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Your website is the foundation of your marketing and communication efforts and—if built strategically—can be your small business’s most powerful marketing tool.
The key here is “strategically built.” It isn’t enough just to have a website. Your website needs to drive prospects to take action. When it does, it will serve as a 24/7 salesperson for your small business—allowing you to make sales or gain strong leads while you focus on other important aspects of your business and life outside the office.
With this in mind, on this episode of Priority Pursuit, we are going over a few simple ways to increase your website’s conversion rate and make your website more strategically built and appealing to your audience.
1. Clarify your message.
First, you need to understand your audience and clarify your messaging. This is because if you want your website to convert visitors into paying customers, your site has to convey a clear message. In the end, clear messaging—which is communication that your ideal customers can understand quickly and easily—is the key to successful marketing.
For the record, and to put it bluntly, all of your marketing efforts and tactics—including building a website—are a waste of time, money, and resources if your messaging isn’t clear.
In regards to your website, studies show that if it takes longer than five seconds for website visitors to understand what you offer, how you can help solve their problem, and how they can work with you, they are practically guaranteed to leave your site, which means lost business for you.
However, when your website has a clear message that helps prospective customers quickly and easily understand how you can help them and how to work with you, they’re much more likely to do the thing you want them to do—like buy now, schedule a discovery call, or download something.
For our regular listeners, you’re familiar with how to clarify your messaging because we talk about it all of the time. So for our new listeners, and as a refresh, to clarify your messaging, you’ll want to write what we call “Marketing Guiding Statements.”
These statements are written guidelines that position your brand and business as a trusted partner that can help make your customers’ lives better. The process of writing these statements gives you the information you need to write clear, concise, effective messaging for your website and other marketing assets—including social media posts, emails, and more.
Because your marketing can’t be successful without clear messaging, we put together a free mini course that breaks down exactly how to write your Marketing Guiding Statements. By the end of this course, you’ll know exactly what to say to convert your prospects into paying customers on your website and in all of your other marketing materials.
While the next five tweaks are pretty quick, it will take some time to write your Marketing Guiding Statements—likely several hours. Then, you may want to sit on them for a few days and come back and refine them. Clear messaging is just so important in the success of your marketing that we’d hate not to mention it.
2. Write copy using a story-based framework.
We can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard small business owners, leaders, and their teams say, “We have no idea what to write on our website.”
Well, if you write your Marketing Guiding Statements, you’ll have almost everything you need to write your website copy. Then, from there, you’ll want to put that information into a “story-based framework.”
We’ll discuss what this means in a minute. But, with the average human attention span being just eight seconds (or less), your marketing—including your website—has to quickly capture and keep your audience’s attention, as well as be memorable. And, the most effective way to do this is through story.
We, as people, naturally love and remember stories. While very few of us can retain lists of facts and statistics, we are 22 times more likely to remember information when it is presented to us in a story-like framework.
For example, what did you study in history class as a freshman in high school? You probably can’t remember. However, can you recall a seemingly random story your history teacher told you about his or her personal life—like how he found out he was diabetic at 19 years old after eating pecan pie his girlfriend’s mom made and how he had to be rushed to the hospital?
This might seem oddly specific, but again, the fact of the matter is that people enjoy and remember stories. As a small business, you can use people’s love of stories to your advantage by turning your marketing—including your web copy—into a story.
To do this, your website copy needs to establish your small business as the guide that can help your ideal customer—the hero of your marketing and website story—solve their problem.
You can learn exactly how to do this if you go back and listen to “Episode 107: How to Write Website Copy for Your Small Business: How to Write Your Home, Service, & About Pages” where Treefrog Content Director Angel Tobey walks you through how to write the main pages of your website using a story-based framework so you can capture and hold your website visitors’ attention and—ultimately—convert them into paying customers.
When you write your website using a story-based framework, your site will lead your customers to want to purchase from or work with you. While your competitors’ websites will seemingly include random facts and information, your site will invite your prospects into a story where they walk away successful.
3. Make sure the first thing site visitors see is a clear header.
Now, we keep talking about people’s short attention spans, but that’s because so much of having a high-converting website is being able to attract and keep prospects’ attention.
With that in mind, the next website tweak we want to encourage you to make is to add a clear header to the very top of your website.
When someone visits your website, the first thing they should see—before they even scroll—is a clear statement that tells them exactly what you can do for them. And, this immediate validation will make them more likely to continue browsing your website and—ultimately—do business with you.
Here are just a few examples of clear, concise headers for various small businesses:
- Enjoy a worry-free experience from a top-rated Indianapolis plumbing company.
- Indianapolis Wedding Photographer for the Type-A Bride
- Take your company to the next level with a marketing agency for small businesses.
As you can see from these examples, your header isn’t the time to be cute, abstract, or vague. Remember, you have less than five seconds to engage potential customers and show them that you can help them. And, because your header is the very first thing prospects will see, you want your header statement to be as straightforward as possible and include your main keyword—which is important but is another show in itself.
4. Give a direct call to action.
Another small but effective way to increase your website’s conversion rate is to include a direct call to action or CTA. Basically, you need to clearly tell your website visitors to do whatever it is that you ultimately want them to do. That might be to “buy now” or to “schedule a discovery call.” Then, you need to encourage them to take action by doing three things.
Make your CTA stand out.
First, make your CTA easy to find and actionable by putting it on colored buttons. Your CTA should be as concise as possible—preferably no more than four words—and fit nicely on a website button.
As you build your website (or have a designer build your site), put your CTA on buttons, use color to help those buttons stand out, and make your buttons link to a page where site visitors can take action. For example, if your CTA is “Schedule a Discovery Call,” make the buttons take prospects to a page where they can schedule a discovery call.
Include CTA buttons in the top right corner of your menu and throughout your website.
As prospective customers peruse your website, they will be ready to take action at different times. For example, some will need to read testimonials before deciding to work with you, while others will need to see pricing.
By placing CTA buttons strategically throughout your website, you can ensure that your website visitors can easily take action whenever they’re ready—making them much more likely to inquire or purchase before you lose their attention.
Use the same CTA.
Remember, your website needs to give visitors clarity. If every button gives your website visitors a different instruction and takes them to a different web page, you’ll only cause confusion and increase your chances of losing a prospect. Instead, use the same CTA over and over again so that website visitors know exactly what they need to do.
If you’d like to see an example of how to use CTA buttons, visit treefrogmarketing.com. Our CTA is “Schedule a Discovery Call,” and if you go to our website, you’ll quickly notice CTA buttons all over our site telling prospective customers to do exactly that.
Remember, if you’re leaving room for uncertainty on your website by not clearly telling website visitors what they need to do, you’re drastically increasing the likelihood that people will leave your site before taking action. In other words, without a clear CTA, you’re missing out on business!
And, once again, people’s attention spans are short, but when you have CTA buttons throughout your website, you can drastically increase conversions simply because you’ve made taking action possible before your site visitors forget what they need to be doing.
5. Make sure your website is easy to navigate & loads quickly.
The fifth way to increase your website’s conversion rate is to make sure your site is easy for your ideal customers to use and navigate.
Basically, make sure your website doesn’t require users to do a bunch of clicking or detective work to find the information they need. To do this, we recommend only including five to six options in the main navigation. You need to make it extremely easy for people to find what they’re looking for.
We know this sounds easy enough—but it can become a challenge, so take time to really think about how your main navigation should be laid out from a customer’s perspective.
Also, you need to make sure that your website loads quickly. If it takes too long to load, users are likely to get frustrated and leave. Ideally, your website should load in two seconds or less.
To check your load time, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. If your site is slow, PageSpeed Insights will give you tips for improving your load time, which will improve your customers’ site experience and increase your conversion rates.
6. Give prospects the information they need.
The last tweak we want to encourage you to make to your website is simply to make sure your site includes the information your prospects need.
Is price important to them? If so, make sure your pricing is clear. Are your prospects looking for a widget with a specific feature? If so, make sure that’s highlighted on your website. Are your prospects comparing your packages to your competitors’? If so, detail your package options.
While we do want to encourage you to check out our free guide—“8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers”—your website’s conversion rate will drastically increase when you simply make sure your site answers your ideal client’s questions.
Not only will this increase sales, but it will also allow your website to better filter leads for you—meaning you and your team won’t need to spend nearly as much time communicating with inquiries who aren’t a good fit because your site will better help your website visitors pre-qualify themselves.
That alone is reason enough to make website updates because who doesn’t want to spend more time talking to qualified leads instead of trying to convince others they need your product or service?
As we wrap up, we want to remind everyone that your website is your small business’s most powerful marketing tool. In fact, after identifying your ideal client and clarifying your message, website development is the FIRST thing we recommend that small businesses invest in from a marketing perspective.
After working with hundreds of small businesses, we know how important your website conversion rates are to your overall bottom line. So, be sure to create your Marketing Guiding Statements and then implement the tweaks we talked about today into your website to start seeing results.
And, while we hope you found this episode helpful, if you want to make your website even more powerful, we want to again encourage you to check out our free guide—“8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers.”
There’s nothing we want more than to see your small business succeed, and the truth is, you need a website that converts. Because, without one, you’re limiting your company’s growth.
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Discover the “8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers” With Our Free Guide.
- Listen to “Episode 107: How to Write Website Copy for Your Small Business: How to Write Your Home, Service, & About Pages”
- Check Your Website’s Load Time With Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool
- Take the FREE Mini Course! The First Step to Effective Marketing for Small Businesses: Writing Your Marketing Guiding Statements.
- Receive 50% Off Your First Year of HoneyBook
- Learn More About Treefrog’s Small Business Marketing Resources & Services
- Join the Priority Pursuit Facebook Community
- Follow or DM Treefrog Marketing on Instagram
- Follow or DM Kelly Rice on Instagram
- Follow or DM Victoria Rayburn on Instagram
The Priority Pursuit Podcast is a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners define, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love.
You can find The Priority Pursuit Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Stitcher, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
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