September 1, 2009
Why Aren’t Your Website Visitors Turning Into Leads?
Posted by Rey Villar
Here’s an all-too-common scenario. You build a website and finally have traffic coming to view your pages… but where are the prospects and sales?
The truth is that even the best websites lose too many visitors. Yes, some of these visitors are surfers not really interested in health insurance. But a lot of them are serious and ready shoppers — who were turned away by your website.
Fortunately, there are 17 free or very inexpensive tools that can help you determine how your website is losing potential buyers…and help you transform your website into a true lead generation machine.
Automated Surveys
Online surveys let you go straight to the source to find out why some website visitors convert into prospects… and why some don’t.
By the way, if you do make improvements to your website based on a visitor’s response, announce it. Let all your potential customer know that you’re one of the few businesses that actually listens to customer feedback.
Internal Search Engines
One reason your website visitors may be “bouncing” away is that they can’t find what they’re looking for on your site — even though you do have it.
If that’s the case, you should insert an internal search engine to your website. Like the name suggests, an internal search engine only looks inside your website — not the entire world wide web.
These engines are easy to install. Best of all, many of them are free…like these:
• JRank – www.jrank.com
• Atomz – www.atomz.com
• SiteLevel – www.sitelevel.com
• Google – www.google.com/sitesearch
My personal favorite is Google. Unlike the other 3 free services, Google doesn’t include ads in your internal search results. In addition, Google will help you track the most popular search queries… so you can make changes to make it easier for visitors to find the most popular pages.
Usability Testing Tools
According to a Forrester Research study, more than half of all consumers who experience usability problems on a business website will leave the site…and never come back!
To make sure they’re not losing potential customers because of poor website design and coding, online businesses are turning to usability testing that can cost thousands of dollars.
But relax. You can test and improve your site’s usability with several free or cheap resources now available on the web.
I recommend you start by first going to www.usability.gov. This government publication explains what’s involved in website usability testing — and why it will help your business.
Start with a survey just for current clients. Find out what they liked about your website and what made them decide to take the next step. But don’t keep it all positive. You also need to ask them how you should improve your website to make it a better experience for visitors.
Your second survey should be for all future visitors to your website. Keep it simple and ask to-the-point questions about your website’s effectiveness. Did they find what they were looking for? And how can you make it better?
Most online survey providers charge a fee for their premium package, but these offer a free basic account:
• SurveyMonkey – www.surveymonkey.com
• eSurveysPro – www.esurveyspro.com
• Zoomerang – www.zoomerang.com
• Kampyle – www.kampyle.com
You may need to offer an incentive to get people to complete your survey. So think about raffling off a $100 gift card to respondents who complete the survey.
Next, I recommend using some sort of usability testing tool or service. Some will record visitor behavior while they’re on your site. Others will manually review your site for key usability metrics. I suggest trying out both types, if you can.
The following are either free or offer free trials:
• UserFly – www.userfly.com
• SilverBack –
www.silverbackapp.com
• UXbooth –
www.uxbooth.com
• UserTesting –
www.usertesting.com
Subscriptions – A 3rd Option
Many consumers just aren’t ready to commit, so converting them into a full client or solid prospect may be out of the question…for now.
You can still convert them into a long-term lead that may eventually become real clients. To do this, you need to give your website visitors a middle option between talking to an agent and leaving your website.
Many websites offer this middle option in the form of a subscription to a newsletter or blog.
This allows you to build trust while you stay connected to potential clients. It also lets you provide them with the information they need to eventually arrive at a buying decision.
Now, unless you have the time, talent or employee to write a newsletter, I recommend going with a blog. Blogs are easier to maintain. And when you use a feed distributor, such as FeedBurner (www.FeedBurner.com), your subscribers can receive your blog postings like an email newsletter!
To get started, check out the top 4 blog providers…all of whom are free:
• WordPress – www.wordpress.com
• Blogger – www.blogger.com
• TypePad – www.typepad.com
• LiveJournal – www.livejournal.com
You can usually get your blog up and running in under an hour. Afterwards, set up your FeedBurner account to effectively turn that blog into a mini-newsletter.
My personal preference is WordPress and Blogger. Both Blogger and FeedBurner are now owned by Google, so there’s more integration. But WordPress offers many more themes and extra plug-ins you can use to really boost your blog’s capabilities.
Website Analytics
How well do you understand your visitors? For example, do you know how long they stayed on your website?
Which pages did they visit? Where do they live? Do you know from which website they jumped from to come to yours?
The answer to these and other questions can help you better understand your visitors. And that understanding can help you create a website that will convert more of your visitors into actual leads.
For example, web analytics can tell you if the visitors who came through one of your pay-per-click (PPC) ads only stay an average of 1 second — before leaving your site and never returning. That tells you that you’re wasting money on that particular PPC ad.
The good news is that many of the tools you need to collect this data are free:
• Clicky – www.getclicky.com
• StatCounter – www.statcounter.com
• SiteMeter – www.sitemeter.com
• Google Analytics – www.google.com/analytics
Google Website Optimizer
Similar to usability testing, Google Website Optimizer helps you create the best website possible by letting you test varieties of specific pages.
For example, you can test 3 variations of your home page to see which one persuades a higher percentage of visitors to subscribe or ask for a quote. You can then use the winning page as your official home page.
Unlike usability testing, the Website Optimizer doesn’t rely on subjective reviews of your webpages. Instead, it runs real-world tests to see which pages produce the results you want. Google will send traffic to both of the test pages and track how visitors respond.
Yes, the difference may often be incremental; but every bit helps. For more information, check out
www.google.com/websiteoptimizer.
Non-Stop Improvements
Creating and maintaining a lead-generating website is not a one-time project. It takes a commitment to continual improvements…especially testing.
Keep coming up with better pages and testing them against the pages that you do have. Then go with the winner for the future…until you come up with a webpage that converts even more visitors into prospects — and genuine revenue.