Most small businesses have a website for similar reasons. A couple of which might include providing information about products and services or adding credibility to your brand. Both of which are great benefits to having a website, but in my opinion the primary goal of a business website is not just to serve as a brochure and provide information about your business but to convert visitors into leads and make you money.
Every small business website should have one goal and that is to either get a visitor to call you, email you or fill out some kind of quote/appointment request form. After all, what is the point in driving traffic to your website if none of these visits are turning into new customers or clients? But unfortunately, most websites simply aren’t designed with conversion optimization in mind.
I’ve personally read through as many studies as I could get my hands on regarding conversion rates and we’ve done some of our own internal research and A/B testing to come up with some proven methods to help maximize our client’s small business website conversion rates.
Some of the highlights of our findings include:
Headlines: As this study on eye tracking shows, many people who first visit a webiste will first scan the headlines before doing anything else (including looking at photos). If they don’t think you offer what they are looking for right away, they will instantly leave your site.
Design: The overall design and professionalism of a website has a huge impact on whether or not a potential new customer will decide to do business with you. Would you spend money with a business who’s website looked awful or had spelling and grammar errors everywhere? While also looking good, your website needs to be easy to navigate and to not have anything on it that would distract your visitors from the main message you’re trying to get across to them.
Call To Actions: Sometimes people just need to be told what to do. Having strong call to actions is a must. Tell them to contact you or to request a quote and make sure you optimize the locations where you place your call to actions and contact information. Don’t just rely on contact forms and provide email addresses and phone numbers as well.
Testimonials or Social Proof: Many studies have shown that including third party reviews or testimonials is the one piece of content that will impact the decision of a prospective new customer. Collect testimonials from your customers and post them on your site. If you’ve got positive reviews out there on review sites such as Yelp you may want to consider linking to them or posting a screenshot on your website. Always be careful to not link to a page that might also link to reviews of your competitors as well (unless your competitor reviews are bad of course!)
Incentives: Another great way to increase conversions is to offer incentives to visitors. Offer some kind of a limited time discount or a bonus for contacting you right away.
These are a few of the main things we look at when creating a new small business website and when combined, they can turn your website into a very powerful marketing and lead generation tool.