More Sales through Better Search and Engagement
Your site is optimized, the page descriptions in your search results are attractive and now you're seeing an upturn in traffic on your site...but where are the sales?
Your site is optimized, the page descriptions in your search results are attractive and now you're seeing an upturn in traffic on your site...but where are the sales?
If you're getting people to your site and you're not seeing an increase in clicks on your calls to action, there might be a problem or two:
- Your calls to action aren't obvious
- Your site is too confusing in general
- Your content isn't compelling
- Your product isn't interesting/good value
Web pages, like newspapers, have a “fold.” What appears on a user’s screen when the page first loads is considered to be “above the fold.” The rest of the page is “below the fold.”
The most popular Web sites don’t have a “below the fold.” And of the sites that have longer landing pages, the most successful have a prominent, easy to see, call to action above the fold.
A call to action is just marketing-speak for the #1 thing you want your site visitor to do. On Google’s home page, there’s only one thing to do: search.
Does your Web site make it clear what I should do when I land on its front page? A lack of direction causes confusion, and confusion causes Web searchers to click their “back” button and return to their search results.
Are your menus arranged in an order that Web users are familiar with. Most users will expect Contact Us and About Us to be at the right hand side, with Home on the left. How about the rest of your page? If a user isn’t being directed to do something, and they can’t easily figure out what they want to do for themselves, they will leave the site and go to a competitor.
Statistics show that customer loyalty is less about delivering great customer service than it is about being the first service provider.
So get your call to action front and center. Make it obvious what you want your site visitors to do, and they'll probably do it.
If you're not creating your own content you will want to change that -- you don't have to write it yourself, but collecting non-unique, non-exclusive articles from content farms doesn't help your SEO, and most of these articles are so jammed-full of keywords that they're unreadable. They're not written by subject matter experts, and they're not written by someone with your best interests at heart. If you can write your own content, that's the best solution. The next best solution is to have an expert write it for you. You, and nobody else. Exclusive, shareable, compelling content is what you're looking for.
Put yourself in the position of a reader -- do you want giant articles with nothing but text, or do you want an easily digestible "Top 5" list? Looking at this article, I'd have to admit: irony isn't dead.
Finally, all the marketing in the world can't save a bad product, or compensate for a product whose price is mis-aligned with its perceived value. Would you buy a radio alarm clock for $500? Or a bottle of water for $20? No matter what marketing you throw at those products, you're unlikely to sell very many. The flip-side of that coin is a well-priced product that has limited appeal. A $0.59 bottle of water probably won't sell at an event where bottled water is being given away for free -- ordinarily $0.59 might be a good price, but when it's competing with free...
Content isn't king. Content that can be searched and found, and which is compelling and easy to share, is your goal. Content is the power behind the dual thrones of search and social.
So go connect with your visitors, engage with them, give them every reason to be advocates for your business and they will be.