The world has become digital, and your business is no exception. With the growth of digital marketing, businesses have been turning to conversion-based sites as a way to drive leads and sales. A conversion site helps you identify what actions your visitors take on your site so you can focus on driving those actions instead of selling visitors on things like products or services.
A conversion-based site is useful for many reasons beyond just driving conversions. For example, it also gives you an option when designing a layout that doesn’t require you to rely on plugins or third-party services. It lets you target your ads more effectively and create a design that will look great across devices, too.
Create a site for conversions
Creating a conversion-based site is great for driving conversions, but it isn’t always easy. You have many options to choose from when designing your site, and the amount of time and effort you put into your site will depend on what you want to achieve. It’s also important to think about how visitors will interact with your site.
It’s best if you consider a few things before starting your conversion-based site:
How will visitors interact with the website?
What are the goals of your business?
What will convert better?
Be clear about your goals
The first step to creating a conversion site is getting clear about your goals. Identify the actions you want your visitors to take and what you hope they will do once on your site. Make sure you have a clear idea of how you want people to engage with your content so that you can create the layout for your site that allows for those interactions.
Next, think about the most important features of your website and plan out what content should be displayed where. For example, if you’re selling products, think about where they should be placed and what order they should be in. If you’re selling services, then plan out which pieces of content are essential to the visitor’s experience and where they should appear on the page.
Use analytics to inform your decision-making
The top resource for finding success on a conversion-based site is analytics. Using the analytics, you can make informed decisions about what your visitors are doing and what actions to focus on.
Start by setting up goals in your analytics software so you know where you want to take your traffic. After that, set up conversion pixels on your website so you can track specific actions. When it comes to clicking ads or visiting certain pages, this will help you understand what’s working and what isn’t. It also gives you a chance to fine tune your site before investing in any other methods of driving leads or conversions.
Make sure you understand your visitors’ journeys
Understanding your visitors’ journeys is vital for a successful conversion-based site. From their first encounter with your website to their final purchase, you need to know what steps they take and how long it takes them to complete each step. This helps you target your ads so that your message will reach the people most likely to convert into customers.
There are several ways you can use analytics on your site to understand these journeys. For example, Google Analytics lets you see where visitors go on your site, when they come in contact with a certain page, and where they enter and exit the site. You can also use Google Search Console to see how many people have viewed different pages of your website over time and what keywords they searched for while visiting. If you have a blog or news section on your website, consider using Google Trends to find out which topics are trending right now.
AdWords is the key to success with PPC ads
One of the most important things to understand is that Google AdWords is a huge key in driving conversions. With AdWords, you can target your audience and set up your ads to have a specific call-to-action at the end. You’ll also see better conversion rates when you’re using PPC ads.
Some other tips for success with PPC: Embrace long-term goals and make sure you are willing to stay focused on them. Track your performance so you can make continuous adjustments.
#1: Use a conversion-based site
Making sure that your website has been designed with conversions in mind is an essential step toward creating a successful conversion site. In order to create this design, you need to know how visitors interact with the site and what actions they take throughout their journey through your website. This will help you identify what actions are most valuable for driving conversions on your site and focus more on those actions instead of selling visitors on things like products or services.
#2: Embrace long-term goals
When designing a conversion site, it’s important not to get too distracted by short-term goals. Instead, make sure that you understand where you want to be in the future and use that information as a way to guide your design efforts today. Don’t worry about getting everything done right away; rather, think long term so that once you reach those goals, all of your work will be worth it overall.
Test, test, test
Of course, to create a successful conversion site, you need to first test your idea. To find out what’s working and what isn’t on your site, use Google Analytics or another analytics tool to review where visitors go on your site. This will also help you identify any problems that might need to be fixed.
Another way to determine if your site is converting well is through data tracking. You can use a tool like Google Tag Manager to track specific actions visitors take on your site and how many people are taking those actions. If you see that people are not converting at the rate you want them too, you should re-evaluate why they aren’t converting and make adjustments accordingly.
Conclusion
Everything about your website – from the copy to the design – should focus on one thing: conversions.
Your conversion-based site should have a clear goal in mind and a site that targets a specific type of visitor. With the help of an analytics tool, like Google Analytics, you’ll be able to track what visitors are doing on your site and use that information to make decisions about where to invest your time and money.
Once you’ve created a conversion-based website, it’s time to get it in front of people. AdWords is the key to success with PPC ads.
The success of your website depends on the quality of traffic it receives. Therefore, mixing and matching the right digital strategies can generate substantial website traffic. While you might deliver the best message, product, and service, it would mean little until you attract your target crowd regularly and reliably. Learning how to increase your website traffic is one of the best ways to achieve these goals.
1. Prioritise Content Marketing
Content remains king. This concept applies to all types of online content, including visual, video, and written articles, because engaging content keeps site visitors coming back for more. While SEO strategies can improve your site’s searchability and align with the crawlers to raise SERP rankings (search engine results page), you should also tailor your content to your readers’ interests.
2. Leverage Paid Ads
Paid ads are some of the most effective ways of getting your site across to your target audience. First, you should thoroughly research your target demographic before deciding on a paid ad platform. Identifying your audience’s interests, locations, and ages can help you pinpoint their most frequented platforms and increase your chances of engagement.
Also, consider the type of ads applied in your campaigns. While video ads may seem highly popular, market research shows that 49% of people click on text ads, 31% on shopping ads, and only 16% on video ads.
Similarly, you should have a systematic tracking method for paid ad metrics to ensure that the money you spend goes to good use. Regularly checking your paid ad campaigns helps you evaluate their effectiveness and re-strategise if necessary to optimise their impact.
On-page SEO refers to your website’s attributes, including meta descriptions, tags, well-positioned headers populated with keywords, and short paragraphs. The effectiveness of your SEO campaigns largely depends on the on-page SEO components. Therefore, managing on-page SEO as a set of living documents that require constant tweaking for the best results is essential.
For instance, combining evergreen and seasonal keywords can help you reach a broader audience, especially during peak seasons like the summer holidays. Also, search engines like Google tend to revise their SEO practices, so keeping up with the latest updates helps drive more traffic to your website.
4. Develop Effective Link-Building Strategies
Links make up a considerable part of off-page SEO. Internal and external links are the two main types, and both can help you improve site traffic in different ways. Therefore, applying each kind to your website might be advantageous.
Internal links facilitate the site navigation process for your audience. For example, clicking on an internal link on your blog may take your reader to a deep service page (i.e., pages that take four or more clicks for access from a home page) and generate website traffic for that part of your site.
External links bridge your site content with other websites and work well with search engine crawlers as part of technical SEO. Google rates the equity or value of an external link differently from an internal one, prioritising them for ranking purposes. The search engine also determines the usefulness and credibility of your website by assessing the quality of your external links.
You might consider external links similar to a peer-review article’s citations, supporting its content’s authority and authenticity.
5. Optimise Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for generating business revenue, with an estimated $36 for every $1 spent. This marketing type can be a real game-changer if you wish to generate website traffic from your target demographic, with a mailing list engaging and attracting constant traffic.
Periodic email newsletters can also help keep your audience interested in your offerings by providing exclusive tips, discounts, content, and tutorials that redirect your readers to your site.
An advanced mailer allows you to manage your mailing list easily and offers customisation features to give each email a personal touch, further driving engagement.
6. Keep Your Google Business Profile in Top Form
Your Google Business Profile represents your company’s online public image, and optimising it will help generate website traffic. For example, organic user searches on Google will turn up your Google Business profile, where potential site visitors will form their first impressions of your business.
While conventionally, site visitors and customers would navigate to your business home page to acquire more information, they will now turn to your Google Business Profile for the same purpose.
Consider including information that optimises your business reputation, such as high-resolution photos of your company and products, customer reviews, and valuable contact information such as operating hours and a link to your website, which directly generates website traffic.
Closing Thoughts on How to Increase Your Website Traffic
Having an easily navigatable site is only half of the battle won. You will need to provide the guiding lamps that lead your most valuable audience to your winning content. Engage Digital can help you discover the most effective methods and tools to connect with your target audience without the guesswork.
Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar business looking to expand online or a digital-first company that needs to re-do its brand, you can consider your website the welcome mat to your business.
If your website is outdated, difficult to navigate, or fails to get across your brand’s values, it can easily leave potential customers feeling disconnected. Meanwhile, if it feels cookie-cutter or forgettable, you’ll have nothing to leverage when it comes to building a lasting reputation and fostering customer loyalty.
For all of these reasons, hiring a professional web design agency is a worthy investment. The question is, how can you choose the right one? No matter your budget, timeline, or desired look, here’s some advice to point you in the right direction and help you select a qualified team of professionals that can bring your brand’s website to life.
1. Compare Web Design Companies’ Qualifications
When it comes time to select a web design agency, you have countless options. One of the quickest ways to narrow down your options to the best is to go through their websites. It’s a bad sign if a web design agency has a website that’s slow, outdated, inconsistent, or just doesn’t speak to you. In other words, this is a situation where you can judge a book by its cover.
After finding your favourite websites, take some time to read through the agency’s list of qualifications. Has it won any awards? Who’s on the team? Are they certified in any design software? While there are plenty of highly talented design agencies that aren’t award-winning, these things can certainly help prove an agency’s reputation and reliability up-front.
Most web design agencies will have a list of their team members so that you can see how long each individual has been in the business. You should also see when the agency was established by checking the “About” section. While you shouldn’t necessarily avoid young talent, experience is valuable.
Lastly, as you try to get a feel for what the agency does, make sure its team is familiar with search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). With countless factors impacting SEO—including speed and clean code—it’s important that your agency doesn’t unknowingly work against your website’s future rankings or performance.
2. Thumb Through the Web Design Company’s Portfolio
Every web design agency will have a website design portfolio where you can look through some examples of their past work. The best agencies may even have case studies where they’ve interviewed previous clients to have them talk about their experience working with the team.
Even just taking a few minutes to look through the screenshots or links that an agency shares can help you determine the quality of its work. Beyond noting whether or not the examples are up to your standards, you should also consider if any of them match your style.
If you’re going for something entirely different from an agency’s typical projects, the company may not be the right fit. With that said, don’t let a website portfolio on its own throw you off just because you have a different style in mind. If the website agency’s team do great work, it’s still worth reaching out to them to see what they’ll say.
3. Make Sure the Practical Details Line Up
Once you have a list of website agencies that have stayed in your favour after going through their website, team, and portfolio, it’s time to do your due diligence and make sure that working with them is a practical choice.
For example, if you’d prefer to work with an agency in person, you should limit your search to those with an office nearby. It’s up to you how far you’re willing to travel, but checking where the agency is located (or able to travel to) will help you quickly determine if an agency is still under consideration.
On the other hand, if you’re working with a web design agency remotely, location still matters. More specifically, you need to know which time zone the agency works in to make sure that scheduling meetings and progress checks won’t be an inconvenience. While many teams will try to work with your schedule, you shouldn’t have to jump through hoops every time you want to call in.
Beyond location and time zone, you might also consider the size of the agency’s team (smaller teams may not be able to take on a major enterprise project), its general timeline for projects, and its target clientele (which will impact how much the agency charges).
4. Find a Team That You Connect With
By far, one of the best things you can do when comparing the web design agencies you’re considering is schedule a time to actually talk with the team—either in person or over the phone. When you do, go ahead and give high marks to the team that you resonate with the best.
Aside from being friendly and clear in their communication, the best web design company will have a team who are happy to spend time explaining their services, getting to know your brand, and talking about how they would approach your project.
During this call, you should ask questions pertaining to:
The timeline and how long they would expect the project to take. In order to provide an accurate estimate, they’ll likely ask what information or pages you want to include, among other things.
The process for handling requests and revisions. How will the agency handle it if you change your mind about something during the project or if you don’t like how they executed something? Understanding if revisions are included, and to what extent, is critical to staying within budget and getting the results you want.
The estimated cost and what could change it. Additional customisations and more complex website features will certainly raise the original estimate. Consider if the web design company plans to charge a flat fee or hourly rate for the project, or some combination of the two.
There will be a lot to remember, so even if you think you can keep track of it all, make sure to take notes. This will make it much easier to compare your options after you talk to your favourite website companies.
5. Compare Estimates From Web Design Companies Side by Side
Following the consultation, you should request a written estimate from each web design company you speak to. Obviously, your budget will be a primary consideration, but you should also think back to which team you melded with the best. Working with people that are happy to listen to you and help build upon your ideas is crucial to a successful web design project that reflects the look you’re really going for.
In addition to great communication, consider the additional services any agency offered to you (for example, help with branding, logo design, or SEO) that you’re interested in. Also factor in the estimated timelines each agency gave you, as it might not be feasible to go with your first choice if the agency is going to take six months or more when the other options can get you a site within two or three.
Ultimately, the final decision is up to you, but by doing your due diligence, you can make sure that you don’t waste time and money with an agency that’s not able to execute your requests with the speed, quality, or reliability that you want.
Get Started by Requesting a Website Quote
Are you working on choosing a web design company? Asking the right questions is a critical step to finding the best fit for your brand. Aside from being communicative and creative, the agency’s team should be quick on their feet and dedicated to your satisfaction. For all of those things, you can turn to the team at Engage Digital. When you’re ready to take the first step, request a free website proposal from us, so you can move forward with your website project.
49% of companies report that customer acquisition is their primary marketing objective. 58% of business leaders indicate that lead generation is one of their most toughest challenges.
Business growth is always challenging – few businesses build their sales revenue on luck – it takes dedicated effort and the right tactics to grow and retain your customer base.
If you’re like most business owners, you’ve tried almost every conceivable way to grow our business. Some of it works – most of it doesn’t.
But let’s start at the beginning – the key to accomplishing your ambitious sales goal, starts with attracting more of the right sales leads.
A sales lead is a person or a business that has the potential to purchase your company’s product or service.
A lead only becomes a prospect once you have identified their fit as a potential customer or they have shown a level of direct interest in what your company has to offer.
Without well-targeted leads we won’t have the chance to close deals. Our clever engagement tactics, sales offers, landing pages, proposals and closing scripts won’t see the light-of-day unless we feed the sales funnel with leads.
Tune in to your buyers’ needs
Fundamental to engaging with leads is appreciating their situation – understanding the process a customer goes through to become aware of, consider alternatives and decide to purchase from you.
Our outreach communication or inbound content needs to resonate with them:
What problem do we solve for them?
What’s our ideal customers biggest frustration?
What motivates them to take action?
What’s the best way to communicate to them?
Why should they care about what we provide?
Once you have identified your most important personas, then you need to optimise your website for conversions. Your website will be your most important tool you have for tuning into your audiences needs and turning leads in to customers.
Implement an omni-channel approach
You can dramatically increase your chances of turning leads in to customers by increasing the number of times your leads see you or engage with you.
The adage that it takes 7 touchpoints or interactions to generate a prospect is so very true – indeed, depending on the commitment (dollar value, consideration of alternatives, trust) required to make a purchase decision, many industries report it takes 2 or 3 times this many interactions before a decision is made.
We need to use every channel to connect with leads – traditional, social media, website content, direct calls, live chat, email, SMS, retargeting and more.
The messages need to be tuned to the stage in their journey with you – discovering their problem, not aware of your solution, weighing up alternatives, developing trust in your promise, motivated by your offer.
Try outbound responses to inbound leads
If you’ve attracted an inbound lead through your promotion, advertising, or content, great.
Sure, you can nurture those leads with a series of automated emails and social and PPC retargeting efforts.
But why not take more direct charge of turning those respondents in to prospects and customers through outbound.
Send more personalised emails, live chat, and direct SMS messages to them and where relevant, call them.
Make your outbound as personalised and as tailored as possible.
If you can’t get to all of them, lead scoring can identify the most engaged leads or those most ready to make a purchase decision.
A direct call has been found to increase the chances of a close by 2-3 times.
Respond lightning fast to leads
According to HubSpot, the odds of a lead becoming qualified are 21 times greater when contacted within five minutes versus 30 minutes.
Just imagine how our odds drop, when we take a day or two to respond to a lead!
Get to your lead while they are in the moment.
A robust lead-to-close system addresses this by triggering a task and alerting an internal sales agent to respond within 5 minutes of acquiring a new inbound lead.
Revisit closed and lost opportunities
Often, “no” means “not right now”.
Revisit with your closed or lost opportunities. There is every chance that while you weren’t selected 6 months ago, you left a favourable impression that you might be reconsidered now that the time is right or other alternatives proved not so positive.
Companies that did not buy from you before are already qualified sales leads. Invest time and resources into marketing to these prospects. Stay in touch through email campaigns, local events, blog posts, and phone calls.
Today might be the very day that old lead asks “what was the name of that company that provided that amazing presentation 6 months ago?”
Find sales leads on social media networks
About 42% of us use some kind of social media.
Facebook and Instagram offer an abundant source of leads for B2C leads but that’s not to say they aren’t a viable source for B2B business either.
LinkedIn offers a more targeted source of business customers, with members more in the zone of finding business related information.
Use social media to get recommendations from your clients, post special offers, and tell more about your company. Any social media can be a fruitful channel to reach your audience and generate sales leads online.
Plus, once you have leads in the system, you can use social media to talk to them and find out more about what they need and want.
Get referrals from current customers
Your leads aren’t as likely to accept you singing about how great you are, as they will hearing from your current clients and customers.
Ratings, reviews and testimonials are powerful forms of endorsement.
Your leads are far more likely to trust you and hopefully purchase from you if they see that that they are working in good company or read positive messages from satisfied customers.
Get those messages front and centre on your website. Use those referrals in your pitch videos. Display your google ratings and reviews everywhere.
Don’t be afraid to ask your customers to refer friends and colleagues to you.
Run specific friend-get-friend promotions to encourage referral lead generation.
Create a better sales funnel
Once you have identified your ideal lead targets and what channels to use to reach them you should have a plan to collect contact information.
Usually, the first stage of an optimised sales funnel process is funnelling leads toa lead capture page or landing page that encourages visitors to share their contact information, usually in exchange for something of value to them; a coupon code, a free gift, a demo or valuable piece of content like an how-to ebook.
At this point, it’s vital that you have CRM or Marketing Automation software in place to keep track of sales leads and to further engage them through email, SMS and retargeting messages on social and websites platforms.
Marketing automation apps like Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign can be set to do all the hard-lifting of sending personalised messages and identifying just the right time to offer online sales incentives or prompt a sales representative to make a closing call.
Attract organic traffic from SEO
While paid online advertising can offer a short term fix for targeting leads, search engine optimisation can generate organic traffic to your website on an ongoing basis, literally for free.
By focusing on keyword researched quality content, posted to informative and engaging landing pages and blogs, you can rank high with search engines like Google and offset the massive investment of ad campaigns.
It’s unlikely that a business in a competitive industry can give up on paid placement, but ranking well with Google will ensure that this organic channel serves you well for a strong flow of leads at a lower cost of conversion.
Takeaways
A healthy and productive sales funnel must start with a strong flow of leads.
Without leads your sales pipeline is dead in the water.
Start by assessing your buyer personas and appeal to their pain points and frustrations with a strong value proposition.
Communicate your value proposition through an omnichannel lead generation approach that may include conventional media, PPC, social media, email, SMS, or cold calling.
Continue to experiment and optimise the sources for your sales leads – measuring not just quantity but conversion, costs and sales value of each lead source.
It’s vital that you use CRM and Marketing Automation to gather contact information of your hard-fought sales leads to engage and nurture them through your sales pipeline.
Assess if your current process responds to new leads quickly and provides them the personalised information that will make your business stand out from the competitors those leads are also considering.
Before the pandemic, ecommerce was important to some of us, an extra channel to support retail stores to many of us, and an ever-growing necessity to all of us.
Now everything has changed.
If the first lockdowns of 2020 got us thinking about growing our ecommerce channels, then the second and third waves of Covid-19 in 2021 have all businesses rethinking the importance of digital and the abundant opportunities of ecommerce.
Forrester research predicts that digital customer service interactions will increase by a whopping 40%.
This increased reliance on online shopping, digital finance services and even health consultancy being delivered virtually isn’t going away.
Sure, we’ll flock to the malls and stores when we get the chance but as consumers, we’ve also realised that we don’t have to travel halfway across a city to have a bargain or an essential purchase land at our door.
We’re becoming more aware that the clothing or electronics or homeware item we need can we hunted out online, often with more choice, better pricing, and amazingly speedy deliver from around the world, let alone from across town.
Competitive websites and particularly ecommerce websites can’t endure a cold face of function and form – to maintain their market position, or push beyond, they need to evolve and interact with users – here are four insights to help improve in this new reality of ecommerce prominence and the customer experience.
Your business needs to be always on – because your customers are.
No matter the time of day or night, no matter how busy you are or under resourced you are, your customers are always on.
So, your ecommerce site or online business needs to be always ready to engage and provide the right information for your customers.
Of course, the digital environment lends itself to provide the right technology to provide the support and answers your customer’s demand.
Searchable and categorised knowledge bases and wikis provide information and assurances to customers literally instantaneously. They can be updated and added to quickly and are inexpensive to install even for the most modest of ecommerce stores.
Live chat can also provide customers instant access to answers. And when not manned by real people, bots step in to provide timely information to the most regular questions.
Pop ups and artificial intelligence can provide answers to customers exploring special product features or pricing pages.
Browse abandonment and cart abandonment automated workflows can re-engage with us long after we would have left the physical stores carpark.
Start small and put ideas to the test
Digital allows us to experiment at a relatively low cost.
We can identify a single pain point within our shoppers’ funnel and address that with conversational intelligence or a reworked workflow.
If results show promise, we update and test some more.
We can then introduce the change and scale at will – keeping an improved customer experience at the centre of our objectives.
Map and improve the Customer Journey
The customer journey consists of four key parts. These are:
Awareness
Consideration
Decision-making
Evaluation
By exploring the CX at each one of these stages, you can improve the overall customer experience with you. This begins with helping them find you.
Map and evaluate the customer journey to determine where customer needs might not coordinate with what you have to offer. Then you can plan for an even better experience by making the sales journey as smooth as possible.
Becoming empathetic and real
In the past, we’ve felt we’re more in control of the customer experience, when that experience was face to face, or at least person to person.
With a mechanical ecommerce relationship that empathy with customers is often lost.
But data from all touchpoints can provide extraordinary insights into the customers’ requirements and feeling.
We just need to spend the time to understand what the data is telling us.
High bounce rates on certain product pages might indicate that we haven’t clearly delivered the benefits of that product over another.
Abandonment during checkout might indicate that our shipping costs are too high.
Not receiving a message to confirm delivery might leave customers anxious that the parcel has gone astray.
Sending a thank you note in the mail is likely to leave a customer highly impressed and they are bound to pass the positive experience on to friends.
Takeaways
Despite the digital process of ecommerce transactions and touch points, or because of them, many online businesses can dramatically improve the customer experience.
Indeed, improving CX is the ultimate objective of our online marketing activity.
If we outgun our competitors with Customer Experience there’s an absolute probability our brand will flourish.
Data analysis, conversion optimisation, marketing automation, artificial intelligence and more, have big parts to play in ensuring we improve and tune the customers’ experience. Just think to when you were most delighted from an online experience – can you emulate that in your business and the way you deliver ecommerce or any sort of website engagement and transaction.
What happens if you’re trying to sell your car, but you’ve left it dirty – people may view it but you’re not going to get any offers. That’s exactly why you need a polished homepage design for your website.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
You need to present the best possible homepage design for your specific audience and ensure you’re presenting your products or services to their best by highlighting their unique qualities and benefits.
Undoubtedly, your website homepage is the most critical page on your website.
Sure, you might have special landing pages funnelling leads from your Google Ad campaigns, and lead capture pages pushing for conversions, or ecommerce product pages that garner a direct sale, but your homepage is most often where it all starts.
Your homepage is most likely to be the first page that your website visitors will see when they land on your website.
It’s the first impression prospects will have of your business – it’s the greeting at the door that welcomes visitors in or scares them away!
So, let’s explore some of the most important aspects of the perfect website homepage…
A compelling headline that talks directly to the customer
On the homepage the headline is a summation of your value proposition – it should distinctly express what this website and business can uniquely offer the visitor – that is, “what’s in it for me”.
Like a newspaper, we’ll certainly read the headlines – if something takes our interest we’ll read further.
If the article introduction resonates with us, we’ll keep reading – perhaps just skimming the sub-headings, images and bullet points, to the point that we’ve formed an opinion or have decided to take an action.
In short, presenting a compelling headline front and centre on your website homepage is the most important element you can create when designing your page. It’s the element we give the most attention in our website design and development process.
If you can’t describe your business to your visitors in that one sentence and if it doesn’t connect with their issues, then you’re not going to convert website traffic into sales.
Keep in mind these questions when creating your homepage headline:
Who are you? (What is your company, product, or service about?)
What do you do? (What does your company, product, or service actually do for its users?)
How are you better than your competitors? (How does your company, product, or service uniquely solve a problem or fulfil a need in a way that’s better than the other options available?)
Same day flower delivery in Auckland – Wild Bunch couldn’t be clearer than that.
Blatant self-plug – here is what Engage does for their clients.
Help your audience understand exactly what you do
If you managed to get your visitors through your door with a compelling headline, now you can tell them a little more about how you can solve their problem.
Its great idea to be upfront with what you do at this point – prospects want confirmation they have come to the right place – so, tell them…
We offer same day delivery of flower bouquets in the Auckland area.
We supply and install European sourced tiles for commercial projects.
We provide retail display systems for multi-store retailers.
GoSweetSpot use a no-nonsense headline to explain what they do.GDM explain what they do, who for and why on their homepage
Deliver concise and unique benefits
Our mantra at Engage is “Go beyond what you sell and focus on why it matters”(to your audience).
But so many brands use their website platform to talk about themselves.
No doubt your background and story is important to you – just make it relevant to the prospect.
The only reason you should mention that you’ve been in business since 1998, is if you back that up that your experience has developed a high quality product that will last for years.
Focus on what your research says is most important to your customer – they are most interested in what’s in it for THEM.
Prospects want to know about the benefits of buying from you, versus your competitors, because that’s what will compel them to make an enquiry or purchase.
So you need to explicitly state the factors that will compel them to buy from you rather than the other 4 websites they have up on their browser?
If they’re in research mode they want to see that your solution ticks all the boxes and more.
So place your key product or service benefits upfront on the home page and encourage prospects to read more.
Product benefits as laid out on Ratio Coffee’s homepageHello Fresh make it clear what their benefits are on their homepage design
On the home page, use support copy or emphasis copy to briefly explain how prospects will benefit from your product or service. If relevant, quantify the benefit with real numbers and state the timeframe that the benefit will be delivered in.
Using our Growthology Engine we’ll increase your leads by 20% within 3 months.
Buy with confidence – 30 day money-back guarantee
The difference between features and benefits
Features are facts about products or services; they add credibility and substance to your sales pitch.
Benefits give customers a reason to buy because they explain how your product or service improves their lives.
To translate features into benefits, answer the question “So what?”
The benefits are the primary reason a prospect will buy your product. When it comes to purchasing, people are self-centred – they want things that solve their problems.
The Features-Benefits Matrix
Get your thoughts together by mapping out a Features Benefits Matrix – it will help crystallise how features of your product or service can match the benefits you can deliver your customers.
Map out your ideas with a Features-Benefits Matrix
Provide a prompt for visitors to engage with you
Most of the visitors to your website won’t be ready to buy from you, just yet.
Your goal is to get them to engage with you and then hopefully convert in the near future.
We don’t necessarily purchase the first shirt we see at the first store we visit, and we certainly don’t buy a new vehicle on the first visit to a car yard.
And so it is with a website visit – we’re not necessarily going to buy the first $100 headphones we find and we’re certainly going to research the hell out of $1000 tablet purchase.
We need to give visitors the necessary incentive, information, or time to make their commitment.
Providing an incentive is an obvious approach for an ecommerce store, where we’ll regularly see coupon offers delivered through homepage pop ups. Take 10% off your first purchase with this coupon code. Subscribe and get 15% off your first order.
Homepage popup offers are popular on ecommerce hompage designs
If you’re an app or software provider, a free trial or demo is a great way to reduce the barriers to purchasing – including a lack of experience with your solution or the trust that your app will deliver as promised.
Homepage free trial offer from ActiveCampaign to engage with their customers
If you’re a B2B business, and prospects simply need to get to know you better, then offer a high-value content offer (HVCO) that exchanges their email for your valuable content like a how-to guide, a clever cheat sheet or access to instructional videos.
High Value Content Offer – something of value in exchange for an email address
The objective for most of these offers is gaining an email address, whereby you’ll have permission to engage with that prospect on a regular basis until you’ve given them the confidence to buy from you, or they’re simply ready to make the leap and call you, book a meeting, visit your store, ask for a quote or make a purchase online.
Include prominent Calls-to-Action
The goal of your homepage is to compel visitors to dig deeper into your website and move them through your sales funnel – from awareness of your business, to interest and on to a purchase decision.
On your homepage, you’re not likely to know the visitors intention – are they just researching, have they just discovered you, or are they ready to make a purchase, call you or request a quote, right now?
Include two or three calls-to-action (CTA) above the fold of your homepage to encourage a deep dive into your website or to take action of some sort.
However, don’t confuse customers with too many opposing options.
Teamzy uses contrasting colour to make their CTA standout
Make sure you use a call-to-action title that makes sense and conveys value. A CTA like “Subscribe Now” is OK but how about “Subscribe Now & Get Free eBook” – now I’m interested.
Here’s a tip: Your CTA is where you want your visitors to focus their attention. It’s an invitation: Here’s what to do next. Create better CTA titles by completing the sentence, “I want to _______“.
Help prospects engage with your business by figuring out where to take them on the next step.
Make your website homepage work brilliantly on mobile
For most of our clients, even if they are B2B, their mobile traffic accounts for 60% of website traffic (and climbing). You’ll be surprised what consumers are getting done on their mobile phones even if they have an accessible desktop alternative.
So, no matter your business, your website homepage must work on mobile.
Tesla uses scroll navigation to perfection on their mobile website
We’re typically building with Responsive Design – that is, we’ll use a framework like bootstrap to quickly build fluid web pages with a set of common HTML and CSS components that adapt the same content for both a desktop and mobile screen.
In fact, many of our websites take a “Mobile First” philosophy where we design layout for mobile first and consider desktop second.
We’re usually laying mobile content to one or two columns wide, which means that any one time the user is viewing just one or two pieces of information.
We need to cleverly use the scrolling and horizontal flicking effects on mobile.
And we should consider the auto population of forms, address finders and clickable phone numbers – all to make the mobile experience of your homepage an effortless one.
We’ll declutter screens using hamburger menus – those 3 stacked lines. And design special flyout menus to help users navigate a website.
And adding sticky call-to-action buttons is a great way to make our important actions always present on a user’s screen.
Test alternative homepage designs
In an ideal world we should be continually testing and retesting ideas and content on our homepage.
An improved homepage has the ability to reduce bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who don’t go further) and more importantly, double your conversions.
Even a 5% lift in conversions could mean a significant return on investment from A/B testing copy, images and call-to-action options.
A/B testing, sometimes also referred to as split testing, is a way to compare elements on a page against each other to determine which performs better in terms of page views, time on page, conversions, bounce rate, etc.
There are numerous free and paid tools that help us do this, like Google Optimize – so if you’re unsure which headline works best, test it.
Include Social Proof and Trustmarks on your homepage
Whether we’re purchasing a T-shirt, a dental exam, a furniture removal service, or a complex retail shelving system we want to know that we can trust the company that we’re go to purchase from or consult with.
Of course, the level of trust required will depend on the quantity of money we’re about to part with.
That trust might come from dealing with a well-known local retailers or a highly credible international brands – so showing the logos of current customers that you deal with, may instil confidence in potential customers.
GDM Retail Systems show their pedigree by the company they keep.
Memberships and accreditations are another way to demonstrate your expertise in certain fields
Digital Marketing agencies like Engage will display their expertise with accreditations.
Embedding your ratings and reviews with trusted aggregators like Google Reviews or Trustpilot is another way to display your creditability.
We’re more likely to purchase from a florist like The Wild Bunch with a 4.9 Google rating.
Takeaways
The homepage of your website is the window to your business.
It’s fundamental that the homepage communicates the right impression otherwise prospects will bounce and venture no further into your website.
The perfect homepage website design needs to include these key elements if it to perfectly present your brand and encourage visitors to find out more or buy from you:
A compelling headline that conveys your unique value proposition.
Copy that explains to your audience exactly what you do so that they get you.
An outline of your brand’s benefits – what’s in it for a customer.
Reasons for your prospects to engage with you.
Direct and prominent calls-to-action – to direct prospects to trial, view more or buy.
Your website homepage must work brilliantly on mobile – because 60% or more of your users will be using their mobile to browse your homepage.
An ability to test alternative homepage designs to optimise conversion with the best layout as proven by your website visitors.
Inclusion of social proof and trustmarks to provide more reason for prospects to buy from you.
Make a great start to redeveloping your homepage by downloading our website project planner.
Contact us today on 09 309 5050 or email phil@engagedigital.co.nz if you would like to discuss theredevelopment of your homepage into a conversion machine!
Meet the evolution of personalised email, sales nurturing campaigns, visitor analytics, lead scoring, content management and social media engagement and so much more – its called Marketing Automation.
Defining Marketing Automation
Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and agencies to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.
We’re now working with one central marketing automation platform that has taken over from our old email marketing system. It most useful tools for us include:
Personalised nurturing workflows – it’s easy to build these workflows, send out nurturing emails, check prospect engagement with those emails, track website page visits, and so on
Score leads based on engagements whether physical or digital and set new actions based on score milestones
Assess what known contacts are doing on your website
bIntegration with Google Analytics and Adwords
Create deals or opportunities and track those new individual prospects along the sale funnel
A Combination of Platforms
While our core Marketing Automation platform does a great deal, it doesn’t have to do it all. Indeed, we’d rather have it that we can pick and integrate with the best-of-class or the system that fits ours and our client’s requirements. So we also work with single-purpose marketing automation platforms including the likes of:
Hootsuite for social media management
Asana for website project management
Wunderlist for our day-to-day to dos and reminders
Wordstream for managing and optimising client Adwords campaigns
Pipedrive combining a trusted CRM with the power of SharpSpring
Meet Grand Engage & SharpSpring
It’s no secret that we use SharpSpring as our central Marketing Automation platform but our label for it is Grand Engage. It’s the platform we use ourselves to progress new client opportunities and nurture prospects and it’s the platform that we use with clients to manage their email campaigns, capture leads, develop prospects through their sales funnel, track one-off emails with a known client, inform sales agents of hot leads and report on conversion from AdWords.
What we like best about SharpSpring
1. Tracking the life of a lead
SharpSpring starts tracking your website visitors even before you know their names. Its then up to you to integrate lead capture tactics and forms into your website and then build out powerful automation rules and display dynamic content or send targeted emails based on a specific prospects website habits or known interests.
2. All-in-one Marketing Automation
SharpSpring offers an all-in-one package: great lead generation tools, integrated CRM, lead scoring, email marketing, online behavioural tracking, campaign optimisation, measuring ROI.
Their powerful, easy-to-use visual workflow builder simplifies marketing automation.
Use logic branches to engage leads at critical points in their unique buying journeys.
Customisable buyer personas makes delivering targeted landing pages or emails easy.
Receive a list of each day’s hottest leads right to your inbox, and act at just the right time to convert them to sales.
3. Integrates with Best-Apps-in-Field
SharpSpring isn’t precious about doing everything. While it admirably performs CRM or Content Management (e.g. Landing Page or form building) tasks, it also plays nicely with the systems you are most comfortable with and easily integrates with say Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Shopify, Magento, WordPress or Gravity Forms (See all SharpSpring’s standard integrations).
4. Analytics at your finger tips
We love the reporting within SharpSpring – we get to see what’s working and what’s not and apply changes accordingly.
Follow email stats like open rates and clicks. Know what items are your emails are engaging best.
Automatically track your website visitors’ conversions; from the moment they first visit, all the way through the final sale.
Track your Adwords search campaigns and follow cost per acquisition to determine the true cost of a qualified lead.
SharpSpring Reports provide all the information you need to measure your current success and accurately forecast future performance.
Tag as many interactions as you wish to score leads or segment lists every-which-way.
Marketing automation is the glue that joins all our clever initiatives together: SEO, landing pages, email marketing, lead nurturing and scoring, website personalisation, segmenting audiences…
Great marketing teams use marketing automation to make their campaigns more effective and to empower their sales team with better leads, culminating with greater ROI.
The Growth Marketing options available to Marketers are endless, so in this post I’m distilling a long playbook list down to 23 practical tactics that any of our small to medium New Zealand clients can deploy today.
I’ve loosely arranged these example actions into one of three sections. The lines are a little blurred between each section, but you’ll get the picture…
Website SEO – preparing your most important digital asset.
Lead Generation – growing traffic and capturing leads.
Content Marketing – nurturing prospects and closing sales.
A key strength of a Growth Marketing strategy is not hinged on any one campaign, channel, or tactic in particular. The success pivots on each of the channels and actions combining to have an effect that is far greater than the sum of their performance alone.
A strong Growth Marketing plan will take care of short-term wins and develop medium- and long-term successes.
It’s likely to include a mix of our shortlisted tactics: Facebook advertising, Google Ads, display advertising, social media marketing, search engine optimisation, landing page design, conversion rate optimisation, email marketing, content marketing… pretty much anything that will help you achieve your goal.
What’s important with any growth marketing methods, is that you take a fluid approach to budget allocation – adjusting the allocation of your budget each month to the channels where you’re generating the best results. Experiment, test and improve constantly.
Website SEO
I can’t think of many situations where a strong website isn’t the catalyst for better results. So make your website great again.
Firstly, set it up so that it will rank well with Google and get found your prospects.
Then ensure it works hard to convert – changes opinions, captures lead, initiates calls or store visits, or it directly sells something.
Search Engine Optimisation – run a website audit and apply the technical changes for Google’s sake. Apply keyword-researched on-page SEO.
Offsite Link Building – ultimately Google ranks popular sites higher and one of their criteria is the amount of quality backlinks your site has. Here we start by auditing competitor sites to work out what strategies they are using to obtain their ranking for specific keywords and then we’ll look to build a better version of their backlinks.
Website Upgrade – perhaps it’s time for a total upgrade to a state-of-the-art mobile-friendly site that better reflects your brand and its position against your competitors.
Landing Pages – Don’t just send traffic to a general home page; direct it to specific landing pages optimised for certain keyword groups and designed to capture leads or for a specific conversion. Destination URLs from pay-per-click ads should be designed specifically in relation to the keyword or topic which was being advertised. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to find the information that is relevant for them. Consider a product like Instapage that also reports on page performance
Conversion Optimisation – construct your landing pages so they encourage a signup or sale. Even subtle changes to button copy can have significant effects. Having the highest conversion rate possible allows you to spend more on marketing than your competitors. Actionable optimisation data could come from Google Analytics, heatmaps, visitor recordings and online surveys.
A/B Split Testing – a fundamental of Growth Marketing is experimentation and testing. Who’s not to say the old clunky page is worse than the new highly-crafted concept page – the only way to find out is to test them side by side at the same time using products like Google Optimise or Optimizely.
Website Trustmarks – An important factor in converting a visitor will always be how much trust they have in your brand or product. If you want a prospect to trust you more, include your clients’ logos, affiliations or employee photos on your website.
Lead Generation
Now that you have new traffic to your website, how can you turn that visitor in to a lead, capture an email address or contact details and then continue to engage and nurture them?
Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service.
Search Engine Marketing – If you want to attract visitors today then start with paid search advertising (pay-per-click). Our tactics often start with Google Ads for immediate traffic and lead generation.
Facebook Advertising – Conversion focused ads using Remarketing, lookalike Audiences, client website fans and tailored interest groups.
Remarketing – You’ve put effort and money into getting people to your site; now retarget those specific groups of those visitors through Google and Facebook.
Gmail Sponsored Promotions – Here you can even target users receiving emails from your competitors!
YouTube Advertising – Test activity on the next largest search portal after Google search. Consider starting with Veeroll to produce high quality inexpensive video ads.
Pop-ups and Exit Intent – Tastefully styled and intelligently positioned popups can highlight an offer and drive conversion (usually email subscription focused). When all else fails, an Exit Intent popup can catch a visitor before they leave with a special offer or coupon.
Online Chat – Online chat works like text messaging and we all know how popular that is. It’s also inexpensive, so just add it to your site and test out the results.
Email Acquisition – Email can form a valuable core channel for any growth marketing plan but first you need to get those email contacts. Part of the email pool will come from general website lead capture – blog subscribers, quote requests, incomplete signups, purchases or applications and enquiries Valued Content Offers – visitors are only going to give up their email if you offer something valuable to them in return. One way to build your email list is to offer special eBook downloads promoted via Facebook or pay-per-click mediums. Another way could be through competitions; offering a prize to entrants.
Content Marketing & Promotion
Content is the fuel that attracts prospects to your website. Great content engages prospects, warms them to your brand and ultimately helps you build a relationship with customers.
Unfortunately, it’s often an afterthought for businesses. If Google Ads works, why would we need to write a couple of blog articles a month? Why should we let our competitors in on our secret best practice guide? Because great content drives interest in our brand and positions us as a leader in our industry. It shows expertise and builds trust. And it weaponises our personalised emails, monthly newsletters and automated responses, and creates interest in social media, while our banner ads are being ignored.
Blog Articles – Much of our work here will be stimulated through valuable content sort out and searched for by your prospects. We’ll use social media and emails and SEO tactics to attract visitors to your blogs. Even for larger clients, blogging is often a hard tactic to commit to but by using affordable content writers anyone can have a strong blogging presence – which will become a strong foundation for much of our Growth Marketing. Mix your topics up a little; think case studies, reviews, in-depth articles, lists, aggregating other sites’ content.
Blog Optimisation – Your blog pages need to be optimised for lead capture – think popups and inline forms and download offers. Don’t forget to AB Test these as well.
Reviews & Ratings – Use a system to gather reviews and ratings from customers; display them on your site and ensure they are added to Google My Business or aggregated by a 3rd party so that they appear in search and Google Ads results – that way prospects are more likely to click on you.
Email Marketing – Email remains one of the most effective means of delivering personalised messages to prospects and customers. We use it at all stages of the sales funnel, segmenting lists and delivering emails to welcome new subscribers, send requested content, to make special offers, send out periodic product news or bring back a lapsed customer.
Marketing Automation – not so much a strategy as a tool, but one that helps us do more, automating many processes through the funnel; from lead generation, segmenting and tagging users, personalising website pages, controlling email marketing and assisting with CRM.
Loyalty Programme – it seems that Retention Marketing often gets left off the list. Marketing to current or previous customers can take a lot less effort and deliver better returns than finding new ones. A loyalty rewards programme could be just the edge your customers need to come back to you for more. Reviews and ratings – People trust reviews to inform them about their decisions, and reviews play a huge role in people’s purchasing decisions. So set up a system where you ask for them, display them schematically correctly on your website and have them pushed to Google My Business and beyond.
Want 10, 20 or 50% more sales in 90 days?
Download a free copy of our 30-page Growth Marketing Playbook – a tactical guide to growing your sales.
