#2: Reduce your Readability Score
What is it and why does it matter?
Description: A readability score is the numerical grade given to your text, based on how easy it is for visitors to read it. The more readable your text, the wider your audience.
Quick Cure: Test your copy, using Flesch Kincaid’s WebFX’s free tool. Follow the recommendations, ranging from slimming down your sentence lengths to simplifying your words. Aim for an average grade of 7 which should be easily understood by 12 to 13 year olds.
Impact: High. Not doing it will hamper any other efforts and throttle back marketing ROI.
Effort: 1/5 – As easy as copy, paste, edit. Copy, paste, edit.
#3: Define your Value Proposition
What is it and why does it matter?
Description: In half a second, visitors have judged your website on:
- Its appeal
- What (if any) problem it solves
- How easy it is to navigate
Tomes of text, imaginative images and animations satisfy web designers, but are proven to distract and halt conversions. Ensure your value propositions are mapped to visitors’ needs and are immediately visible.
Quick Cure: Instead of long copy, use Strategyzer’s value proposition method to identify between three and five key sales messages. Make sure these are above the fold on any core pages, including the home page.
Impact: Black and white. We’ve quadrupled enquiries for clients.
Effort: 3/10 – But your site isn’t a sales machine without it!
#4: Capture data using triggers
What is it and why does it matter?
Description: Offering useful content in exchange for visitors’ contact details. Very few of your website visitors will pick up the phone on a hunch you might help them. Making ‘lead-magnets’ or intellectual gifts available on your website persuades visitors gathering knowledge at the start of the buyer journey.
Quick Cure: Perform a deal review. Analyse the most common questions new customers ask and offer something to answer them – like a calculator, free trial or checklist.
Impact: Converts a static website into a lead-generating machine.
Effort: 2/10 – You don’t need fancy automation tools to test this. Add a message on your current website forms offering your FREE lead-magnet to all new enquiries.
#5: Add Site Search
What is it and why does it matter?
Description: Visitors using a search bar on your website have a higher chance of conversion. 43% higher according to Econsultancy, as their intent is intrinsically stronger. Analysing phrases these visitors type into your search bar also informs your business about trends and buyer needs, which influence the content you add.
Quick Cure: With WordPress, this should be free to add to your site as a widget or plugin. Just take care to ensure the results it displays are optimised.
Impact: One website we audited, had 70,000 searches a month for a specific category that didn’t actually exist. Remedying this increased engagement by 7%. It also provided a business case for a brand new, profitable, product category.
Effort: 1/10 – Easy, download Ivory Search FREE, and setup Google Analytics Goals to record visitors searches.
If you want to know more about increasing leads the fastest way, get in touch. We’ve added over £100m in sales for UK businesses – from the NEC and JCB to many mid-tier software and technology clients. The techniques we use follow proven behavioural psychology patterns and form best practice for lead-generation websites.
Market leaders in your industry know these techniques – and more. We see the evidence every day. If you want to know how your successful competitors are winning, we offer digital due-diligence to benchmark and highlight the opportunities in your field. Talk to one of our experts now.
In my next post, I’m looking at the response speed effect on sales, and how automation solves this.