We’ve mentioned in our blogs the idea of personas and their importance and relevance when creating your website and structuring your copy. I wanted to explain what personas are, why you should put so much emphasis on them, and how they can actually help you increase your website conversion rate. But a single post will not do this topic justice. So, I’ve decided to launch a personas tutorial in order to shed some light on this vague topic. Although I will not be covering everything, it will give you a better idea of what they are, why you should have them, and how they are created. To complete the series, I will create sample personas for some popular sites; which will help you understand the process a little better.

So what are personas? Simply put, they’re archetypal and hypothetical constructs that can be used for your user-interface, design, and web copy development. What does that mean? Well in plain English, a persona is a prototype of the many clients you have.

Let’s say you own an ecommerece website that sells golf clubs online. How does your creative team design a website, come up with its copy in a way which appeals to your market? How can you make your site “relevant” to the prospective buyer? How can you lead the customer through the site persuading them to make a buying decision? The most important elements of selling online consist of anything that is going to lead your visitor to make a final buying decision. But the question remains, how do you make sure your words and overall site structure will engage visitors and move them through the conversion funnel?

Before example:

So you love to golf and you’re searching for some new clubs, eh? Look no further! Golf Mania’s has the largest selection of golf clubs. Shopping on-line for golf clubs is an easy and rewarding experience. Where else can you find the best selection and prices for clubs, all at your golf-happy fingertips?

Golf Mania carries nearly every manufacturer out there. We carry:

Acer, Adams, Advanced Golf Technology, Aldila, Alien, Alpha Clubs, Ashton, Aurora, Bag Boy, Bang, Beast, Ben Hogan, Billy Club, Brady Boy, Burrows, Butler, Callaway, Cleveland, Cobra, Confidence, Cooperstown, Cougar, CSG, Cyclone, Datrek Clubs, Dunlop, Dunnoy…..

Now, let see how your copy and site will change when you start thinking about a specific client.

Let’s take Greg, he is 32, is just starting to golf. He doesn’t really know what clubs he needs, and doesn’t know what the difference between the selections are. He has been promoted in his job to an executive level position. As a result he now is obligated to attend more social events with his co-workers, managers, and sometimes even the VP of his company; which include golf outings. He wants to appear like he knows what he is talking about when it comes to this sport. He also wants the right equipment. Greg feels like the future of his job, his position in the company, and his social status among his co-workers depends on this.

Naturally, Greg searches for “golf-equipment.” He’s also hoping to get a few tips on which equipment is best, and what the functionality of each club is. Unfortunately, goflmania.com did not provide this information. They mentioned their expertise and the fact that they carry a wide selection of golf equipment. However, how can Greg find information, understand more about the equipment? Well, sorry to say, but this golfmania.com has confused Greg even more! It doesn’t offer any relevance to the Greg’s search. He needs a site that’s going to walk him through and help him understand which golf clubs to choose, reviews on the main manufacturers, and beginner golfing tips.

Greg is out of there because all the manufacturers names confused him. How does he know which one to choose? He visits the site golfster.com:

New copy: (underlined words are links on site)

Golfster offers a wide selection of golf clubs for the novice and expert golfer. Our commitment to you is excellent expert advice on the right equipment for your level, gender, and age. Visit our expert tips for which clubs are right for you. If you already know what you need, search amongst the widest selections of golf equipment on the web. Need some tips on golfing and which equipment to select? Visit our blog and articles section for excellent information from leading experts.

This is a quick example to give you some taste of the final result of the process of creating personas. Greg would search by golf level and receive tips, expert advice, and even reviews on which clubs are the best for his situation.

In order to increase sale, the prototype of a male, 32, executive, wants to become an expert golfer must be targeted. True he might not be the only client, but he is one client that should be considered when building your website.

Personas is not an entirely new concept. Although it has more recently been implemented on the web, many manufacturers and corporations have relied on this concept for years. Product designs and store set-ups have been geared towards specific “hypothetical” individuals that the marketing team has described as “the perfect” and ideal customer. Products that are successful are created with the perfect customer in mind; and that’s why they sell.

Online, you don’t have the convenience of showing your products to your customers and physically trying to sell them. So you need to construct a site that’s going to lead your prospects through a “conversion funnel” to secure a sale. The problem many website suffer from is trying to appease too many people and too many visitors.

Do you have personas created for your website? Do you believe it would actually make a difference?

Tags: increase-conversion-rate, online-marketing, online-optimization, Personas
Posted in Conversion Optimization

Last week I attended a webinar held by elastic path’s Jason Billingsley with guest speaker Mellissa Burdon of Future Now. The topic was 7 ways to boost your holiday conversion rate. It’s always nice to hear the guys at Future Now talking about conversion, and I thought that this webinar was particularly interesting.

The webinar’s main goal was to present 7 solutions that can be easily implemented to improve conversion rate. I will list the 7 points and elaborate on my thoughts of each:

1. Product Images Tell a Story

Your products need to elaborate more on their details and features within the photographs or images representing them.So basically, when I see the dress I want to be online through several different angles, and encourages me a hundred times more to buy the item. Of course this is not always a simple task. If you’re an ecommerce site, going through and changing all your images will be a challenge. You need to decide which images truly need to be elaborated upon. And really, depending on the product you may only need one really good image.

2. Headlines

We’ve said this over and over again: you need to hook your readers with a great headline. The webinar explained 3 different ways you can write the headline. Other sites such as copyblogger and Jacob Nielsen have great tips about how to write the perfect headline.

3. Calls To Action

Again, it’s true that calls to action throughout your document, placed in the right positions will significantly boost conversion. The correct placement of calls to action will help walk your visitors through the conversion funnel.

Visitors are coming at different stages in the buying process, ESPECIALLY during the holiday season. People tend to shop around to find the best deals, etc. So what you need to do meet the buyer at which ever stage he/she may be.

4. Point of Action Assurances

If you want your visitors to buy, make sure you help them feel at ease to give out their personal information. Nobody wants to give out information to insecure site.

5. Make Contact Info Obvious

Maximize on your conversions, if you have a call center, by placing your number somewhere visible (like the top left corner of the webpage). Sometimes your visitors want to call to get some type of clarification on an item. Little changes can truly go a long way.

6. Don’t make your visitors wait

Sometimes your site is all flashy and fancy, and quite attractive, but in order for your visitors to see your images, it takes 1 minute to load! In this day in age, people hate waiting, ESPECIALLY internet users. Pages should load in less than 3 seconds.

7.    Relevant Scent

Don’t let the visitor figure out your site, you need to figure out what stage of the buying process they are in. Okay, so what now your buyers are similar to dogs! No silly!! Let me explain: Let’s take me for an example: I have a toddler and an infant, I’m on the go all the time. I am looking for a simple, light, and easy to use double baby stroller. It also needs to be durable and comfortable for both children in the various stages of their growth. So, I go online to search for the term “double baby stroller”.

I know what features I want, but I don’t have a clue which stroller presented is the best for my particular needs, unless the information is clearly stated (the scent).

Well, when I land on the site, I don’t want a page full of jogging strollers, and heavy strollers! I want an easy way to find the light, simple to use strollers. The idea is your visitor needs to be able to SNIFF their way through the buying process. So if I land on a site that presents a functionality that helps me find the stroller with the features of my choice, that’s a site I will buy from. I also like to read reviews, so if I find a site that has everything easily displayed, they are guiding me through the conversion process by presenting all the information I am looking for, and I want right under my nose.

In a nutshell, those are the 7 points, which are great to help boost conversion. I don’t know if they are all “quick fixes,” it takes time to figure out your buyer, and that is done through understanding your market and the creation of personas. But if you’re a site with no Calls to Action for example, placing a few here and there can boost your sales significantly. If you’re a site with flash and slow loading times, that’s an easy fix. Your headlines and crucial, and that may help you see people stay a bit longer on your site rather than exiting immediately! Some other ideas I have for to boost your conversion rates this holiday season are:

8. A clean site design

When I visit a site that looks unprofessional, I’m outta there faster than you can say wait! Your site design can easily be cleaned up by removing unnecessary images, using normal and toned down colors, and making sure the copy is free of grammatical errors or slang.

9. Adding testimonials and reviews

Your visitors need the assurance that you are someone they can trust. What better way than what other clients have said about you! Give your visitors easy access to the testimonials so they can see what others have to say about you. Additionally, like the above examples, reviews are essential to help buyers make the plunge. If I read a bad review, it does not mean that I will not purchase the item. It just means that I am aware of this issue that may come up and I will continue reading other reviews until I am fully satisfied (or dissatisfied) with the product. If I see an item with 0 reviews, I almost NEVER purchase it. Elastic Path actually also had a webinar about the power of reviews on e-commerce sites.

10. Incentive Offers

Well you’re up against thousand of ecommerce and retailers out there. What can you offer your visitor that’s going to give them that extra encouragement to go with you over the 10 other sites they’ve visited? Free delivery? 25% off of their order? You have to stand out amongst the competition, so know who and what you are up against, as well as understand what your buyers want!

Any other ideas on some things you can do to boost conversion rates?  Share your thoughts!!

Tags: increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing, online-sales, Personas
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing

Did you ever click on a PPC ad for Victoria’s Secret? You do not have to explain to me, I know that you wanted to get a gift for your wife or girlfriend . But how about clicking on that Victoria’s Secret ad again, but this time to do some research on increasing your landing page conversion rate?  Victoria Secret’s targets a specific gender with their landing page, and creating gender specific landing page is the latest trend in landing page design.

Let’s go back to that Victoria’s Secret ad. You’ll notice that the landing page is designed with the female audience in mind in order to entice them to make that purchase right then and there. But that’s obvious, right?  I mean Victoria’s Secret has a target market of women 18 – 34, so it’s no surprise that they cater mostly to that group. Gender specific targeting is not a novel idea in traditional advertising. Nivea is the first to profile clients on ATM machines to display specific gender related ads.   How can such an idea be accomplished with landing pages? And what implications would gender specific targeting have on a landing pages?

Are there companies that are trying to create online gender specific campaigns?

HP launched an e-mail campaign that personalized each ad for the individual that received it; male or female.  Other companies are turning towards giving their client’s the convenience to log in to the site and adjust the settings to meet their specific mood, gender, and preferences. 

Creating gender-specific landing pages is no different.  In order to capitalize on your target market, you must address their needs, wants, and preferences through the ads and landing pages you create. Gender specific targeting is taking your landing page to the next level. 

But there are a few considerations you need to keep in mind:

1. Know your market:  Invest the time necessary to understand the demographics of your market. Only when you do so will you be able create the landing page that will fit your market criteria.  Don’t blindly decide that 90% of your clients are males; and only address them.  If you do, you may be losing a lot of potential business.  Through market surveys and site analysis techniques do the research, understand the breakdown of your customers, and decide who you will be targeting through your landing pages.  Once you do so you can determine whether creating a gender specific landing page works for you.  Also, a great way is to test with various landing pages to see what works and what doesn’t.  So targeting a gender may be wise or a disaster for your business; but after thorough research and testing with a single landing page you can determine that without creating damage to your company.

2. Create Personas:  Once you’ve understood your target market,  you must develop personas that the target the most complex of your target customers.  This will help you develop landing pages that are more personalized in nature because you begin to envision the personas and sell to them rather than the masses.  So, if you are Bose, (Bose.com) selling high end sounds systems, you will most likely develop male personas for your site. If you are selling genealogy software on the other hand, then your personas will be predominantly woman. Disney trying to sell a family vacation on their site will most likely develop a male as well as a female persona for the father and mother in the family. Remember that you should always create a landing pages to satisfy your primary personas. These personas are created to make you visualize someone when creating every element of your site; a real-life representation of your clients. 

Company x may have a target market of predominately men.  They will create a landing page to satisfy John and Ronald; their primary personas. These personas were created with in order to envision someone when creating the website; a real-life user-interface experience.  Rather than marketing to the large masses of men and their distinct personalities out there.  John’s personality, lifestyle, life, ambitions, and goals are much different than Ronald’s.  They each represent the most complex of personalities that purchase from company x; if you satisfy them, you satisfy hundreds of men with less complex traits.  The commonality between John and Ronald is that they both like to purchase from company x.

3. Copy:  When creating copy, you need to begin to understand what language will appeal to your market.  If you are addressing a female in your copy, you need to use words that would appeal to her specific personality traits (that is determined through the persona you create) but also address the fact that she is a woman.  Woman generally like long copy. Men on the other hand generally like short copy pages.

It is probably true that on the whole, women are more collaborative, men more competitive. Women are more likely to engage with students in active learning, men more likely to keep a distance through lecturing.

What does that mean for your landing page? Generally, men are more competitive, so the landing page must answer questions such as: what is in this for me? Or how can you help me. Whereas, women are generally more humanistic in nature, so the landing page should answer questions such as: how did your product or service help others? How many clients do you have?

Remember, it’s not always the case that women are humanistic and men are competitive; you need to always refer back the personas created.  Although the persona you created may be a female, she may have characteristic traits that were found in many of your women customers such as competitiveness and spontaneity.

4. Design:  Similar to the copy, the design of the landing page must appeal to the target audience.  Victoria’s Secret targets females ages 18-34, although they do not all have the same personality traits and preferences, they are able to construct pages that will appeal to that entire age group. 

Remember, the entire purpose of personas is to create hypothetical individuals with complex personalities that encompass all the rest of your market.  Because by satisfying your personas; you can satisfy everyone.  So if you create a gender specific page targeting Jane, a 34 year-old stay-at-home mom and Hannah, a 50 year-old construction worker; your page needs to address them BOTH, and they are VERY different.  Although Hannah is a female, because of her profession and being around men constantly, she is and always has been tom boyish.  So, your site design needs to address this aspect.  Making a site filled with images may appeal to Jane, but not to Hannah; you need to find a middle ground.  But don’t dismiss Hannah’s femininity either; she’s still a woman.

5. A note about the ad:  In addition to constructing your gender-specific page, you also need to construct an ad that will appeal to your target market.  Remember that the content, picture, or headline of the ad must be echoed in your landing page to avoid confusing your potential client.

Tell me what do you think? Have you considered creating landing pages that target specific gender? What are some of the challenges in doing so?

Tags: increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-sales, Landing-Page, online-marketing, Personas, PPC
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing

Your website conversion rate is one of the most important indicators of how well your website is performing. Many website owners invest huge amounts of money and time to drive traffic to their website. And eventually, people start visiting and traffic jumps from hundreds to thousands. But then nothing happens. No new orders, no new subscriptions, no email opt-ins, and no RSS subscribers. I have seen clients invest 12 million dollars in a website, get 5,000 visitors in one hour but not a single order. That is sad. It’s not all about traffic. Increasing your site conversion is part art and part science.

Your website was created to encourage the visitor to take an action. So, whether you have an ecommerece website, a lead generation website, or even a blog, you will need to create a website that converts.

An 8-Step Tutorial to Increase Your Website Conversion

This tutorial is designed to take you through the basics of increasing online conversion rates. As you finish each post, try implementing the recommendations and begin seeing better results:

1. 31 quick points to instantly understand online conversion: Everything you need to know about online conversion
2. What is more important: increase traffic vs. convert traffic: Finally someone actually answers the question!
3. Compare your site conversion rate to ecommerce site averages
4. Discover the three essential design factors to improve online conversion rate
5. Get site visitors to become clients with these five tips: Learn how to create a customer focused site
6. Can I trust you? 13 quick tips to increase online conversion rate via building trust
7. I am confused, scared and out of here! Deal with your visitor first impressions when he lands on your site
8. I am Fudding: How to increase your conversion rate by 60%: Discover how to handle your visitor objections

The most important point to remember as you begin is that in order to increase your website conversion rate, you will need to invest the time and energy in creating a client-focused site. Let us know how your online conversion increased after implementing some of our strategies and techniques. Good luck!

Subscribe to The Invesp Blog to learn more about increasing your site conversion rate and online marketing.

Is your conversion rate less than 10%?

• Do you need help increasing your campaign or site conversion rates?
• Do you need landing page optimization services?
• Is your ecommerce website generating all the sales it should be generating?
• Is your site generating all the leads it can?

Our clients had an average conversion rate of 14.56% in 2007. If you would like to see results like these, contact us today!

Tags: increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing, sales-objections, site-conversion-rate
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing

I recently wrote blog for seo scoop titled,” Why do we accept low conversion rates.” In the post I am discussing the main reasons I think many website owners accept low conversion rates. Let me know what you think of it.

Tags: increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing, site-conversion-rate
Posted in Conversion Optimization

Your site is always going to generate some weak leads. Even after all the sales lead optimization in the world your website will always generate some leads that are weak or maybe even completely out of your market. Whether you make the sale or not, I truly believe you can pull value out of almost all of your leads.

Salespeople should only be given valuable leads.  This helps build their trust in marketing efforts while minimizing wasted
follow-up efforts. With that, marketing should deal with weak leads but they can get a lot of excellent feedback from salespeople. Weak  leads can be handled in any number of ways, such as:

• Trash weak leads without contact (not good)
• Respond politely and suggest solutions elsewhere
• Forward the leads to a competitor or vendor
• Do any of the three above and keep the information for future marketing purposes

There’s Value in Them Leads

Even weak leads hold value for you. You have already paid for them so get whatever ROI you can from them. I commonly extract value from off-target leads in two ways. Both are simple and require very little no and certainly no money.

The first way I used weak sales leads is listed above- forward them to a competitor or vendor. Doing so builds goodwill with people/partners in your industry and they might return the favor with leads, referrals, better pricing, or (in the least) some kind words about your company. Contact companies to whom you would like to send leads. Tell them to expect some leads from you and that, although they are not obligated, you would appreciate the same courtesy in return. Follow up by sending them some information about what you do. This contact, in itself, is a value-creator. Some of those contacts might become your customers.

The second way, and the most valuable way, to use weak leads is for learning about products or services on the cusp of your current offerings that you should consider offering in the future. Doing so actually turns future leads you would have received anyway into valuable sales leads. That, by the way, will increase your site’s conversion rate. Lemons into lemonade and all that, right?

For instance, if you specialize in engineering bridges built with laminated beams and you continually get leads from people wanting bridges designed with trusses or natural timbers, spend some time finding out what you need to learn in order to offer those design services and how profitable you can make them. Alternatively, you can take the “shoot from the hip” approach and simply answer, “Yes, we can do  that.” and THEN learn how to do it.

Look Beyond Your Current Horizons

Sometimes the value in a lead is not directly tied to what you currently keep in stock. You probably spend a decent proportion of your marketing budget generating sales leads. Make sure you maximize the value of each for future returns.

Tags: increase-conversion-rate, increase-sales, online-marketing, sales-leads
Posted in Business, Sales & Marketing

If you have a website, then most likely you are trying to sell something to your visitor. Some websites sell products or services, while others are selling a brand or an idea.

Talk to any experienced salesman and they will tell you that 60% of sales fail because they did not deal with customer fears, uncertainties, and doubts (FUDs). Sales are lost because consumer objections are not dealt with. But most websites don’t know the first thing about dealing with FUDS. Too many people think that presenting product information is enough to convince a visitor to convert. Low conversion rates are proof that this has not worked for years. So, do you want to increase your site conversion rate by 60%? Deal with visitor objections and you will see immediate improvements in your bottom line!

I must agree with you that dealing with FUDS is easier done offline because you have the consumer sitting in front of you. You can assess what objections they have. The task online is much more challenging. It is not enough to deal with objections; you must anticipate these objections and then resolve them without any real-time interaction with your customer.

The good side of objections

Although objections do kill a sale if they are not dealt with, there is a positive side to them. They tell you that the site visitor is actually interested in buying your service or product. When a customer abandons his shopping cart, he is telling you, “I am interested but I object.” When you see that your contact page getting hundreds of visits per month but you are not getting actual submission on that page, the visitor is telling you, “I am interested but I object.”

Anticipate objections
Of course, the objection your site visitor might have is different based on the nature of your site. Here is a list of the top 7 objections we see usually when working with our clients:

1. Your site visitor can not afford your services
2. Your site visitor thinks that your price is too high
3. Your site visitor does not have the authority to make a decision
4. Your site visitor thinks that he can get a deal some where else
5. Your site visitor does not need your service or product right now
6. Your site visitor does not have confidence in your company, product or service
7. Your site visitor is too busy to convert on your site

This is by no means a comprehensive list. One of the first things you should do is sit down and come up with the list of objections your visitors might have.

Why do visitors have objections?
Each of these objections happen because:

• You have not established confidence in your product or service
• You did not qualify the visitor
• You did not sell the consumer on the real value you provide

How do you deal with online objections?

Here is a process you need to implement to deal with each of these objections:

1. Sit down with your team and list all possible objections your visitors might have: The more details you come up with, the easier it will be to deal with these objections.

2. Come up with answers to each of the objections: You must come up with real answers to each of the objections. It is not enough that you are convinced with these answers, your site visitor must be convinced.

3. Develop tools and mechanics to deal with each of the objections: Some objections are dealt with via testimonials, others via product demos, or better product or service documentation.

4. Incorporate each of the answers you came up with to your site: Take each of the solutions you came up in steps 3 and 4 above into the right places of your site. Knowing the right place where an objection should be dealt with is essential. Only when each page of your site is evaluated from big three design aspects, you will be able to determine the correct place to include these answers

5. Test your answers and see if there is an improvement in conversion rate: as  you start testing the answers to each of the objections you will learn that some of the answers are not enough, other times the answers are correct but they are not presented in the right place or the right format. The only way to know is via testing, incorporating the feedback and repeating the process for optimum results.

Real objections and real ways to deal with them

You did not think I would finish the blog without giving more examples did you? Here are some of the techniques we developed to help our clients deal with some of the online objections.

Your site visitor can not afford your services: this is issue of qualifying the visitor in the first place. While most B2C sites display product prices, many B2B sites still struggle with this concept. Some people still have the dream that if I get a customer on the phone, I can sell him my products or services regardless to price. For the rest of us who are not sales experts, displaying prices will actually help your overall conversion rate.  Let’s face it, not everyone is going to afford your services. It will save you a lot of time, effort and money if you give the visitor an idea about what prices they should expect to pay for your products or service. Just like everything else, there is a correct way of displaying price on the site and there is a wrong way. Including a single page in your site with prices does not work. The best place to include prices is in the same page where you offer the product benefits. So:

1. With each page you display your product or service give the visitor an idea about the cost associated with the service
2. Address the fact that a visitor might not be able to afford your service: Keep the visitor coming back to your site even if they can not afford your services at this point in time. Include something that says,” if you can not afford our services at this point, make sure to stay in touch by visiting our blog and resource page.”
3. Offer different paying options to the visitor. A visitor might not afford to pay $2,000 for your services all at once but he might afford it if you offer a payment plan.

Your site visitor thinks that he can get a deal some where else or Your site visitor thinks that your price is too high: This FUD is more difficult to deal with online because it is more difficult to detect. In both of these scenarios, the visitor can actually afford the price you are asking however he does not see the value of your particular offering. Why should I pay you $100 an hour for web copy services while I can get copy services done for $5 an hour? E-commerece websites struggle a lot with this point. There are too many online services that offer price comparison tools. These tools reduce the shopping to a price comparison exercise. How do you deal with this? Focus on benefits you provide which other competitors do not offer.

From the minute someone lands on your page until the point where they face a conversion questions, they need to understand why they should buy from you. For example, there are many online sites that sell books. Although Amazon is more expensive compared to many of these sites, the full customer service Amazon offers sets them apart from other competitors. Programs such as Amazon prime where you receive free shipping on premium two day shipping helps in increasing site conversion rate.

Your site visitor does not have the authority to make a decision: Although this is a major problem with B2B site, some B2C sites can still face the same problem. Anyone who worked with large corporation and tried to order books or supplies for his department knows that there is a lot of red tape to go through. How do you deal with this?

1. Use technology to minimize authority problems. For example, allow companies to create corporate accounts on your site. These corporate accounts can have multiple users under it. Managers can set up different spending limits for their staff based on the position or seniority.
2. Ask the visitor if anyone else is going to be involved in the buying process. Although I am completely against complicating online order forms this might make sense if you are selling B2B service.
3. Allow visitors to download product demos: I believe this is one of the best ways to deal with objections. Free demos do not require authorization. I still remember at the start of my career as a software engineer. I was evaluating a TogetherSoft for a software project I was working on. Each product license was 30k. We needed about 10 different licenses with a total price of 300k. I had no authority to make the decision. What did TogetherSoft do? They allowed me to download a free copy of the software and use it for a month. Although I could not authorize the purchase, I made a buy recommendation to project management. The result? Together soft walked away with 300k in 45 days after I downloaded the free demo.

Your site visitor does not need your service or product right now: The best way to deal with this objection is by giving the visitor a reason to come to visit you again. Here are some practical ways to do so:

1. Capture the user email by offering a free newsletter subscription. You are not trying to sell anything with your newsletter. All you are trying to do is provide useful information on that newsletter. It is a way to keep visitors reminded that you are there for them.
2. Offer whitepapers: Whitepapers are great way to demonstrate your authority and expertise. Many people tend to share these whitepapers with coworkers. The first time I visited SEOMOZ, I downloaded their free guide on search engine optimization. I shared that whitepaper with many of my colleagues. When AT&T was looking for a company to help with search engine optimization, I made sure they heard about SEOMOZ.

Your site visitor does not have confidence in your company, product or service: Ayat disucssed at length how to build confidence in company, product and service.

Your site visitor is too busy to convert on your site: Here is an important statistic to know. How many times does it take for a visitor to convert into a client? There are few sites that are able to convert a visitor from the first visit. Behavioral targeting which I will discuss in a separate blog can help in resolving this objection.

Can you give some more objections your clients usually have? Of course, you need to tell me how deal with them as well.

Tags: Branding, increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing, sales-fears-concerncs-doubts, sales-objections
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing

You might have heard various numbers about how many seconds the average person is willing to spend looking for what he wants on a website before leaving to look elsewhere. It is difficult to get a trustworthy measure of the average and many companies with the resources to get truly accurate stats would not disclose it anyway. I have heard numbers as low as 7 seconds.

Whatever the average time, the fact is people are impatient online and you will not change that. As a matter of fact, the situation will probably get worse as bandwidth gets bigger, sites and search engines improve, and people become more sophisticated online.

So, go with it! Embrace impatience and design for it. Let your competitors’ sites be the ones that get only 7 seconds of fame. Accept your visitors’ impatience as your problem and solve it. Let’s start with a few questions to think about the problem:

Q: Why are people so impatient online?

A: Even though we throw around the word “browsing” as if the internet is a carefree college cafe, most of your visitors are keenly focused on finding what they want.

Q: Why do people give so little time to a site before leaving?

A: Experience has told them that 90% of the time they will find what they want on the next site with only a glance and a click.

People are impatient online because they have a purpose and have learned that online they usually don’t have to wait - give it quickly or never mind.

Show and Guide

Show your visitors what you have with pictures and use words to guide them to details or options. Use vibrant and unmistakable pictures to engage their attention then guide them to the best place for them with image links, simple menus, and effective titles, captions, headlines, and copy. Be clear about what you do and what products and/or services you offer.

You have probably heard the old ad design adage that goes “pictures tell, words sell.” It is still true, especially in site design. Use pictures and words effectively together to captivate your visitors.

Now that they see you have what they want, tell them how to get it.

Tell Them How

By now, your visitor should be engaged in your products - learning about them and looking at pretty pictures - which is the perfect lead-in you need to tell them how to get it. Don’t show, ask, or suggest. TELL. Always be ready with a contact opportunity when they say, “aha! There it is!”

I am not an advocate of hard-sell tactics but I am an advocate of clear intentions and purpose. If you offer information about something, your copy should read, “for more information, call…” and if you sell that something your copy should read, “To purchase, call…” or “Call us at…to buy” If I want more information, I will sign up for your newsletter or just keep reading your website. Tell me how I can get it.

Show, guide, tell. Be honest and direct with your visitors about how to get what you offer. They will show their appreciation with their money.

Some other time we can discuss the average time visitors spend on a website - and how misguiding that measurement can be.

Tags: average-time-on-site, increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, site-conversion-rate
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Sales & Marketing

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that the secret of improving site conversion rate starts with your visitors. It is a lot easier to talk hypothetically about a creating client focused site, but implementation is another story. Stepping out of your comfort zone and stepping into your site visitor’s shoes will help you to better understand them, especially their needs and wants. At the end creating the perfect website starts with building user confidence, creating quality content, keeping design simple and providing real value to your visitors.

Let’s take John for example, a first time home buyer. John really does not understand the first thing about getting a mortgage. Buying a house is the biggest decision he is going to make in his whole life. John does not want to make any mistakes. Since he has never got a mortgage before, he goes online to do some research. John first searches for the term: “mortgage for first time buyer.” He is looking for a site that explains the following to him:

- All the concepts behind getting a mortgage

- What types of mortgage he might have to choose from

- How the mortgage process works

- How much his monthly payment is going to be

- What are some of the mistakes first time home buyers make

The first site has a title that says first time buyer mortgages.

Well, for some reason the link is to a site in the UK and John is sitting in the US. John however does not notice that right away. John clicks on the link. Remember, that he is “scared” and “confused.” He looks around the site. The intro has a paragraph that very much sums up many of John’s questions:

If you are a first time buyer, no doubt you will have a lot of questions to ask. First and foremost, what are the best mortgage deals for first time buyers? Should I opt for a fixed rate, a capped rate, a discount or a tracker for my first house? How do I get my first mortgage? Should I go to a bank, a building society or a specialist lender when I’m buying my first home? How much can I borrow for my first mortgage, and how much will it cost me?

That is great. The site knows exactly what is on John’s mind. But, where are the answers to all of these questions? They are no where to be found on that page. John is even more confused. He notices the big tool in the middle of the page…

Well, he decides to give that a shot. Anyone can complete a three-step process. However, when John gets to the third step he finds:

What? He thought he is going to get mortgage advice. Why do they need my telephone? And address? Oh, no! John is even more scared! And you can bet that in no time at all he is out of there.

We can take the example of John and expand it to many of the online visitors. When a users go online to do a search, they are searching for something which they do not understand. They do not want to make a mistake. So, they land at your site with all of their emotions and if your site does not take that into account, the visitor leaves in a matter of seconds.

All of this is great but how do you deal with these concerns and fears? Remember we are talking here about the initial impressions a visitor has of your site. Here are some essential steps to keep in mind that will help you comfort your visitor and increase your website conversion rate:

1- Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes: Think about your site from your visitor’s perspective. Before you design a single page or create its copy, start by creating your site personas. There should be 2-7 main personas you are going to use when creating the site. Personas are your most complex site visitors; the ones who will demand the most and have more reservations than others. They are hypothetical individuals and your user-interface, copy, and design will be focused and built around their specific needs. They are created based on in-depth market surveys and client profiles. When you are able to provide a website and content that will address their needs and concerns then you will undoubtedly do the same for the rest of your target visitors. It is always easier to target specific individuals when developing site copy, content, design, or usability techniques. It is also important to provide useful and beneficial content that will catch their attention. John is far from a fully developed persona for your mortgage company but he is a good start.

2- List the questions and concerns for each page: For each page of your site list all of the questions and concerns a visitor will have for that particular page. In our example, “Your Mortgage” website started on the right track. They listed all of the questions John had in mind. But then they stopped. Where did the answers go? Make sure to include the answers as well as the questions so that your site visitor doesn’t get lost.

2- Tell your visitor what to do next: Back to our example, John is staring at the page but he does not know what to do next. You need to gently guide your site visitor to the next action you want him or her to take. You need to navigate and direct your client to the answers and solutions that they are looking for. There is no way that this can be accomplished if you haven’t entered the mind of your visitor.

3- Simplify your site navigation: To stop your site visitors from getting frustrated and eventually leaving your site, you need to make your website easy to navigate through. Everything on the site needs to be clearly labeled and well organized. Search icons and the checkout box, for example, need to be easy to find and accessible. Do not aggravate your visitor with the basic task of finding important tabs or icons that will lead him/her to where they need to go. The worst thing you can do is create a site with excellent content, only to have visitors navigate away because the site is unorganized. When a visitor is dissatisfied with the organization and navigation of the site, “friction” occurs. And the more friction your visitor experiences, the less likely that he/she will convert. Just imagine your site is a funnel; what’s supposed to happen if a client enters? They come out from the end which is the conversion result. But if your funnel has a bunch of holes (friction holes), you will be losing a lot of people along the way down the funnel.

4- Secure your site: This is one of the most important aspects to keep in mind when creating your site. It’s important that your site is secure, especially when the visitor is checking out or providing any type of personal information. A security icon is crucial to build visitor confidence and increase conversion.

5- Build confidence in the visitor’s mind: Becoming a member of the BBB or TrustE are beneficial in instilling trust and confidence in your site visitors. It is especially crucial to have secure pages when your client is entering sensitive information. The last thing you want to do is getting customer information hacked because you did not secure a page!

If you implement the advice you see in this blog, you should start seeing results immediately. Good luck executing these steps, and please share your experiences and concerns with us.

Tags: increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing, site-conversion-rate
Posted in Conversion Optimization

Why do I buy appliances and electronics from Costco? Because I love their life time warranty. The truth is that I have never tested that warranty. Yet I am confident that any Costco in the US will honor it. That confidence is so strong that I shop at Costco over many of its competitors. So do you want to increase your site conversion rate? Can you establish such confidence in the minds of your site visitor? It is not that easy, is it?

One of the first challenges that many companies face online is establishing consumer trust and confidence. It might be easy for the top 100 ecommerce sites to gain the customer confidence but you are not one of them. So, while Amazon enjoys the name recognition, its online competitors have to struggle with building consumer trust in their brand.

What gives clients this low sense of confidence in the first place and how can you deal with it:

Lack of confidence in your company

Does your site look fishy or give the impression that it is selling a scam of some sort? I know it probably doesn’t, but will clients think so? You need to build confidence that you are the best at what you offer your clients. How do you do that?

1. Create client-centric, visitor-focused copy: I talked about giving clients what they want and how that can help you improve your conversion rate.

2. Design your site with easy navigation: goes with the point above but I wanted to emphasize it some more. My golden rule is to make sure the site visitor is able to get to anything they want within 3 clicks. To sum it up, put the customer first and watch your website conversion rate increase.

3. Provide real value on your site: People do not want to be sold, they love to buy. And yes, do not hard sell on your site. Give your clients great industry information through whitepapers or case studies. Some people want to keep their trade secret to themselves. If the visitor does not find this information on your site, he will find it on your competitor’s site.

4. Include PLENTY of testimonials: this is one of the best ways you can build a user’s trust; they need to see who your clients are, what you did for them, and how. Of course, make sure that these testimonials are real and from actual clients!

5. Manage your online reputation. There is nothing worse than searching for a company and getting hundreds of reviews that tell you how bad that company is. Always remeber that poor customer services and scams are easy to discover with Google.

Lack of confidence in products/services

If packaging is essential offline, it is even more significant online. I have seen too many clients with low conversion rates because their own site does a horrible job in representing of their products or services. Quick tips to build confidence in your company:

6. Include high quality images for your products: images displayed on your site can make a product look cheap and ugly. By the way, high quality does not mean large size images that take forever to download. The rule of thumb is to keep image size to less than 15 kb. An image optimizer can do wonders in reducing the size of your product images while keeping their quality.

7. Deal with bad reviews head on: With you or without you, the online community is always talking. It’s estimated that 54% of customers check product review venues before making a purchase. If you’re offering bad products and services don’t be surprised about low conversion rates. Before getting out there and selling your stuff, make sure it’s of the best quality in order to avoid this very embarrassing obstacle.

Lack of confidence in the site

Maroon background, neon font, and clipart make for one ugly site. You can’t PAY me to buy anything or sign up for anything from a site that looks that horrid. Are there actually sites actually still OUT THERE? Yes, and you can probably talk to the owner of the site who will tell you that they did a swell job with it! Okay, just stop right there, you’re still wondering why your client has low confidence? OH MY GOD! Just re-do your nasty site and see the difference it will make! How do you fix that?

8. Get professional help to design your site: Many people think they are great designers; few are actually good at it. You can hire a professional web designer to redo your website for a minimal investment. Of course, if you do hire someone, guide them through the process. So, no flash and no fancy images that take forever to download. Web designers are good at design; they are not experts in creating a site that converts well.

Lack of confidence in your customer care

Customer service starts the minute someone lands on your site. It should never end when someone buys something from you. Every customer should generate repeat business. Here is the online twist: it is not enough to provide amazing customer services to every client; you must let your site visitors know about your customer service.

9. A satisfaction guarantee goes a long way in assuring customers that you will stand behind your products or services. So can you put your money where you mouth is?

10. Indicate through your copy and some icons that customer service is a top priority. Include things such as how fast is your response time to a problem or questions they might have.

11 Don’t be a “Sprint”: Sprint is notorious for bad customer service; they are rated the worst customer service phone service out there! Sprint experiences a close to 50% customer dissatisfaction rate with their services and customer care. Recently, the company “fired” 1000 of their worst customers; rather than getting the 1 phone call complaint a month per customer, these customers were averaging 50 times per month! Well I guess that’s the latest trend for companies out there: fire your complaining customers!

Lack of confidence in the security of the site

This is a huge one. People are already worried about giving you their private information. And if they feel even the slightest lack of security they will leave! So make sure your site gives them a feeling of safe

12 f you are a B2C site, you’d better make sure that pages that require sensitive information are absolutely secured and the client is aware of this.

13 If you are lead generation site, you need to include text of how much you value the customer’s privacy and that is a top priority.

So as you can see, there are many things that will stop a visitor from becoming a client. Make sure you tackle each issue and really try to build confidence in each individual area. Have you experienced any lack of confidence recently from your customers? How did you resolve it?

Tags: client-centric-site, increase-conversion-rate, increase-online-sales, increase-site-conversion-rate, online-marketing
Posted in Conversion Optimization