Chris Smith - The Conversion Code

More choices = fewer decisions made. You want to limit the number of calls to action on any given page to one when possible. If one page of your website asks me to subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on Instagram, and download your e-book, I might not do any of them. Remember, one page, one purpose.

The only pages of your site that will likely need multiple CTAs (calls-to-action) are your home page and contact page. Keep them laser-focused on one goal for all of the other pages.

Many of your website's visitors will be coming back to visit for a second, third, or even 100th time. Some of your website visitors will be visiting for the first time. Even the best-built websites do not capture every visitor who stops by. Just make sure you capture every bottom of the funnel lead. Also, make sure the visitors who are the “edge case” (don't visit often and are unfamiliar with you and your brand) can navigate your site and find information as easily as the visitors who return often.

Building a well-designed website can be a daunting, lengthy, and expensive task. The good news is that there are some quick hacks for turning (almost) any website into a lead-generating machine.

There are proven tactics and add-ons that will increase the overall percentage of your website's visits to leads captured (conversion rate). That said, if you annoy people with too many aggressive pop-ups or you force them to register to access basic information, you will have a much harder time getting them to answer their phone and convert the lead.

Our goal is to be there for leads who want to speak with someone in sales but also to capture the information of people who will convert later.

Adding the following will increase your conversion rate and is as simple as installing a line of code into your site settings.

“Alert” boxes (Optimize by Google makes this easy and free to add. You can even run A/B tests. You can also use Proof for more advanced alerts that help convert visitors to leads.)

Live Chat or Chatbots (Drift, Intercom, and Olark are all great.)

Pop-ups (Wisepops, Poptin, Sumo, and OptinMonster are all easy to integrate and either free or inexpensive.)

A Contact Us page that you link to from your About page and Testimonials page as well as from your website's menu, header, and footer; this page can have a form, but it should also have every other way possible to contact you (live chat, phone number, email address, location that is clickable to Google Maps and social media profiles)

One of the best features of tools like these that few companies are taking advantage of is personalization.

Personalized CTAs convert 202% better than generic ones, 8 and 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when a brand offers a personalized experience. 9

If someone visits a specific page of your site or if they visit a certain number of times or spend enough total time on your site, you can show them individualized content, copy, and CTAs that are hyper-relevant.

As an example, if someone is on the testimonials page of your website, for the third time in the last 30 days, you can have the headline for that page be “Thanks for reading our reviews, again. Don't worry, we read them a lot, too.” or “Fun Fact: People check out our reviews an average of three times before they contact us. This is your third time. No pressure.”

In the same scenario, you can also personalize the live chat message based on the knowledge that they frequently read testimonials. Instead of a generic live chat starter message, we can say, “Thanks for reading our reviews. I always read a lot of reviews before I buy things, too. If you have any questions, let me know! Our goal is to earn a 5-star review from you as well.”

Meanwhile, someone who is higher up in your funnel but has just read several articles in a row on your blog can see a personalized message such as “High five! You just read four articles in a row. Most people who do that also subscribe to our email list (and never unsubscribe). We only send our most popular stuff. You should join, too.”

The possibilities are endless. So, to keep it simple, just decide on (1) what triggers do you want to use and (2) what messages/links/CTAs do you want to display when a visitor activates those triggers?

This behavior-based approach personalizes the experience and makes your messaging more relevant. Don't skip this step if you want to improve your website's lead conversion rate. It can pay dividends day after day as new and returning visitors will constantly be completing the steps needed to trigger the customized content, which gets a higher CTR (click-through rate) than the vanilla equivalent.

Think of your website as a brick-and-mortar retail store. Thousands of people are going to walk in each month. Personalization is the equivalent of having everything your store sells that they would want the most waiting for them at the front door when they arrive. You also want someone to greet them in case they need help finding anything specific or have questions they want to be answered right away.

Of respondents, 44% stated that having questions answered in real time during a purchase activity is the most important feature a website can offer 10 and 38% of customers reported making a purchase after having a good session with a live chat agent. 11

If a visitor engages with a live chat agent, they're 2.8 times more likely to end up converting. 12

The key to any live chat tool is that someone has to be available. You may not be on 24/7 but remember: just like it is critical to call an internet lead immediately, the same is true for live chat. You have seconds, not minutes, to respond. You (or a member of your team or someone you outsource monitoring the live chat to) should get a push alert each time someone starts a new chat and hop in as quickly as possible.

Be helpful, but make sure you get their information (name, email, phone number) during the back and forth. They want to use the chat to get a quick response. You want to use the chat to capture and convert a high-quality lead.

You want a lead on your calendar, not just on your website.

I have found that live chat leads are some of the best leads. If you have not been getting them until now, start immediately. If you have a live chat now but are not using it the right way, you will find that these best practices can regularly get leads who are ready to transact.

1 1.Alsudani, Farah, and Matthew Case. “The Effect of Aesthetics on Web Credibility.” September 1, 2009. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1671011.1671077.

2 2.Stanford. “Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.” 2004. http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html.

3 3.Sillence, Elizabeth, and Pam Briggs, Lesley Fishwick, Peter Harris. “Trust and Mistrust of Online Health Sites.” In Proceedings of the 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. April 25, 2004. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/985692.985776.

4 4.Lingaard, Gitte, and Gary Fernandes, Cathy Dudek, J. Brown. “Attention Web Designers: You Have 50 Milliseconds to Make a Good First Impression!” March 4, 2011. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449290500330448.

5 5.Adobe. “State of Content.” October 2015. http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/max/2015/pdfs/state-of-content-oct.pdf.