Keep Your Website Working For You

Ways to attract and convert site visitors.

It’s your best marketing channel. And your most important part of your new biz development team.

If you agree with the above statement – read on.

If you’re thinking: “I’m not sure I agree with that.” This post is not for you.

In 2024, having a high-functioning site is the ante in the business game. Notice I said high functioning.

That doesn’t mean expensive or complicated or walls of marketing speak.

It DOES mean it should provide your prospects and clients with the information they need to help them take action with YOU.

Simple enough right? But simple is not always easy. Don’t worry, I’ve got you! In today’s edition of PRO Tips, I’m going to go through the steps to help you get all you can from your site.

Making Your Site More Effective

When it comes to your site there are two buckets to think about.

The first is traffic. Many want more traffic to their site and to engage with their content.

And it’s easy to understand why. More traffic = more business. At least in theory anyway.

This traffic bucket – we’re going to call this the cheese.

The other bucket is converting visitors once they are on your site. That could be in the form of a call, an email, a download of a white paper, a brochure, etc.  This bucket is the mousetrap.

The Cheese And The Mousetrap…

Most want to start with getting more cheese. But the real problem is often with the mousetrap.

Because no matter how much cheese you get — if you have a broken mousetrap, you’re really not going to catch mice.

So, let’s fix the mousetrap.

The first place to start is your main contact/landing page.

This page or form is meant to get visitors to do what you want them to do. We are going to start there and work backward.

Take a look at your page. Is there anything confusing, weird, or difficult going on? You may want to get some outside opinions on this.

Next, is there friction on the page? A common wall is asking too many questions in order to get a download.

Another is making the visitor scroll too far down the page. Remember, removing friction is a great way of increasing conversion.

If you fix your contact form, every visitor to that page forever after will have a higher conversion rate.

Ok, onto the Call to Action (CTA) that brings people to the contact page.

If the call to action has a low click-through rate, nothing else that you do in marketing will make that much of a difference.

So, start looking at changing the call to action on your website to get a greater percentage of visitors to click it.

That’s usually done by making your CTA more specific, and more compelling. Make it sound more valuable, or make it sound easier.

Examples:

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• Are you looking for the best adventure experiences in 2023? Go here.
• The key is to make the cost — or the time involved — seem low and the benefits high.

So far so good? Cool, let’s keep rolling.

Next, look at the page or pages where you have your call to action.

• Does that page answer questions your visitors might have?
• Did that page make any unsupported claims?
• Is the content on the page clear and informative? Or is it too vague?
• Could you add more evidence to that page in the form of testimonials or UGC?
• Could you pull a statistic out or reference an article to add to the credibility?

Your high-converting and effective pages have three elements: they provide answers, they contain evidence, and there’s a call to action. Use concrete language!

Here’s Another Way To Think About It…

A great page should act like the visitor is talking to you or your top sales rep.

There are two more pages to think about.

The first is the home page. The key to an effective homepage is making it clear. Like really clear. Clear to the point where you might even think it’s too boring.

State exactly what you do and the value that you are going to provide and all that needs to be above the fold.

The other page is your About page. This is a hidden gem on your website. It’s a great opportunity to tell your story and add a bit of humanity to your site. Humanity adds trust. And trust results in more business.

Plus, the About page is typically one of the top-visited pages on most sites. But few do much with it except use it as basically a resume. Here’s what I did. And then I did this. Blah, blah, blah.

This is your chance to tell a story. To engage. Take advantage.

Whew… lot there so let’s sum up.

• Today, your number one sales and marketing tool should still your website.

• Most want to focus on getting more traffic (cheese), but where you need to start is with building a better site a.k.a. (the mousetrap).

• In order to improve the mousetrap, start at the bottom of the funnel and work back from there. That means your landing or contact page.

• Look for improvements at each point in the process. Adjust, tighten, modify, and test. Make the trap better.

• Fix the issues, remove the friction, then start worrying about getting more traffic.

That’s it for today. Now for some reason, I’m craving a grilled cheese sandwich. How about you?

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