Monday, June 9, 2014

Convert More Website Visitors Into Leads - Part I

 
First, think of your website as a 24/7 sales person sitting in front of your prospect whenever they want to listen.  Like any good sales presentation, your website needs to talk about the prospect and the benefits of your product(s) for him - not about yourself, your company or your features. Your prospects only care about their needs and how you can help them. Use the word "you" a lot, not "we."
And make it easy and convenient for prospects to listen to (read) your presentation. This means don't make them click all over the place to read your sales message. It's amazing how many websites get prospects just where they want them, and then make them go somewhere else after just a couple of points. And then go somewhere else. And then go somewhere else.
 
If you had a 30-minutes sales presentation with a decision-maker, would you stop every five minutes and say, "That's a little bit about how we can lower your production cost twenty percent.  Now, let's move into the next room and we'll talk about our excellent warranty." After making your prospect get up every five minutes, I think he's likely to say, "No, I think I've got the picture. Thank you very much for the excellent presentation. We'll be in touch."
 
Silly, right? Then why do so many websites stop every few paragraphs and make you click somewhere else to continue? Just like the example above, this is crazy. If the prospect is going along reading your sales message, he either likes it or doesn't. If he doesn't, he'll stop and go somewhere else anyway. You're not any better by hiding the stuff he might like on another page.
 
And if your prospect likes it, why in the world would you want to stop every couple of minutes and say, "Are you still interested? Really? Okay, then are you interested enough to click over here and wait for another page to load, find the right place to start reading, skim through the fluff at the beginning and start reading again?  You are? Great, click here."
 
Every single time you make a prospect stop and think about whether he really needs to learn any more, you're going to lose a certain percentage of web visitors.
 
Again, we're not talking about using your website to do everything for everyone.  We're talking about how to capture more leads as a percentage of all site visitors. One way to do that is to refrain from continually interrupting them in the middle of your sales presentation.

MY OBJECTIVE:

To share common sense lessons learned with 40-plus years experience in marketing, sales and as a B2B publisher.

Followers