With any new digital marketing effort, your website is one of the first things you should evaluate. Presuming that your digital marketing is going to do its job of sending good, prospective customers to your website, it’s your website’s job to engage with them and convert them into customers. Is your website up to the task? Here are a few things to consider when evaluating your website and its ability to convert visitors into customers.
Let’s start with the basics. Make sure your website is correctly branded with your name and/or logo prominently displayed on top. Does your website “look and feel” like your company? If you have a dedicated marketing resource, have them share your company’s Style Guide with your website developer. A style guide specifies colors, fonts, design elements, guidelines on the use of images and the tone of your copy. Even if you don’t have a style guide, using the company’s familiar colors and fonts maintains your company’s brand consistency and personality. Consistent brand helps to create a better connection between all of the marketing you do. It makes more impact and helps website visitors recognize that they have arrived at the right place.
Once you’ve got an attractive, correctly branded website in place it’s time to think about your visitors and their experience on your website. If you are running a digital marketing campaign, visitors are likely coming to you in search of answers to their questions or solutions to their problem or opportunities. Does your website answer these needs quickly and simply? Does your website explain how your products and services satisfy their needs? One of the best ways to address customers’ specific needs is to create landing pages that relate specifically to the products or services they are looking for. For example, if you sell excavating equipment don’t send all prospects to the same home page or products page. Instead, send those who are looking for a bulldozer to your bulldozer page and those looking who are looking for backhoes to your backhoe page. The two rewards of highly relevant, tightly-themed marketing groups are 1) those searching for a particular product or service will find exactly what they are looking for and are more likely to purchase and 2) Google Ads rewards relevance between the keyword search, the ad and the landing page with a higher quality score. A high-quality score is one of the factors that impacts a higher ad position and lower cost. Having explained what you sell, your next job is to explain how your product, service, or company is different and better than alternate choices. This is known as your unique selling proposition. Put simply, your website should answer the question as to why a customer should buy from you vs. someone else. Give your prospect a reason to choose your solutions over similar solutions offered by competing companies. A SWOT analysis can also help you to figure out where you are positioned in the marketplace against competing firms. Simply list your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This will further help you to identify solutions or benefits that are unique to your company.
By the time a website visitor has spent at least 15 seconds on your website, they should “get” your brand, know your name, what you sell, and why your solutions are unique or better than what your competitors offer. With that done, your next goal is to engage with visitors and “reel them in”. Engagement tools encourage visitors to interact with you and/or your website. Establishing a relationship with visitors builds trust and gives them a vested interest in continuing the conversation. Engagement tools also provide “jump off points” for prospects to interact with company representatives, bots or apps and these interactions convert prospect to leads. On the landing page or home page itself, make sure your phone number is prominently displayed at the top and frequently within the content. [Contact Us] buttons should be placed strategically as well so that when a prospect decides to take next steps, there is always a button or phone number within easy reach. Live chat is a great way to engage with website visitors, answer their questions and explain the advantages of your products or services. Remember, your visitor arrived at your website solve a problem, answer a question or explore an opportunity. And if you answer those needs via chat or other means, they will have very little reason to leave. You may also consider an automatic appointment scheduling app. These apps integrate with your existing calendar and allow visitors to schedule time with you (by phone or in person) for 15 to 30 minutes time slots based on available time in your calendar. If the product or service you are selling has a short sales cycle (like a book or paid consultation), make sure to add [Buy Now] buttons and keep the buying process quick and simple. These website engagement tactics will help you develop an online relationship with prospects and convert them into leads and sales.
The last important piece of any digital marketing effort is analytics. Make sure to have a good analytics tracking tool installed on your website. Google Analytics is one of the most popular apps of its type, enabling you to track the source, volume and traffic patterns of all website visits. In other words, Google Analytics allows you to track where your website visitors are coming from and what they are doing once they get to your site. Do they bounce, do they stick, do they engage, do they convert to leads or sales? Where do they drop off? A website tracking tool like Google Analytics is critical to the evaluation of your digital marketing efforts. It allows you to compare performance between advertising channels, ad groups, ads and even individual keywords. A Google Analytics Qualified Agency (like AdEdge) will be able to “round up” all of your website traffic and tell you where your paid and unpaid efforts are getting the most traction. With that information, you can make shifts in your marketing investment and optimize remaining channels for even higher performance.
If you need help with website design, digital marketing or Google Analytics, make sure you’re speaking with an agency who has extensive experience and current certifications in Google Ads and Google Analytics. AdEdge Digital Marketing has been offering expert digital marketing management to small and medium-sized businesses for 12 years and we’ve been a Google partner agency for six; and we maintain advanced Google certifications in Paid Search, Banner Advertising and Google Analytics. If you would like a complimentary website evaluation or digital marketing audit, please contact us at 203-682-4585, email anthony@adedgemarketing.com, or schedule a call.