as opposed to any traffic and pre-sell outside of your site and you should also increase conversions.

It's not just one thing though. There are lots of little things.

Another example that pops to mind. Anytime you ask for an email address add a small line that says 'we value your privacy' That little line seems to greatly increase how many people will give you their email. Think about possible objections people might have to contacting you and respond to that objection right there at the moment they have to decide whether or not to contact you.

[rezzy]

As it stands a conversion would be a contact for both me and my clients. I want to push my visitors through the funnel. One of clients has good conversions but I am always looking to improve the bottom line. I am always re-analyzing what I did, and deciding if it was the best move. So, when the client comes back for updates, I can give them better site, that gets them more calls and clients.

[Dan Furman]

I'm biased, but assuming you have the right traffic, the #1 thing that leads to website conversion is your copy (both in actual words and structure that it's written in). I don't see anything else being even remotely close.

[vangogh]

I'm not biased and I agree. There's a lot that can help lead to conversions, but your copy is at the top of the list. I'm always surprised that the copywriting section here gets so little conversation. It's one of the most important aspect to so many aspects of business success.

My bias is toward design and development which I think very important as well, but I'll put copywriting at the top of the list. Good copy can overcome a lot of other things done poorly. The reverse usually isn't true.