You can have the most beautiful, elegantly designed website with striking images and snappy content, but if it’s not helping your business generate and convert leads or achieve other KPIs, what good is it?
If you’re going to invest the time and money in quality web development, you owe it to yourself to make sure you launch a website that supports the growth and success of your business. In most cases, this requires working with a professional website design agency.
For so many companies these days, their website is a major hub for sales/marketing and business development activities. Here’s why:
61% of marketers say generating web traffic and leads is their top challenge. (HubSpot, 2018)
78% of B2C consumers and 85% of B2B customers conduct research online before they make purchasing decisions. (Source: Stanford Web Credibility research)
Content marketing (creating / distributing valuable content online to prospective customers) generates three times as many prospects as outbound marketing and costs 62% less. (Source: Demand Metric)
63% of consumers requesting information on your company will not purchase for at least three months.
How to build a website that converts?
Define the user journey for your target audience
As with all types of marketing efforts, you must have a clear picture of your target audience if you hope to build a website that will convert them. Start by building a customer profile or “buyer persona” that outlines their demographics and identifies which digital marketing channels are driving them to visit your website.
What pain points are they facing that your product or service can relieve or resolve. Once you know more about your potential customers, you can develop relevant website content in terms they understand and guide them on their user-journey.
What’s your value proposition?
It’s important that your content clearly communicates your value proposition—what do visitors have to gain by doing business with you. Their journey—from shopper to buyer—will likely require several communications from you, these might include blog posts, automated emails, product videos, or direct mail. At each touchpoint, always have a clear call to action. Let them know what you want them to do.
82% of converted, purchasing customers view at least 5 pieces of content from the winning company prior to purchasing (Forrester).
42% of organizations believe email is one of their most effective lead generation channels.(Circle Research)
Marketers with blogs are 13 times more likely to achieve positive ROI than those who don’t have one. (Hubspot)
Define your most wanted action and design brief sign-up forms
It is important to direct your customer to do exactly what you want them to do while visiting
your website. If your goal is to make a sale, ask them to “click on the buy it now button”. Want them to sign up for your newsletter, ask them to do that. This will help you reach your online conversion goals. For your home page you should focus on a simple, clear call to action for web visitors.
Are you asking them to enter their email to receive your newsletter?
Do you want people to request a product demonstration?
Do you want them to refer a friend to your website for more information?
Are you offering a free initial consultation?
Do you want people to buy certain products?
Whatever your goal is, it must be clear and simple, like “Add to cart” or “Sign up here.” Keep the information they must enter online to a minimum. Brief forms with fewer fields get completed more often than long forms.
Develop landing pages to A/B test messaging and content
Using different landing pages to conduct A/B testing of messaging or layout changes
and tweaks to your website can provide informative results. Identify elements that
could be keeping customers from converting. Are your forms too long? Is your
copy not clear enough? Test changes and keep moving forward. Slight changes to
the design, copy, and functionality of your website can have huge impacts on conversions.
The more landing pages you have, the more leads you are likely to get.
Businesses that nurture leads make 50% more sales at a cost of 33% less than non-nurtured prospects. (Forrester)
A/B testing is becoming a preferred content research method that has brought a lot of the companies the most success.
Businesses that are continually fine tuning their websites learn a lot about their target audience and get better at driving conversions. You can’t remove the barriers to conversion until you test and figure out what they are. Redesign your pages based on data and insights from your A/B testing, then test the new pages!
All of these strategies go into designing websites that convert
Keep these in mind when updating and managing your website, your site will capture more leads and elevate your conversion rates. See how one of our client’s websites improved with a clearly defined strategy and execution.
Case Study: Surgical Affiliate Management Group, Inc.
Surgical Affiliate Management Group wanted to redefine their brand image and messaging platform to better position them in the market amongst several new competitors entering the space. Our discovery process uncovered the need for a stronger value proposition as well as the need for a more intuitive website experience.
We developed content for each stage of their sales funnel and implemented an SEO strategy optimized for lead generation. With their rebranding and implemented lead generation campaign, Surgical Affiliates had secured two new hospital contracts and currently has two more in the pipeline. Learn more about the website redesign ParkerWhite completed for Surgical Affiliates here.
Let’s start a conversation about how ParkerWhite can help you build a website that becomes a lead conversion machine. We would love to chat and learn more about your marketing needs.