Many people who enlist for SEO services are thrilled to see that their traffic numbers are higher than ever before. But then they are quickly puzzled to see that their conversions have not increased, or have increased very little.
Getting Traffic is Not Enough...
That is because traffic, or SEO, is only half the battle. You need to make sure that the pages your audience is landing on are optimized for conversions. This means about four different factors need to be addressed to make sure that people aren’t landing on your pages and clicking off within seconds:
1) Call to action: Every landing page needs a call-to-action. However, business owners and Web site developers who don’t know any better often take this call-to-action thing to a whole new level, called shout-at-the-customer-until-they-leave-your-site……action. Some examples:
- “Order Today!”
- “Click Here Now!”
- “Hurry While Supplies Last”
- “Your Last Chance to Order!”
- “For a Limited Amount of Time Only”
That last one always makes me roll my eyes and laugh because it only takes two visits to the Web site to know that the phrase “For a Limited Time Only” is NEVER NOT there! Hopefully, after being on the receiving end and reading these phrases yourself, you can see how annoying they can be and how they can convince you do to anything but purchase a product.
There is a general consensus amongst the marketing field professionals that there are few things on this planet that are more annoying than flashing, brightly colored call-to-actions or pop-up ads. Please refrain from making your audience feel like they want to bang their heads against the wall. Thank you.
Instead of shouting at your audience, try incentives that relate to your target audience. For example, if your Web site sells green products and you are offering “free email courses” (written courses sent out via email) that describe easy ways to incorporate ‘green’ into your everyday life, then an appropriate call to action would be suggesting that the client sign up for the courses because they are starting soon. For example:
“The first free course starts in 5 days. Be sure to sign up now to be a part of it.”
Of course, your call-to-action should always take place after your killer sales copy. Echo the call-to-action once more underneath the visual call-to-action, which is whatever image or icon you have on the top of your page (usually in the top right corner or in the left or right sidebar – just make sure it is above the fold). The awesome image or icon should, of course, be hyperlinked to the appropriate page where the visitor would need to be to sign up for the free courses.
Offering something for free that is worth money (i.e. information) is always a great call-to-action. It creates consumer trust in your Web site. That trust will eventually translate to reliance when it comes time to decide where to purchase products. If there is trust, then the consumer will rely on you to provide them with quality products and services henceforth.
Other call-to-action ideas that often cost very little for your business to implement:
- Free shipping
- Free Gift with Purchase
- Free Instructional Video
- Free Instructional Emails
- Free Video Emails
- Sign Up For Coupons via Email
- Submit your comments about our products or services (creates great conversation and extremely beneficial for businesses)
In my next blog, I will discuss step two to optimize your landing pages for sales conversion.
A difference can really be seen when comparing both examples of call-to-action. I have heard about this before but reading it in this post of yours has created more impact on me perhaps because of the comparison style of writing. Thanks.
Excellent, I could not agree more about no sensationalistic BS advertising. I used the no BS method successfully in my transmission shop for over 25 years..Now I am a rich man.
These are a terrific series of posts, I look forward to tomorrow, thanks.
Great post. I agree that after comparing the call-to-action lists, it’s obvious that the second would be much more attractive to customers. I work for a small advertising agency that utilizes these tools everyday. http://www.mediarevo.com/services/social .It’s so important to avoid the cliché hooks everyone else advertises and present a message that is clear with a quiet confidence about it.
You have mentioned some nice point. It is true that even our blog top ten we might not get traffic, if we does not optimize our landing page. So we always try to optimize our landing page for better conversion.