Best Tips: Learn How to Convert Website Traffic into Paying Customers

Website traffic can be defined as the number of people that view your site, the pages that they view and the length of time they spend on those pages. When someone goes to your site, that visit is recorded and any links that individual might click and follow are also recorded. At the end of the day, these numbers are added up to give you an idea of your website popularity.

The Importance of Website Traffic

So, why is website traffic so important for my business, you ask?

If you aren’t attracting visitors, your website is bound to get lost in the vastness of the internet and perhaps, never found. Every site needs traffic, and even if your site is made very well, if you are not attracting visitors, you won’t be generating sales or achieving your end goal with your business.

Many people forget that it is people who view your website and do business with you online. In the end, your website and business will not survive without steady traffic flow from the right demographic.

There are many reasons why you need to consider the importance of website traffic, and here are three of them:

1. You need to generate more targeted traffic to generate more revenue, ultimately.
2. Traffic from targeted users, or people who are interested in what you are selling or promoting, are more likely to stay and refer your website to others.
3. An increase in the amount of time a person spends on your page, increases the likelihood that they will sign up for your newsletter or to receive your promotional content, allowing you to market to them long-term.

Do you have traffic to your website or blog but they are not turning into customers? Do you have plenty of leads and prospects but they are not buying?

Traffic is one thing, turning that traffic into sales is another.

So how do you convert those leads and traffic so they become loyal and  paying customers?

Lead nurturing is the process of building a relationship with your leads and moving them down your sales funnel until they are ready to become a customer. When a new visitor arrives at your website, there are two ways to seize the opportunity and guide them to becoming customers:

Two Ways to Make a Prospect a Customer

1. Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing starts by collecting contact information in exchange for something the visitor deems of value, but with little risk. Often, this entails some form of information or product trial intended to help solve the visitor’s problem.

Email addresses, RSS subscriptions and similar methods of engagement all serve to keep a visitor’s memory and impression of a company or product at the forefront. Later, the contact information provided offers you the ability to educate, inspire, or otherwise engage a potential new customer.

The goal is to encourage both return visits and eventually, sales. Always remember, lead nurturing is all about relationships.

2. Behavioral Marketing

Behavioral marketing collects information about what the visitor does while on the site, and intuitively engages the visitor before he or she clicks away. For example, a visitor might land on your home page, see a button about a product of interest and click to learn more. Imagine if her activities could automatically produce targeted messages announcing special incentives, additional useful information, tips or other enticements.

Behavioral marketing uses your visitors behavior, both on and off the website, to select just the right message, at just the right time.

• If a lead should mention a competitor in a tweet on Twitter, for example, or use specific keywords, you can automatically send that lead a Direct Tweet.
• If they download a document but does not return to your site within a set time frame, an automatic email goes out asking her to review the document.

Each of these examples serves as a way to engage with leads and bring them back to your website.

Both opportunities can evaporate in the blink of an eye without the proper systems in place. Together, lead nurturing and behavioral marketing help increase conversions and provide the building blocks needed to move leads along from visitor through to paying customer.

3 Points Necessary to Gain a New Customer

Nearly every marketing expert will agree, for a visitor to become a customer, you must cover three basic points. Those points are “know“, “like” and “trust“. In other words, before expecting a visitor to buy or invest money, you must cover all 3 points.

1. The Visitor Needs to “Know” – Provide an opportunity for the visitor to learn about the company, product or service (know)
2. The Visitor Needs to “Like” – Help the visitor identify with, relate to, or see a need or usefulness for a particular company, product or service (like.)
3. The Visitor Needs to “Trust” – Help the visitor come to trust the company, the product and most importantly, his or her decision to risk money on it (trust.)

Lead Nurturing Automates the 3 Points

Offering up an email address, subscribing to a newsletter, following on social media, all of these actions demonstrate a visitor’s interest. The visitor has taken the initiative to engage, like starting a face-to-face conversation. With automation tools, you can continue the engagement in a hands-free environment, while still participating in the conversation.

Automatic emails, new content notifications, RSS feeds and social media updates can all be automated to deliver valuable information to previously engaged visitors on a regular basis. Again, the visitor is not taking a large risk, only learning more and becoming more familiar with a company, product or service. In essence, automatic tools take over the 3 point process needed to move a lead along.

The Power of Automation

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of lead nurturing is the ability to automate. The effort to create an environment that encourages conversions, at least on the part of the business, is expended once, yet repeatedly produces results. It is the equivalent of producing a TV commercial once and replaying it dozens, hundreds or even thousands of times for each individual lead. When done well, the process does not even feel automated for the visitor. Each instance of engagement, such as a series of informational or training emails, provides a gentle nudge towards becoming a paying customer without the business exerting additional effort. Work once, reap the benefits over and over again.

Feedback and Forwarding

Not only does lead nurturing provide the opportunity to move one visitor toward becoming a paying customer, but also provides feedback and referral opportunities. Business owners and key management personnel can see what visitors do, how they respond, what messages they open and what links are clicked. This provides a wealth of opportunity to tweak the process to best meet the needs of your target market.

So you need to:

• Test new content
• Experiment with targeted or segmented promotions
• Request feedback on services or engage customers in the decision-making process.

Social media sharing, email forwarding and similar actions of current leads can also provide a plethora of forwarding opportunities. Produce outstanding content, send it out to your leads and those leads can potentially market your information for you. People, by their very nature, are prone to sharing information and solutions they feel meet the needs of their friends, family, co-workers, supervisors and colleagues.

Lead nurturing, when executed properly, can serve to encourage sales as well as generate more leads through forwarding and sharing.

Build Loyalty by Listening and Responding

How many times have you bought a product and loved it, but couldn’t remember where you bought it? How many times have you thought a product could be improved, but didn’t say anything because you didn’t feel someone would listen?

With the right lead nurturing system, you will never leave your customers feeling like this. Staying in front of previous customers through continued lead nurturing helps them remember how valuable you have been to them in the past.

Giving customers a platform on which they can regularly interact gives them a voice. It also provides you with a means to hear what they have to say and respond in a timely manner with improved products or processes, more interesting content or a better information delivery schedule. Do they want to know more, hear from you less often, or express an idea for a new feature?

Lead nurturing helps provide the means they need to stay engaged with you and your offerings.

Shorten the Time Between Initial Contact and the Sale

According to Market2Lead, the sales cycle is nearly 25% shorter for nurtured leads. That means a visitor engaged in immediate contact through lead nurturing will risk money on a product or service in three-quarters the time as a traditional lead. Faster sales cycles means increased revenues and less effort on the part of sales staff. A warm lead, as any good salesman knows, is easier to convert than a cold lead.

Is Cold Calling a Waste of Time?

Genius.com reports that the top marketing misalignment occurs when vendors rely on cold calls and sales personnel in the early stages of lead development, when leads rely on their own research and low-pressure engagement. Less than 10% of customers surveyed reported buying from a company as a result of cold calls. In fact, buyers listed vendor websites and white papers or ebooks as two of the top three influences that helped them feel confident enough to make a purchase.

Lead nurturing combines these influential marketing tools to help maximize lead conversions.

Conclusion….

Obviously, website traffic is not the only thing your business needs and depending on your industry and market, you need to keep this in mind. But your website can play a big part in your business’s success!

When you can increase the quality of the website traffic and visits to your site, you are also increasing your conversion numbers and this in turn decreases the number of new website visitors you need to maintain your business goals. Keeping in mind, it is not always about the total number of visitors, but how interested and ready to buy they are. The further your website visitors are in your sales funnel, the more interested they are in your solution or product, the greater chance you have to increase conversion.

The other big piece of the website traffic equation is your ability to capture the targeted website traffic and convert them into customers, which opens more opportunity for your business to succeed. If you are ready to capture your current website traffic as well as increase your qualified opportunities, then inbound marketing could be just what your business needs!

Depending on the kind of service provider you choose, targeted website traffic may be guaranteed or not. Don’t confuse traffic with the concept of sales; the point of these service providers is to increase the number of visitors you get, but there is no way to force them to conduct business on your site. This is an important consideration in determining whether purchasing website traffic is right for your needs, especially if you’re using your website to conduct business.

Buying targeted website traffic is not right for everyone’s needs, so it’s important that they are considered before you invest your money in a service that may or may not work out for your best interests.

In case you are a website owner, then you are probably aware of the fact that website traffic is crucial for the success of your website. It doesn’t matter how good your website looks like and what kind of information you have in case there is no one to check the content. Website traffic usually comes from external links from other websites, search engines, and social media. However, the fact is that you can get website traffic from other places and in other ways. For instance, in the recent period, more and more website owners are interested in buying website traffic.

In order to feel this benefit, you will have to opt for website traffic providers that promise to deliver targeted traffic. Keep in mind that it is the best option to have visitors that are genuinely interested in the content you are offering. Building a successful website means finding a way to lower so-called bounce rates and with targeted website traffic you can achieve this goal and make your website more relevant in the eyes of popular search engines.