We live in a world where every business, regardless of the size or the products or services can benefit from smart online marketing to drive sales. Almost all businesses will have an online presence of some type to connect to their customers.
Websites have now been around for decades and continue to prove they are thriving as effective marketing platforms for businesses. They can act as a virtual storefront, with many consumers now exploring a company’s website before setting foot inside the physical store or speaking to a staff member.
More and more, businesses are closing down their physical space and may only have an online presence, being able to reach customers globally and grow their sales through online leads and strong customer engagement.
Getting Website Enquiries & What to Do with Them
Website enquiries are the first step towards a potential sale, and they are an integral part in growing a successful business. An enquiry may be a newsletter sign up, a phone call, a chat function or a website form submission.
Firstly, it is important to consider how a prospective customer can contact you, then putting the functions in place to facilitate the contacts and tracking the contacts using Google Analytics and internal systems.
Lastly, it is crucial to have the right processes in place to capture and do something meaningful with the enquiries. Once a customer visits your website there are many factors that determine the success of the sales process. Your aim is to encourage the customer to want to find out more about your business.
Perhaps your next customer interaction is to respond with relevant email marketing, have a member of your sales team call the person directly or set up a face-to-face meeting to secure the sale. This part of the process needs to happen in a timely manner - customers favour a speedy response to their enquiry as it shows your brand is reliable and that you value your customers.
Any growing business needs a well-defined sales funnel which specifies the customer experience at each level, from awareness through to consideration and ultimately conversion to a sale.
A sales funnel process consists of three main steps:
1. Creating awareness about your products and services
Be clear about who you are and what your company stands for. Create quality content that is informative and interesting to get visitors’ interest.
2. Building interest in what you are offering
Once you have their interest, increase their want or need by explaining how you can solve their problem. Give them reasons why your product or service is the only one they need to consider. Good branding, quality website design and content, case studies and testimonials are important in this step.
3. Encouraging action
Implement strategies to push their desire in your product or service to a sale. Offer a special time-limited deal or ongoing tailored support so they feel valued and looked after.
Create Your Website for Success
For assistance in developing your sales funnel and ensuring it is supported by your website, seek the assistance of an experienced and professional web team such as Web Force 5 who offer Customer Relationship Management tools to work for you.
Having a website is great, but it needs to work in a way that meets your customers’ needs and grows the success of your business. There are many ways to construct your website, so it provides what your customers are looking for.
An easy content management system allows you to create ideal content, keep your site updated and responsive and makes user pathways easy to follow and decision-making easy. It is important to have a CRM tool to manage customer information, correspondence, email lists and an associated sales pipeline.
An integrated CMS that is easy to use but includes comprehensive functionality like CRM will give you the confidence to set up the site you need, capture the enquiries and facilitate the sales process efficiently.
A tool such as Google Analytics is vital to track your customers’ behaviour and your website’s performance. You can use this data to optimise your web content, to enhance your user experience and fulfill your business goals. The more customer data you have about your website visitors, the easier it is to create meaningful and relevant content so you can attract the visitors you want.
Make sure your website content is concise, helpful and relevant. It should be engaging and perhaps even fun, with attractive images and graphics, videos if suitable and simple navigation. Provide detailed product descriptions and list your prices as many customers will click away if your costs appear elusive.
Have clear, relevant calls to action on your website to increase the chances of a sale. They tell potential customers the next action they should take and encourages them into the next stage of the sales funnel. Provide different options for your customers to contact you and many people do still like to speak with a human. Talking directly also gives you advantages to push potential customers along the sales funnel.
Web Force 5 are an expert team that specialise in all aspects of website creation and performance. Speak to a specialist consultant for a free no obligation chat about converting your enquiries into sales!