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Your sales team works hard to close deals, tracking down leads and using top skills to persuade people to buy. But once the pitch is complete, many prospects want to spend time researching before making a final decision. This is where your business’s website comes in.
From your landing page to your company blog, your website should be a conversion machine. If potential customers can easily find the answers they need, you’ll find that your success rates increase. You may even discover an uptick in the number of inbound leads your team has to work with on a daily basis. But all too often, a business’s website works against it rather than for it. Here are a few ways your website could be turning prospective customers away.
The first impression your website makes is everything. One look at your landing page could send customers away, even if your sales team has done a great job at pitching your products or services. Too much text, an overuse of colors, cluttered backgrounds, and other well-known design mistakes will send visitors scrambling for the back button. Use a DIY web design tool that includes professionally-designed templates and pay for a professional photographer to capture images of your products and your team.
As technology has improved, consumers have grown accustomed to a speedy internet experience. The slower your page load time, the more likely a customer will leave your website. While design does factor into the speed of your site, web hosting is a large part of it. Carefully research your web hosting provider and don’t be afraid to make the switch if you find your site loads more slowly than the competition. In addition to losing customers, you’ll also find Google penalizes your site if it loads too slowly, which means fewer inbound leads.
Website visitors only have so much patience when it comes to finding what they need. If your navigation makes it difficult to locate even basic information, you’ll likely find many visitors don’t make it past your landing page. Keep your navigation simple and easy and continue to monitor the pages that get the most attention. If people visit your website to get information on your products, your pricing, directions to your physical location, and to contact you, you’ll know this information should feature prominently on your landing page.
The biggest sales mistake any business can make with its website is to fail to deliver the information customers need. You may feel that keeping your pricing information off your site and urging guests to contact you instead will somehow help with negotiation. However, there will be many customers who leave your site, instead choosing to do business with a competitor who is more transparent about their cost.
You wouldn’t send a sales team to pitch your product without offering a prospect the opportunity to move to the next step. Your website shouldn’t fail to close the deal, either. Your webpage should have a goal of gathering visitor information, directing visitors to contact you, or a combination of both. Even your blog posts can include a brief sentence or two that invites readers to contact you for more information on the specific topic being discussed.
At any point while browsing your website, visitors may make the impulsive decision to contact you. They may even visit your site with the sole purpose of finding your phone number. Provide as many ways to get in touch as possible and make sure that information is linked from every page. Some businesses have hesitated to put a phone number or email address on their site, feeling that by avoiding doing so they’ll cut down on solicitations and spam. The decision is likely costing them business, though. If applicable, make sure you claim your Google business listing so that your contact information shows up in search results.
A business’s website should enhance its sales efforts, not counteract them. With a few small changes, businesses can turn their pages into conversion tools. At the very least, it’s important that customers can quickly locate the essential information they need to complete their research, including phone numbers, pricing, and what they need to do to become a paying customer.
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Dan Steiner is a professional writer, author, and marketing influencer. He is an active mentor in the California startup community, and has helped numerous brands grow over the years. Currently he serves as CEO at Elite Legal Marketing, a law firm marketing agency. Dan's published work has been featured in dozens of media outlets, including Entrepreneur, Inc, HuffingtonPost, GoDaddy, among many others. When he’s not writing or speaking, you can find Dan at the gym, backpacking, or volunteering at his local animal shelter.
