Six Effective Steps to Turn Your Website into a Prospecting and Sales Engine

Most businesses treat their websites as a one way communications tool with many objectives, one of which is connecting with prospects and clients. Many businesses feature products and services on their websites hoping customers and prospects will find their website, see their products and services and call to sign on the dotted line. But just how many business websites achieve this goal? Getting more visitors to your website and turning those visitors into profitable customers is not difficult. Read on to learn six effective ways to increase your website's visibility and how to turn browsers into sales prospects.

1. Strategy and Planning (Planning Your Goals)

Every successful business venture begins with a plan and objectives to accomplish the goal of winning more business. This article will show you how to drive new prospects to your website and turn them into profitable customers. Use the following to map out your route to get you there.

Inexpensive Market Research to Achieve Success
Very few businesses can afford the cost of market research, but there are inexpensive and just as valid methods of gathering the data you need to make smart decisions.

Engage your customers. First, listen to and invite feedback from your existing customers. You can do this in the following ways:

• Customer feedback form. If you do not have a simple and direct way for your customers to contact you with their concerns, you are missing out on valuable data. Listen to what your customers are saying, and use this information to improve your site and your service. They might even tell you what you are doing right and you can expand on that.

• A forum on your site. An on-site forum is not only a great way to get real-time feedback from your customers, but also provides an additional method of sharing the availability of new products, company and industry news. Forums aren’t expensive and provide a way of keeping your website sticky, and position your brand and company as an expert.

• A blog on your site. Another great way to gather customer feedback and to share info. More on blogs later.

• Search on your site. If you put a search function on your site, later you can look at what people have been searching for and give them more of it.

• Tracking and Analytics. Another benefit of performing and investing in all forms of online marketing is that you can track each tactic and easily gauge the result. You can literally account for every penny you invest. From Search Engine Marketing, email marketing and your website. For example, Google Analytics will give you valuable insight into how many website visitors you get each day, month or year, where your visitors come from geographically, and how many times each visitors returns to your site. Plus, it free.

What are Your Competitors Doing?
Look at what your competitors’ customers are saying by scanning their forums, blogs, and their websites. Not only will you find out what complaints they receive, but you may also discover what they are doing right. Use Google and Yahoo to get critical information by combining competitor names and keywords like “‘competitor name’ customer service” and look at the results carefully.

Search Engines: The Secret to Easy Market Research
Use Google and Yahoo for inexpensive market research. Take advantage of Paid Search text ads for proof of concepts. For example, let’s say your business is developing a new line of widgets or providing a new service. You can test the demand by creating a few Google pay per click ads to gauge whether people are searching for your new type of widget or service. You can bid low for the ads so that you only pay a few cents for every click. For $300 you can get valuable insight from the world’s most powerful search engine and prospective customers.

Use Google Advanced Search Operators (http://www.google.com/help/operators.html) to find information in PDF, PowerPoint and other document formats. Google has indexed the Internet so take advantage of it.

Define Your Business and Website Goals
If you don’t know where you want to go and what you hope to accomplish, not only will you waste valuable time and money, but you may be doomed to failure. What’s the purpose of your online venture? Do you want to sell a thousand widgets a month, increase subscribers to your newsletter, or capture e-mail addresses of prospects? In many cases, it’s all three. Establish your goals before you begin online marketing. Your expectations will be set and you’re chances of success will be greater.

Define Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
What makes your business, product or service more special than your competitors? Are you for example, the first to market? Develop a simple matrix of your competitors’ products and services as compared to yours, and look for the holes. State in one or two sentences exactly why you’re the best choice on the homepage of your site. You’ll make great use of your USP by placing it in your homepage headline and body copy. You’ll also put your USP in the title tag of your home page because it’s the title tag text that appears in the organic results of Google and Yahoo.

Define Your Value Propositions (VPs)
What makes your business more special than others? What service or product are you providing that your competitors’ products and services cannot accomplish? Your VPs may be your location, the experience of your team, and your price.  Again, state in one or two sentences exactly why you’re the best choice on the homepage of your site. You’ll put your VPs in the headlines, title tags and meta tags of all your product and services pages of your website. All this effort will contribute to your website appearing on page one of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

List the Features and Sell the Benefits
List all of the features of your product, service or business. A feature might be a mortgage calculator on a real estate website. The benefit of that feature is that a visitor can see how much their monthly mortgage payment will be. The benefit to your website is that the calculator is a “sticky” tool for driving new and repeat visitors to your site. Follow the marketing maxim that states “list the features and sell the benefits”. This technique alone is worth the investment of continually updating your website.

2. Begin Your Relationship with Prospects Online

Before you can begin building any kind of relationship with your prospective customers online, they have to be able to find you. Unless you’ve made the investment in Search Engine Optimization, the majority of your prospects will not find and visit your site. Alternatively, you can use another method to promote your business, build your brand and drive prospects to your website. The most effective methods include Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on Google and Yahoo!, social media marketing like blogs and YouTube.com, and the use of video and banner ads for brand building. All of these fall under the general umbrella of Search Engine Marketing which Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, defines as “the act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities.”

The Effectiveness of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
According to a 2006 survey conducted by Jupiter Research of online behavior, “62 percent of search engine users click on a search result within the first page of results, and a full 90 percent of search engine users click on a result within the first three pages of search results.”  Forrester Research reported that 80% of all Internet activity begins with search. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is vital to getting your website to the top of the search results, and many factors go into successful SEO, both on-page and off-site.

On-page Optimization
Optimizing a web page involves ensuring your site includes the elements the search engine’s algorithm is looking to find. To keep ahead of the spammers, the algorithms are altered periodically, but certain basics stay the same. These include:

• Include your keywords in the page title.

• Keep the page title relatively short (90 to 110 characters is generally recommended).

• Meta tags are losing their importance, but the meta description is often used by search engines to define the page, so write it for human eyes, and the more compelling the better.

• Use your keywords in H1 headers all on your web pages.

• Descriptive H2 or H3 headers (subheads) can improve usability and help define the page content to search engines.

• Because people scan web pages to quickly find what they’re searching for, use bulleted lists and/or bolding, which makes it easier to scan.

• Content must be written for human eyes but include all your keywords.

• Don’t neglect the image alt tags. Make them descriptive and include your keywords.

• Optimize specific pages and the overall site.

• Optimize to be found locally. Include local address and telephone numbers.

Much more goes into on-page optimization, but adhering to these basics is essential.

Off-site Optimization
Off-site optimization is generally defined as links from other websites and blogs pointing to your site. For example, having your website URL listed in your local chamber of commerce’s website is a great start. Think of the many industry, association and partner websites that could add your website URL to their website. Google places tremendous value on the quality and quantity of links pointing to your site. Combined with effective on-page optimization, off-site optimization performed well can almost guarantee your business a page one position on Google, Yahoo and MSN for many keywords.

Here are a few tips when conducting off-site optimization:

• The anchor text of your incoming link should include your most valuable keywords.

• The incoming links should point to pages related to the anchor text.

• The incoming links should come from trusted and relevant sites. A trusted site will usually be a domain (.com) that is at least 3-5 years old. Other trusted domains include .edu and .org domains.

           
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
Quite simply, PPC is an advertising system in which the advertiser pays a predetermined amount of money every time a user clicks on their ad and is sent to the advertiser’s website. That click can cost as low as 20 cents and as high as $5.00.

PPC is available through a variety of advertising networks, but the most common models are those offered by search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Live Search.

Here’s how it works: An advertiser will bid a certain amount of money on a keyword related to their website. The highest bidder of that keyword will have their ad listed first in the “Sponsored” results section of the search engine results pages, or SERPs. The SERP is the page of websites returned when a user types a keyword into a search box. Whenever a user clicks on a sponsored ad, the advertiser is charged the amount bid for that keyword.

While it sounds easy enough to just bid the highest amount for your keyword - there are some subtle nuances involved with PPC Advertising, such as a quality factor, especially with Google. Instead of paying for your mistakes while learning, consider hiring a qualified professional to handle your PPC campaign to assure a better ROI. This professional is aware of all PPC entails along with knowing the appropriate keywords and the correct amount to bid to provide more value for your advertising dollars. Look for a Google Qualified Advertiser or Yahoo! Ambassador.

Benefits of PPC Advertising include:

• Exposure of your site to those searching for your keywords.

• You control the cost.

• Ads can be directed to your landing page for easier conversions.

• Tracking reports that include how long visitors stay on your site, what pages they visit and more.

Social Media Marketing
Social media sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and others are used by businesses to connect with their customers in meaningful ways. These sites provide opportunities for search marketing, brand building and selling. More on Social Media later.

Banner Ads
Take advantage of running banner ads through the Google and Yahoo! networks to build your brand. The standard banner ad is 468 x 60 pixels and usually runs at the top of a web page, making it one of the first items seen when the page loads. Google and Yahoo! offer a variety of pricing methods and because they are contextual based, they can be targeted to your audience. Banner advertising is now out of fashion, but it is very inexpensive, and if done right can build your brand and help you market your products and services to your desired audience.

3. Build Relationships and Your Brand With Your Website

The design of your website along with the information you provide and how you provide it are the most effective and least intrusive ways to build relationships and your brand. Subscribing to and following a list of best practices gives your customers and prospects an enjoyable online experience and will lead to them returning to your site time and again.

Jakob Nielsen, dubbed “the guru of Web page usability” by The New York Times, created a list of nearly 150 best practices for websites. Having spent the past 25 years developing the science of usability, Nielsen is worth listening to.

Here are some important usability tips to get you started:

Plan and build your website for your audience, not your company.
If you’ve completed the research mentioned earlier, you know who you are trying to reach and what they expect. Build your site around their needs, not yours.
           
Build Trust.
Web users have developed into a wary lot, so you have to show them you can be trusted. A website your prospects can trust should include:

• Full contact information, including your address, local and toll-free telephone numbers, email address or contact form, and names of the company’s principals.

• A Privacy Statement that tells them what personal information your site collects, why it collects it and what you will or will not do with that information.

• An “About Us” page that includes a brief history of your company and biographies of the management team. You might include photos.

• Security is a primary concern of people doing business over the Web. Assure your customers their personal data is secure. Include a “Privacy Policy” page on your website.

           
Usability

• Don’t make your visitors think! Keep your website simple. As you rebuild your new website continually ask yourself “is this simple enough?”

• Don’t get cute with your site’s navigation or functionality and use only the well-established methods for navigation.

• Make your content printable. Some people still like to hold paper in their hands. They may even pass it on to others.

• Provide the user with some customization, such as increasing the font size. This option is a favorite among many users.

           
Persuasive Copywriting

• Make sure your content is written so that it shows how your product can solve your prospects’ problems.

• List the features of your product or service and sell the benefits.

• Write in a friendly tone but avoid whimsy.

• Talk to your customers as people, not as a business. Your visitors will appreciate the personal touch.

• Readability of your content is vital. People like to scan, so use bolded subheads, bullet points and lists.

           
Enhance Your Credibility

• Include copies of positive media coverage, any awards you’ve received and all your press releases.

• Customer testimonials are a powerful selling tool. If you have them, use them.

• Include instructive how-to articles, product guides and other content useful.

• Write a blog and show your expertise. This is also an excellent way to gather feedback through the comments section of your blog page.

           
Call-to-Action

• Define your call-to-actions and tell your prospects what you expect of them. Don’t make them guess. If you want prospects to call you, tell them to call.

• Develop specific landing pages for each marketing campaign with one goal in mind, your call-to-action for more conversions. More on landing pages later.

           
Conversions

• A conversion is a phone call, a sale, a download or a completed web form. It’s the result of your objective.

• Know ahead of time the type of conversion you are after.

• Design your landing pages with your conversions in mind.

                       
Collect Prospect Information
This is important for future marketing campaigns. Include any or all of these forms:

• Emails for opt-in email campaigns.

• Customer information for future contact.

• Contact forms for customers to reach you.

                                   
Site Design Must Reflect Your Brand

• Keep it simple and visually appealing.

• Graphics should be used sparingly and only to augment your products or services.

                       
Use Flash, Videos, Multimedia for Product and Service Demos

• The use of multimedia is a powerful tool to communicate what you’re selling.

• People prefer to watch than to read. And if you can entertain then even better.

• Good use of multimedia can separate your business from the pack.

4. Maintain Your Relationship with Customers

Customers can be a fickle lot and it’s up to you to develop their loyalty. The successful online business stays in touch with their customers and prospects with regular but helpful service bulletins and newsletters that provide product information and advice. You can also use other online marketing techniques by promoting discounts, online coupons or free content downloads.

People like predictability so make sure your weekly, monthly email campaign or newsletter is sent around the same time each time. If your newsletter runs late, explain why it’s late.

Email Marketing
An excellent way to build and sustain relationships with your prospects and new customers is through email marketing, including newsletters, and product and service updates. As you gather email addresses from your site, make it clear that visitors are opting in to receive email from you, and give them an easy way to opt out.

Use of commercial email services, such as the AWeber or Vertical Response can alleviate some of the concerns brought out by federal law, such as providing an easy opt-out method. These services:

• Help you build and manage your email list.

• Provide activity reports.

• Track clicks to your site from your mailings.

• Offer newsletter templates, and more.

However, the federal CAN-SPAM Act specifies requirements for commercial emailers and penalties for those violating the law. The Act’s main provisions:

• Bans false or misleading header information.

• Prohibits deceptive subject lines.

• Requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method.

• Requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address.

For all the great ways email can help build your prospect and customer base, you must use caution, especially if you have no experience with email marketing. Email marketing done incorrectly can destroy your reputation. Consult with a professional email marketing provider to discuss best practices before engaging with your prospects and customers via email.

5. The Future of Relationship Building is Happening Now

As you plan your relationship building you ignore the Social Media sites at your peril. These sites are now used by many Fortune 500 businesses as supplements to their marketing activities. Participation in these sites can result in a big boost to your site’s visitors. Here’s a sampling of a few:

www.linkedin.com – LinkedIn is “an online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.” It’s a good place for someone to find you and your services, and for you to find prospects.
 
www.facebook.com – Many contend that FaceBook is place to market to the younger crowd. They offer a variety of social ads that can be targeted by age, gender, location and interests. SEOmoz has this to say about Facebook: “Facebook is so beloved by so many people that promoting something wisely and making it seem hip and fun could do you a lot of good. This site’s users tend to get passionate about Facebook issues and if you can get them riled up via a group or event, you could stand to benefit greatly from the hysteria.”

www.YouTube.com – YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. The service uses displays a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as short original videos. In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users watched over 3 billion videos on YouTube.

www.StumbleUpon.com – Good place to be found "accidentally." You can pick only one topic for your site, but can give it multiple tags. Users can give your site either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. The more upward thumbs the more traffic.
 
Additional ways to consider building relationships is participation in industry-specific online forums and blogs. You can become a recognized expert in your field and garner valuable prospects and customers by writing to forum threads and adding your comments in the many industry blogs. Go to http://technorati.com to find blogs on your industry.

6. Landing Pages That Convert Browsers into Prospects

So far we’ve shown you how to increase the visitors to your site, but without an effective landing page all your hard work will come to nothing.

The landing page is the most important page of your website for conversions. It’s the page of your site where the visitor will “land” once they click on a link from your ads or other online marketing efforts.

Components of an effective landing page include:

• A consistent look and feel of your brand.

• A headline identical to the information in your PPC ad or the copy about your site in the Google or Yahoo! search results.

• A quality graphic or photo representing your product or service.

• A simple sign-up form to capture an email address or other information for follow-up marketing activities.

• A toll-free telephone number and local number, if appropriate.

• A testimonial from a satisfied customer, or several if space allows.

Most importantly, the landing page must have a specific call-to-action. Tell the prospective customer exactly what you want them to do.

Content on the landing page must be:

• Relevant

• Focused

• Above the fold. They shouldn’t have to scroll to see important content.

Eye-tracking studies show that people look first at the upper left-hand side of a Web page, then the headline, then back to the left side of the page. Use these positions for your most important information.

If your landing page is not performing to your expectations, revise and test. Consider testing several different versions at the same time and go with the one that converts the best.