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In a post last week we talked about a marketing funnel and typical website conversion rates (be sure to read that post first as it will provide the background for this post). And while that post did a great job explaining the funnel and how it operates, it didn’t address any tips for improving your funnel and having a better conversion rate.
As a marketing firm we offer a service specifically aimed at improving website conversion rates. But as a webmaster or business owner, there’s a few simple things you can do to improve your overall conversion rate and sales process.
Keep Your Design Clean And Simple
So many websites fail to have a strong call to action. If you go to the page and are confused as to what you want your visitor’s doing, then there’s a clear problem. A call to action could be a “buy now” button, an “add to cart button”, a “call us now” graphic, or a “contact us” form. No matter what your call to action is, it’s important to make sure that it stands out on your website so people know what they should be doing on the site. This will dramatically improve the conversion rate.
The Sales Process
A conversion rate of 10% is great, but it isn’t so good if you don’t have a strong sales process to handle those conversions. Whether you sell a product or service, you need to make sure you have a strong sales process. Categorize your leads into various categories based on their position in the sales process:
- Ready to buy (hot lead)
- Considering buying in the next 1-2 weeks (warm lead)
- Interested in buying in the next 1-2 months (warm lead)
- Can’t be reached (cold lead)
This is a very basic way of setting things up, and depending on your niche it will get more complex and have various stages. In our CRM system, we have well over 10 different stages to classify leads based on their position in our sales process, and we send them various follow ups and pieces of information based on the position in the process.
Nurturing Leads
Nurturing leads is critical — and as I just mentioned we send different information based on their position in the sales process. That’s important and it’s important to understand where your leads stand in the sales process and deliver them the proper information at the proper time.
Up-selling To Customers
An important part of sales that many companies miss out on is upselling to current customers. Whether they bought a product from you last week or a service two years ago, make sure you keep them in the loop and updated with follow ups, email marketing, and phone calls. Current and past customers/clients can be a great way to gain new sales when you offer a new or different product/service.
It’s difficult to expand much on this topic simply because different niches are incredibly different. But if you don’t think you have a proper sales process in place or you have a poor conversion rate, give us a call or fill out a consultation request and we can look into it and offer our suggestions in improving the process.