Now that online marketing has become firmly entrenched in marketing, and it’s been predicted that in 5 years, up to 70% of your leads will be coming from your website, it is clear that websites are no longer just an ‘electronic brochure’ for marketing, but a vital part of the sales and marketing process.
Conversion is what everybody is starting to talk about. Whether it’s conversion ratios, conversion rates, conversion funnels or ActiveConversion, leading sales and marketing organizations understand that beyond having a professional looking website and large volumes of traffic, that they need websites that convert visitors into leads.
This is easier said than done, as your visitors don’t always want to be converted, at least not yet. Your website visitors want to make sure you fit the bill before they get called every week by your company for the next 7 weeks. In addition, today’s buyer wants to be well informed, before they contact you. This has increased the need to understand conversion so that you know what you are really getting from all this traffic.
Fortunately, conversion has been studied extensively, and it has resulted in tools and practices, that help increase conversion rates. One common, but neglected practice is the idea of a conversion path. With a conversion path, each step in a conversion is mapped out, so that the website elements lead to the conversion objective. For example, a home builders conversion path for a potential home buyer would typically be:
Those companies thinking they can get to step 5 before addressing 1-4, will likely get poor conversion rates.
Knowing the usual order that a buyer will want to look at your product/services, and making it easier to find it in that order, will work much better than a website that just expects the visitor to spend time looking for it. Because your competition is always only 1-2 clicks away.
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