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10.22.08 Solidifying The Final Stages Of A Website  By Peter Da Vanzo Sales people talk a lot about about "closing the deal", the final stage in the sales process needed to get people to sign on the dotted line. Typically, the stages leading up to the "close" are affordability, no perceived need, no hurry, or no trust. Sales people are trained on how to spot and deal with this issues, and ways in which to overcome a customers objections. Sales training is partly systematic, and part art. After all, everyone is different. It's the same on the web, however unlike the salesperson, you can't engage a person, one-on-one. But there are things you can do to increase the chances of making the sale. Checklist I thought I'd put together a simple checklist for beginners on ways in which you can get a visitor to take a desired action. I've included links to some great resources for those who want to dig deeper and see practical examples. But what if you don't sell things? Really, every web site "sells" something, be it a good, a service, or an opinion. This checklist can be used, and adapted for any site. Sometimes, a simple change or two is all that is required to go from good to great. For example, Amazon, a company that builds conversion techniques into their powerful sales platform, made one simple change that made them millions of dollars in extra revenue. Rather than phrase match search results, they displayed products most people purchased after searching on any given query. By doing this, they increased relevance. The result? A revenue increase of 3%, which amounted to millions of dollars in extra sales each year.
You can read more about what Amazon did in this free report "Controlled Experiments On The Web: Survey And Practical Guide" 1. Never Make It Difficult For People To Pay You Once someone has said "yes" to an idea, you need to get them to sign on the dotted line as quickly as possible. Leave too much time, and people may reflect, have second thoughts, get distracted, or otherwise lose momentum. Think about bricks 'n mortar stores. It's always immediately obvious where, and how, to make payment. If the store is smart, they don't make you wait to pay. One exception to this rule is if you have a good chance of upselling. However, overplay this strategy, and you might lose the customer altogether. A certain, large domain name registrar springs to mind... Further Reading:
• Shopping Cart Usability: 21 Best Practices
• Best Practices for Online Checkout Process • Hidden Secrets of the Amazon Shopping Cart 2. Be Relevant Learn the lesson of Amazon. What do you your visitors really want from you? If you're not what the visitor wants, then all the SEO, testing and tweaks in the world won't help. Monitor what people do on your site after they arrive. Do you know how many visitors click the back button after arriving? If too many visitors click the back button, you've clearly got a relevancy problem. Obvious, right? What's not so obvious is what to do about it. Which brings me on to point 3... 3. Measure & Iterate Good analytics are important. What's even more important is acting on the data. Look at your website as a constant work in progress. It should be always "under construction". Watch what your visitors do, and what they don't do. Make changes, measure the results, then make further changes in response to those results. Repeat. Converting visitors to action is part science, part art. There is no one way of doing it. What works for you may not work for others. Further Reading:
• 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
• Increase Your Sites Conversion Rate: Google Website Optimizer • A/B Split Testing Continue reading this article... About the Author: Peter Da Vanzo is the founder of Search Engine Blog.com, a news resource for the search engine marketing industry. He is also a regular contributer on SEO Book. |
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