Your company’s website can be the source of many new leads, but too many companies unknowingly let those leads slip away. What’s needed is a way of capturing all those leads that are visiting your website and then finding a way to convert all that website traffic.
Of course, that may be over-simplifying matters a bit. As a general rule of thumb, out of every 100 visitors coming to your website, only 3 are actually ready to buy. Another 40 are just beginning the process of buying, and may not even be sure that they are ready to buy. That leaves another 50-60 visitors in a gray area – they’re checking out options, learning about pricing, but aren’t quite ready to buy just yet. That means a conversion rate of 3 percent is actually pretty good, and most companies have conversion rates closer to 1 percent.
In short, website traffic is really a game of numbers. The vast majority of all website visitors – anywhere from 70 to 90 percent – will leave your website without buying anything and will likely never return. That’s especially true for especially complex B2B sales items, like sophisticated systems or complex software packages.
The good news is that there are plenty of vendor packages out there – such as 40Nuggets – that can help to automate the lead capture process for your website. These software packages work by understanding all the conversion opportunities on your website, gathering a lot of data and insights, and then helping to optimize the conversion process at each stage of the sales and marketing funnel.
It may not sound like much, but boosting your conversion rate from 1 percent to 2 percent is actually DOUBLING your conversions. And that means potentially doubling your sales. Boosting your conversion rate from 1 percent to 3 percent actually represents a TRIPLING of your conversions. So there’s a lot to be said for optimizing website interactions!
And, of course, there are other steps you can take to capture more leads from your website. For many B2B companies, the key is to focus on “micro-conversions,” which happens every time a prospective customer signs up for a webinar, downloads an e-book, or subscribes to your company’s e-newsletter.
The reason why “micro-conversions” are important is because they help to push the prospective customer through the sales funnel. It goes back to that game of numbers. These micro-conversions are helping to move the website visitors (especially the 50-60 visitors who are checking out options and pricing) one step closer to the final sale. Once a prospect has signed up for your e-newsletter, for example, a weekly or monthly content drip campaign could encourage that prospect to check back on your website for even more information that can be used for evaluating a final sale. Over time, some of those “just browsing” visitors will turn into that small handful of visitors who are actually ready to buy something. And that’s when the sale happens.
So – remember, capturing more B2B leads from your website is not a “one and done” solution. Instead, it’s a process that works itself out over an extended period of time. You just have to ready at every step of the customer journey to move the prospect along, so that the initial lead turns into a final sale.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.