I get the same question in almost all of my website marketing classes: “What 1 thing can I do tomorrow to improve sales leads on my website?” Well, here are 9 things to improve your website sales fairly quickly. They are based on methods I have tried and measured.
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Move your contact information to the top of all your website pages
Make sure to include your physical address. Researches show that this is one of the most significant aspects of website credibility. A phone number is also required. You never know when a potential sales lead wants to reach out and try to buy from you – make it easy by listing your contact info right in front of them.
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Replace all email hyperlinks with forms
Forms qualify your sales leads and browsers do not always properly launch the preferred email program when a user clicks a mailto hyperlink. This means lost leads. Almost all junk emails come from website hyperlinks. If you have coding that looks like “mailto:[email protected]”, the email address will be harvested for spamming.
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If you are already using forms, reduce the amount of required information
Most forms are abandoned because of the ridiculous amount of information requested. It challenges the sense of security of leads and their patience. Only ask for one way to contact and allow the sales lead to select which one they enter. Allow them to select a “Request more information by email” or a “Please have a salesperson call me” checkbox.
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Set up an XML Sitemap and ROBOTS.TXT file on your website
These files can improve how well search engine robots index your website. The XML Sitemap should be submitted to Google Sitemaps at least. The ROBOTS.TXT file should be added to your root: https://www.website.com
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Develop some keywords and advertising text to start an ad campaign
Use Google Ads, Yahoo Sponsored Search, or Microsoft AdCenter. Note that MSN might provide better results in some situations when purchasing personnel have MSN as their search engine instead of Yahoo! or Google.
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Submit your website to the big 3 if it has not already been done
Each search engine uses a slightly different approach. Follow their rules for submission!
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Respond to web inquiries as soon as possible
Anything past 24 hours will be seen as non-responsive.
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See who is linking to your competition and ask for a link in an appropriate way
Search by typing “link:www.thecompetition.com” – without the “quotes” in the big 3. Google will show the most important links and the smallest number – start with them. Yahoo! provides the most detail.
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Use web analytics to get more information about how your site is performing
Google Analytics is fairly easy to set up and allows you to dig fairly deep. Check with your web developer or hosting company to see if they have analytics.
If you have some quick things that helped your website, please tell us about them in the comments below.