One of the biggest missed opportunities we see is when companies don’t know how to funnel their website traffic properly. You can find thousands of marketing blogs talking about how to increase website traffic, but very few blogs actually show you how to correctly funnel and convert your website traffic into actual leads or paying customers. These next few simple steps will help you better understand how to funnel your website traffic once they land on your site.
What Does Your User Experience Look Like?
When creating a conversion strategy, it’s important to ask yourself first, what does your current user experience look and feel like? Once someone lands on your website, what are they doing?
Before you think about a strategy for accumulating more website traffic, you need to honestly evaluate your on-page user experience. It makes no sense for you to invest in trying to get someone on your website for them just to bounce off. It’s critical that you funnel your website traffic to the pages you want them on. What is your end goal for your website user?
Start learning about your own site’s user experience by asking yourself these five questions:
- Once on the site, do I have clear action on what to do?
- What actions do you want your website users taking?
- Why should a user stay on your website?
- What value and intrigue are you providing your user?
- Are you giving the user a reason to come back?
Once you answer all five questions, it’s time to start building your conversion funnel roadmap. Keep in mind the first experience a user has with your site is the most important; it will make or break your overall conversion funnel. Most businesses fail because they confuse their user during the first five seconds they land on their site.
Looking at the picture below, you can see that your website should be able to direct your website traffic to your end goal with ease. You have to assume you are holding your website traffic’s hand from start-to-finish. You want to make sure they get from point A to Z with ease.
This phase of the game is 100% essential for any conversion funnel to work. We asked Daniel Nice, Senior UX Architect for Singularity Networks his take on user experience and this is what he said:
“Making complicated interactions is easy. Making complicated interactions simple is what takes time.”
Don’t rush your beta phase when testing your user experience. Take time with it and be willing to adjust.
Have Clear Calls to Action for your Website Traffic
This might sound simple, but you’d be surprised how many companies miss the mark with respect to having clear calls to action in place. On the flipside, we see a lot of companies have “too many” calls to action in place as well. Having a strong call to action strategy is key – especially if your end-goal for your website traffic is conversion. Let’s dive into our philosophy.
Less Equals More
People think they want more choice until they’re forced to decide. When it comes to funneling your website traffic, less is more. If you overwhelm and force your website visitors to make “too many” choices, then they won’t make a choice at all.
Barry Schwartz is the leader in saying less choice equates to bigger reward. He believes communication gets convoluted when you give your end user too many options, and it confuses the purpose of your main message.
Our advice is to focus on one or two main calls to action. If you give your traffic a reason to click, you’re giving them a reason to “take action,” and the goal should always be to get your website traffic to take action and come back.
I Signed Up For Your Newsletter. Now What?
Okay, great! You got your first email signup through your website! Cha-ching! You’re rolling… Now, it’s time to strike when the iron is hot! Most companies fail to maximize their new leads once they get them.
You have done most of the work already. You hit your main goal, which is to funnel your website traffic to take action. Now, let’s not leave them hanging! All too often people fill out an online form on a website, but then they / the company fails to reach out; this is the worst thing that could happen.
Once you funnell your website traffic correctly, and you engage someone enough to give you their information, don’t be lazy and fail to reach out right away. It’s critical you get in touch with them right away. Having autoresponders in place can provide you with a great solution, which brings us to our next point: drip campaigns and digital integration.
Make Sure You’re Digitally Integrated
Once someone comes to your website and gives you their information, where is their info being stored? Is it going straight to a segmented email list, is it being inputted into your sales CRM, or is it being held in your email inbox via a form-fill email notification? (Please don’t be option three!)
So, before you even think about automation, it’s critical to have the right tools in place. Listed below are the top three email automation features we recommend for any small business.
Having simple autoresponders in place is important to help you nurture your online leads. Mailchimp does a great job at helping you on-board your new online subscribers. Having email automation in place will allow you to automatically follow-up with your online audience once they take a certain action on your website.
Automation is critical in the early stages after someone trusts you enough and gives you their own personal information. Make a great first impression and make them feel welcomed to your brand right off the bat. Not only is this maximizes the effect, it’s the professional thing to do.
For a full list of Mailchimp (our recommendation) automation, click here.
What’s a Drip Campaign?
A drip campaign? What in the hell is that? We know the feeling, this term can be overwhelming and confusing at first. So, let us breakdown in human (non-marketing jargon terms) what a drip campaign is, how it works, and, more importantly, why it will benefit you.
A drip campaign is simple to understand; it’s a flow of automated emails, autoresponders and data-driven marketing automation. The ultimate goal of a drip campaign should be to nurture and convert your online leads. At the end of the day, a drip campaign is a set of automated emails that will be sent out on a schedule. Boom, there you go! Now, we are all drip campaign experts!
The reason why drip campaigns are successful is because they consist of following-up. Everyone in sales understands the importance of a follow-up. So, instead of having you take time out of your busy schedule and follow-up with lower end prospects, a drip campaign will do the dirty work for you. Drip campaigns are an effective strategy to have in place because they’re zero risk / pure reward. Have the campaign accumulate and nurture low percentage leads, while you focus on your current high priority prospect list.
Conclusion
Our conclusion is this: most companies – especially smaller businesses – don’t think of what their website user experience is truly like. The business guilty of this are more worried about getting a website up just to say they have one as opposed to actually having a set strategy in place to market their website, which is the whole point if the w
ebsite is to actually funnel / convert.
It’s one thing to have a website, but it’s a completely different thing to have a website that converts; this is where the majority of brands fail. Funneling your website traffic is not an easy goal to accomplish, and it takes thorough planning, work, and consistent implementation to generate results. In the end, your ROI will outweigh any time and money invested.
We challenge you today to ask yourself these questions: “Are you funneling your website traffic appropriately? What does your user experience look like?”