There are more than 1 billion websites on the internet and 99% of them are not converting and are not profitable at all. And it may be the case for your business that you have a website that you might have spent quite some money to design and develop, but it seems to be useless when it comes to bringing in more customers.
Today we will have a look at a few elements (7 – as you’ve seen in the title modeled after Stephen Covey’s book) that your website needs in order to have the biggest potential to generate revenue for your business. 7 elements that your business needs in order to have a highly converting website.
Without any further ado, let’s dive in.
Clear Navigation
If it’s easy to get lost on your website then it’s easy to lose tons of sales and customers. A confused mind never buys. If your visitors don’t know what page they’re on your website, if they don’t have a clear navigation path to take the desired action, then your website’s navigation needs to be improved.
Here’s a simple way you can check if your website has clear navigation: ask your wife, husband, child, parent, brother, sister, friend (whoever is closest to you and it’s most likely to do this) to go to your website and try to buy something or submit a form for selling your services. Observe them on how they navigate or ask them to record the screen (or both). See if they take the desired action with ease or if they are struggling to find more information about your products or services. And now you know if your website has bad navigation. And now you can fix that.
If your visitors can’t get to take the desired action on your website or they don’t know where to find information about what you do, it means your website had poor navigation and it needs to be fixed. Quickly.
Good Copywriting
I’m not necessarily talking about good grammar (even if it is a must), but I’m talking about persuasive copywriting that will make people buy, or request a quote for your services, or whatever your desired action is. Many businesses when they buy a new website, hire a web designer to… well… design. And a nice and professional design is important, it is the text, the words on the website that do the selling.
Having on-point copy (or text) on the website is one of the most overlooked aspects when designing and developing a new website.
That means, if you have not invested in a good copywriter (or a web designer that knows his copywriting), you may need to do an overhaul of your website on this aspect. This may be the highest ROI activity that you can do at this point. Not only that, but it will increase all your other marketing efforts. Especially if you are running ads.
Clear Calls to Action
This point ties in with the last one. It is so easy to forget about adding clear calls to action. Maybe for you “discover more”, or “start the adventure” seems nice and legit, but for your customer, it sounds confusing (especially if you are selling some industrial equipment, for example). A confused mind never buys.
Or maybe your website has no call to action whatsoever. Maybe your website hero section states just who you are, or says “welcome to our website” and that’s all. This is even worse than having unclear calls to action.
A good call to action usually starts with a verb and ties in with the desired action or result. So, if you are selling industrial widgets, a call to action like “See all industrial widgets”, or even the “Discover” would work here: “Discover our industrial widgets”. Or if you want your visitors to request a quote or an offer from you, a simple “Request a quote” call to action might work, but linking the call to action with a benefit will work better. Something like “Get a free discovery call” or “Get a free 20 minutes consultation”.
Live Chat
Your potential customers will have questions that you have not answered on your website. So, if you have a live chat plugin working (or even a chatbot if you are offline) you will save a lot of lost leads. This is unexplored territory for many businesses. That means it is a great opportunity to get the first mover’s advantage.
Installing chatbots or simply a live chat software (you can get the free live chat feature from Facebook) will differentiate your business from the competition. By a long shot. For website visitors, nothing compares to have your questions answered in no time, by a real person in the most comfortable position
Social Proof & Authority
When you go on Amazon, one of the first things you see is the reviews for the products they sell. And this is on purpose. People love buying what other people love buying. It’s just the same with your business. If your website is not showcasing reviews, awards, major press releases that your company has, you are losing a lot of clients that are not convinced by your authority. If you are in business for some years you might have already gathered some of those. Not including them on your business’ website is a rookie mistake.
The best places to include reviews and other authority signals are on the home page and especially on the individual service or product pages. Here’s a quick rule of thumb: the closer your visitor is to make a purchase, the more social proof, and authority need to be displayed on your website.
Lead Magnet(s)
This is where most businesses leave a ton of money on the table. Millions. 95% of your website visitors are not ready to buy, especially if you are selling a high-end or high-ticket product or service. And once they’re gone, they’re gone forever. This is painful. Especially when you’ve paid a few bucks for that click.
But there’s a way to combat that. Having a method of collecting your visitor’s email addresses (or together with some other info) will help you nurture those leads and follow up with them when they are ready to make a purchase. Or, when they trust you enough to do business with you.
And the easiest way to do this is by having a lead magnet on your website. A lead magnet can be anything from a free ebook to a checklist, to a consultation call to an email course. There’s only one rule, really. Offer something low-pressure and high-value.
The exact deliverable will differ a lot depending on the industry you are in. If I’m selling wedding photography I shouldn’t at all offer a Harvard researched white paper on how to organize your wedding. But if I’m selling $200k manufacturing equipment, well, that kind of white paper will be welcomed.
If you are not offering a lead magnet on your website, this is something that you need to start doing right now.
Get an email marketing provider (like Mailchimp, or anything else), create your lead magnet, and put it on your business’s website as a standalone form and as an exit-intent popup.
Consistent Design
If every page of your website looks like a different website, then your business is in trouble. Besides the lack of professionalism, this will confuse your website visitors and they will lose trust and respect for your business. And with no authority comes no persuasive power, and, obviously, no sales.
So, what you can do is to take screenshots of your website pages and then open them all side by side. See if you see any congruency. If you don’t, then your website needs a redesign. This can happen if the person who built the website did not think about the design in the first place. If you start developing your website straight in a website builder (like Elementor, Webflow, Squarespace), this can happen.
In the other cases that I’ve written about earlier, a few tweaks were enough to solve the problems, but it is not the case for this one. Usually, a complete redesign of the website is needed.
Conclusion
If you have all those elements then your business has a highly converting website. If your website is missing any of these elements, then it’s time to make a change.
We are here to help your business grow in the online media. And your business’ website is its most powerful asset. If you need any help with these contact me and we can develop an online business strategy.