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How to Turn Website Visitors into Paying Customers

So you’ve utilized other SEO strategies to increase traffic on your company website.  Next comes the trickier part, getting those website visitors to convert into paying customers.  This is perhaps one of the most difficult to achieve parts of running a business website. The reason why it can be hard to convert potential new visitors into paying customers is because you don’t know why they were visiting your site in the first place. Visitors may come because they like one of your products, but may not convert because a product may be too high in it’s price, you may not have the specific type of product they’re looking for, or you may find there’s other factors at play. While you can’t control every aspect of a visitor and push them to make a purchase, there are some ways you can help to nudge them in the right direction. There are a number of tips and tricks you can use to convince website visitors that they should purchase your product or service. As long as you work on these helpful tips and not the common mistakes ecommerce businesses make, you’ll soon see a good return.

It Starts With Your Landing Page

Start with the landing page of your website.  You can create a special landing page with an offer for customers, in exchange for some information about themselves.  For example, you can collect names and email addresses for an email subscription list.  Make sure you explain the offer clearly, putting an emphasis on the value to website visitors.  The form length should reflect the value of the offer.  For example, don’t collect the physical address and phone number of website visitors, if you’re only providing a weekly emailed newsletter.  Create a detailed headline that reveals the offer, and remove the navigation menu and links from the offer page.  Feel free to include a relevant image or animation connected to the offer, and add social sharing buttons, to make it easy for website visitors to share that offer with others. Don’t forget to check your bounce rate as well of your landing page. If you’re bounce rate is high, you’ll find there’s something not right with your landing page which is causing more and more people to leave as soon as they arrive.

Offer A Live Chat

A live chat is a cost-effective method for companies to interact with customers while they’re on your website.  This is a great way for customers to have any questions answered quickly, or for any problems to be addressed.  Most live chat programs allow you to intervene before your website visitor gets frustrated and leaves.  Features, such as page tracking, allow you to set triggers that will prompt the customers for a chat when their activity signals a problem with the website or trouble with their purchase.

Offer Something for Free

Yes, we understand that new businesses don’t have money to throw away, but studies have repeatedly shown that offering free trials results in a higher conversion rate of website visitors.  A free trial demonstrates that you have confidence in your product or service, and it can provide customers with the information they need in order to feel comfortable with the decision to purchase.  You can choose to either require the customer’s credit card information with the trial or not.  Customers may be more likely to not do a trial that requires a credit card, but of those who do, customers are more likely to go on to the paid version of your service.

Show Signs of Social Proof

Demonstrate that your company has plenty of satisfied customers.  You can do this by having a section of your website dedicated to testimonials from clients, or you can display the logos of current clients.  This gives your customers the knowledge that other clients have been happy with your work.  You can even take this a step further with case studies, in which you demonstrate exactly how you’ve helped particular clients.  Some companies choose to display the number of people who have bought their products or signed up for their services.

Create Demonstration Videos

This is a great way to show off your product on your website.  Show the product from every possible angle, and highlight its best features.  Make sure that you use high quality images that allow the customers to zoom in on details.  Even though it’s more expensive, we suggest hiring a professional to shoot the video, as the quality will be so much better.  You may also want to employ someone to appear in the video and provide an explanation throughout the video, although this isn’t necessary for some products.

Take Advantage of FOMO

FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is a great strategy to use to encourage customers to purchase your product or service, and there are several ways to create this sense of urgency.  You might state that only a limited quantity of a particular product is available.  Or you could display how many people have looked at the product recently, or how many have purchased it.  Another method is to show how long you have to order the product if you want to receive it by a certain date (such as Christmas Eve).  Customers who were on the fence about making a purchase can be convinced that they need to purchase it right now.

Create an Exit Overlay

An exit overlay is a message that pops up as a visitor tries to leave the website.  Sort of a last-ditch effort to get the customer to stay on your website.  This message could be an offer of a freebie (see the above free trial), or a request for information for email subscription.  Another possibility is to ask the customer to create an account in order to save the items in their shopping cart.

Create Comparisons with Competitors

This is your chance to prove that your product or service is superior to others.  You can write a comparison blog post that points out the differences between a competitor’s product and yours, or you can create a comparison chart to display that information visually.  You could even use a comparison calculator that shows the savings to a customer, assuming your product or service is priced lower than your competitor’s.

Redesign Your “About Us” Page

Most companies just put basic company information on the “About Us” section of their websites, information like the owners, address, and mission statement.  However, there are ways to tweak your “About Us” section to get the attention of customers.  Rewrite this section to outline how the company can help customers.  Rephrasing some statements can show customers why you’re the best choice for their business, and you can also include testimonials and social proof in this section of the website.  You can even include an opt-in form for email subscription.

Keep Your Website Clean and Inviting

There are a number of other ways that you can fine-tune your website for a higher conversion rate.  You should always be conducting A/B testing, in which you redirect half of your website visitors to a slightly different webpage, and evaluate the results for both sites.  This helps you identify particular changes that you should make to your website, and even a slight change can result in a higher conversion rate.  Make sure your website loads quickly, as nothing is a bigger turnoff to website visitors than a page that loads too slowly.  Also, create engaging content for your website visitors.  Provide information and articles that are relevant to customers, and they will keep coming back for more.  An easy-to-use website that provides useful information is the single best way to turn those website visitors into paying customers.

Here’s an interesting video from Hubspot that might help as well.