How to Optimize Your Website for Sales Prospects
Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Damian Davila, Content Marketing Consultant at idaconcpts.com.
An online presence is essential in today’s competitive sales environment. From real estate to accounting to marketing, businesses are finding out that more and more sales leads are coming from the Internet. Still, it is not just a matter of “putting yourself out there” and launching just any site. To stand out from the competition, you need to have a site that follows best usability practices. If your site requires your visitors to use a 15-page instruction manual, then the number of people bouncing out of it will be high.
In this article we will discuss the 3 best usability practices to optimize sales sites.
1. Clients hate to read.
According to studies, we only read about 28% of the text on a web page. And this is only in best-case scenarios. In the pursuit of “maximizing” the potential for sales, product managers often cram as much information as possible into every single page.
For example, I was working with a large corporation that had all kinds of press releases, product announcements, fact sheets, blog posts, and partnership updates to choose from. As we put together the sitemap for the site, we divided the site into sections, which would showcase a specific source. Once the site was built and ready for content upload, the reps from the corporation wanted to make sure that every section included all sources…on every single page! Each page ended up regurgitating the same info so that if you saw one page from the site, you virtually had seen them all!
The corporation’s approach was flawed due to 2 reasons. First, a website is an experience. By repeating the same info all the time, you’re cutting that experience short because you are telling your audience: “I got nothing else to show; this is it.” Second, it is not about content quantity, it is about content quality. Studies on how users read on the web show that only 16% of site visitors always read word-by-word any new page they came across. It is a mistake to decrease your chances of something being read by jamming everything into a single page. Without line breaks. In font size 8. Stop it!
2. Clients are using smartphones and tablets.
According to eMarketer, the number of U.S. baby boomers and seniors on the mobile web will hit 28.8 million by the end of 2013. As more and more potential clients are accessing the Internet through portable devices, it becomes imperative that your site is ready for those smaller screens.
More specifically, your sales sites needs to:
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Load quickly – Microsoft computer scientist, Harry Shun concludes from his research that a site needs to load 250 milliseconds faster than a close competitor for users to stay.
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Be short on text – Remember that site visitors only read 28% of text on a web page and that percentage drops even lower on smaller screens. Don’t frustrate your mobile visitors with unsurpassable barriers made of letters.
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Be device-agnostic – While you may love your Samsung Galaxy S4, you still need to make sure that your site renders properly in iPhones, Blackberrys, Windows Phones, and other devices.
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Leverage responsive web design – Don’t design your site like it’s 2010! Responsive design is a revolutionary web design trend and it is changing how sites are being developed. Talk with your web developer and take advantage of fluid grids, flexible images and other components to optimize your site for any screen.
This is not a fad; it is a reality that is here to stay. If you’re still not convinced, consider this: 63.2% of Millenials accessed the Internet from mobile devices in 2012. These are the future decision-makers and purchase influencers that you will be battling for with other companies in a not-so-distant future.
3. Clients need directions.
Your site needs to be built around a purpose. Whether it is to collect leads via email, push downloads from a whitepaper, or request signups for a free consultation, you need to make it clear. Don’t beat around the bush and leave your users guessing what it is. It needs to be 100% clear what you would like your site visitors to complete, ideally through a well-planned page layout that makes smart use of visuals and white space.
Not only will you increase the probability of people completing your call to action, but also you will be able to establish a conversion funnel for your site. This is beneficial for both your clients and your internal team members. How can you expect your sales team to increase sales leads from your site if nobody is clear about the conversion funnel? Establish it, measure results from it through a web analytics tool such as Google Analytics, and improve it. Repeat this process on a monthly basis to keep track of how clear your directions are to your site visitors.
Takeaway
Notice how I have purposely wrote all of the best website usability practices starting with the word “Clients.” That is because websites meant to generate sales leads must be designed, built, and updated with clients in mind. Remember that your clients hate to read, are using smartphones and tablets to access the Internet, and need clearer directions for what you want them to do at your site.
Damian Davila is a professional marketer living in sunny Honolulu, HI. Since 2008 Damian has been writing articles on online marketing and web analytics at idaconcpts.com. Find Damian on Twitter at @idaconcpts and Google Plus.