If you have an interest in SEO and online marketing, you’ll probably already have a good knowledge of how to drive traffic to your website. Thanks to your link building, your guest blogging, your social media campaigns and everything else that comes with them, you’re already finding that your site is getting plenty of hits. But are these translating into sales? After all, you could be getting millions of visitors every day, but if they aren’t buying from you, they’re not worth much to your business.
Here, we take a look at how you can convert web traffic into paying customers.
Ensure your customers can find what they’re looking for
This one should be obvious, but sadly, it’s something that so many businesses fail to do. Once a visitor hits your site, you should make it as easy as possible for them to find what they’re looking for. This means that you need to have clear site navigation and natural links throughout that will point them in the right direction. If a potential customer can’t find the information they need, they’ll simply move on and look elsewhere. In most cases, they’ll go to your competitors instead. When you work with a professional SEO company, this will be taken care off as part of the on-page optimisation process.
Implement a relationship-building tool for those who aren’t ready to buy
Not all web searchers are ready to buy. They might be interested in your products or services, but want to find out a little bit more about them and give it some thought before committing to a purchase. To make sure these people don’t leave you site then forget all about your business, you should implement a way of continuing to build a relationship with them. This could be in the form of providing links to your social media accounts (and of course having great content on these that keeps your followers interested), or having an email sign-up form.
Provide easy and secure ways to pay
If possible, make it easy for your customers to buy online straight away with minimal fuss. PayPal offers great functionality with most websites, and automated options such as this mean that you take off the burden when it comes to admin. For higher price products or services, you may wish to offer an installment option.
Use analytical tools to see where you might be going wrong
Tools such as Google Analytics provide invaluable insight into how your website is performing. By carefully looking at the data, you can ascertain what your visitors are looking for, and where they eventually leave your site. To really reap the benefits, draw conclusions and then act upon them. If, for example, visitors are viewing your contact page but are then leaving without getting in touch, you need to find out why. Are you asking people to call you, when they’d prefer to email? Is the information easy to find? Did you provide several options? Use the information to constantly improve your website.
Do you pay attention to conversion rates? How do you make sure that your visitors are likely to buy from you?