There’s nothing quite like the feeling that comes when you improve website conversion rates. It’s a sign that your marketing funnel is doing its job — especially when you start closing sales.
On the other hand, it can be hard to even know where to start when it comes to improving your website conversion rates. Marketers are always talking about highly-specific social psychological studies, highly-calculated design principles, and color theory, and while those ideas surely play a role in the conversion game, I’m here to say that the place to start your website conversion strategy is by defining clear, concise, and effective objectives.
Simple enough, right?
Not exactly. You see, defining actionable objectives requires quite a bit of focus — more focus than writing a standard blog post or eBook. Here are three hard questions that can help you begin to hone in on the ideal website conversion objectives for your business:
1. Who am I targeting?
While this may seem obvious to you at first, many business owners don’t actually stop to think about who they are targeting. You see, this question isn’t the same today as it once was. Many traditional agencies would be quick to push you into making the hard sell, but. In answering this question, your goal shouldn’t just be to simply define your target market, but it should also reflect the objectives of your sales funnel.
Is your goal to convert traffic into leads, or would you rather just have subscribers? How are you going to qualify your leads to make sure that they can afford your product or service, and that they may be ready to buy? It’s important to consider top, middle, and bottom of the funnel objectives when crafting your conversion elements.
2. What differentiates my product from the rest?
Even if you belong to an industry that you feel most people would consider boring, there’s always an angle to take when branding your product or service, and in creating interesting content to boot. Once you know exactly who you are targeting, try to get inside of their head; figure out what kinds of calls to action to use that will be irresistible to them.
3. What can I offer in exchange for an action?
People don’t like giving away their information for free, so when looking to generate leads through your website, it’s important to offer something in return.
First, gain an in-depth perspective into what somebody in your industry will find relevant, interesting, and downright irresistible. For top-of-the-funnel objectives, this could be something as basic as a how-to in ebook format, while bottom-of-the-funnel prospects may opt-in for a free 20-minute consultation. Whatever this incentive may be, make sure that you deliver on your promise and truly offer something of value.
This will keep your visitors coming back again and again.
