Not a day goes by when the team on our Live Support are questioned with the golden query “How can I convert more of my visitors in to Sales or Leads?” And although the answer to that question can and will change depending on the clients site, the niche & the source of the visitor traffic; there is 1 Golden Rule worth mentioning. So much so, that we thought we would dedicate a blog post to the answer.
A little background for you: When you develop as many websites and work on as many SEO or PPC Campaigns each month as we do, you start to document trends. Quickly determining which designs convert, which ones do not – and why that is.
Each and every client has his or her idea about what they believe may best work for their brand or in their niche – and in all fairness, most of our clients have a much better understanding of their own market than we ever will.
What we do have, however, is experience and insight on what an end user responds to.
So here’s a short, quick and straight-to-the point rule on how to get your message across & convert more visitors in to leads or sales:
The #1 Rule – Throw one ball at a time.
Picture this:
You’re standing on a football field, and there’s a group of 10 NFL footballers standing about 20 yards away from you. At the exact same moment, all 10 throw a football toward you. You have 10 footballs hurling your way.
How many do you think you will catch? Chances are, with that many footballs heading toward you at the same time: None.
Now let’s change the scenario:
I’m standing in front of you. Just you and I, and I have 10 footballs in a basket next to me. One after another, I throw a football toward you. Consecutively, one at a time. How many do you expect to catch now? Five? Seven? All of them?
The same can be said about sending a message when a visitor hits your website.
If you attempt
to throw dozens of messages, Calls To Action and general bits of information to the end user, chances are; they won’t catch anything.
On average, you have about 3.6 seconds (yes we track these metrics) to capture an end users attention & get them to do what it is you want them to do, if they are bombarded with messages, calls to action & a myriad of different attention grabbing page elements – they’re not going to catch anything, nor do what it is you’re hoping they may do.
Need a real world example? Let’s take a look at our own website.
Less than 30% of all visitors will ever use the scroll bar down the side of your website. If you clutter the top half of your website (considered above the fold) with non actionable content, your chance of a conversion has just decreased by 70%.
Again, you have approximately 3.6 seconds to deliver your message and ask for the sale/lead/action.
Many would argue that the web is interactive, and that the “Fold” doesn’t exist in an interactive medium. We beg to differ, and did the research to prove just that. We’re not alone, either – check out the Browsersize Application published by Google Labs:
The page should refresh, and display a colored overlay. The percentages represent how many users will actually ever see your website. Now ask yourself – what % of users are actually seeing your Call To Action?
Repeat the process, and this time put in our website: www. loveclients. com in the ‘Enter URL here’ field.
Notice where our Value Proposition is positioned?
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