7 Sales-Boosting Website Design Tips You Can Implement Now
If you're not making sales, no one cares.
It's a hard fact in business that we all have to accept.
For all the hype about "social media" and SEO etc. -- none of it really matters if you're not selling.
Last weekend I sat down with a close friend to work on monetizing his website traffic. His site is in the Fitness / MMA space and it gets 70,000+ visits per month. But do you think he's parading that fact around?
Nope. Of course it's a cool vanity metric to think about. But traffic alone doesn't pay the bills.
You know what he's much more excited about today? The fact that this past Sunday, after I coached him on how to setup a basic sales funnel, in just 4 hours of work he's actually making money now, instead of losing it.
On a related note AutoGrow launched its first digital product last month. It's an online marketing course that teaches marketers how to setup a complete sales funnel and send lots of traffic down the top of it, without an ad budget.
From that launch experience alone I've learned an immense amount. So based on my marketing experiences these last 8 weeks, I'm sharing with you 7 sales-boosting tips that you can integrate into your website design right now.
Let's dig into it...
Tip #1 - Ghetto-Hack Your Sales Funnel to Start (Lack of a Marketing Budget is Not an Excuse)
I was reminded of an important lesson this past week while creating a sales funnel for my friend's fitness website: You really don't need much to grow your business from your current web presence.
For example, building something that works really just requires that you lay out a pathway to start.
And even if the conversion rate is terrible to start, you still have something that works.
That's really the first step forward you need to take: build the pathway, and someone is going to walk down it as long as you show it to them.
Lack of money or budget to hire a company like AutoGrow or a web designer is not an excuse either.
When I worked with my friend on Sunday, he's what we did to set it up.
- We created a free offer landing page
- We created the landing page for a $19 fitness ebook
- We setup the payment processing account and hooked up a payment form to it so people could buy the ebook
- My friend had a small email list of past clients and colleagues in the industry so we imported that in his newsletter software
- We created a simple, educational newsletter that gave readers some value and then hit send
- People bought :-)
Though we didn't use the free offer in this case, the idea was to get a working proof of concept. My goal in coaching my friend to success was to show him as quickly as possible that he could start getting results. I wanted to do this because often, our confidence in the process is what defines whether or not we'll keep taking action and moving forward in that direction.
Want a complete list of the marketing tools I used here, as well as other apps that will save you time and help you sell? Click to get my content bonus this week and I'll instantly send it on over to you.
Tip #2 - It's not just the landing page stupid -- it's how they get there!
As I discussed in Tip #1, I'd worked with my friend after just 4 hours of work we were making sales.
Of course, this let to the question: "Well, why didn't we sell more?"
I knew this wasn't going to be home run in terms of sales quantity. As I explained, the idea was to make a working prototype that could be built out over time.
I knew this because, in my own sales funnel leading up the offer for our Build Sales Engine course, we invested a lot of time and effort in educating prospects and building trust.
When people sign-up to our email list for example, we give them free tips on how to double their leads in the next 5 days or 3 actionable lessons on how to improve each stage of their sales funnel.
And that was a key difference in between my friend's sales funnel and the one here on autogrow-pro.frb.io. The version 1 funnel for my friend wasn't focused on nurturing, giving value, and building trust prior to pointing people to the sales page.
So remember: having a sales page is enough to get you some sales, but for the long term (especially if you want to automate your sales funnel) you need to be thinking about how people arrive on that page.
Tip #3 - Make it Easier to Buy Your Product or Service
[caption id="attachment_4528" align="aligncenter" width="658"]
Russell Brunson explaining how the conversion rate increases when a 2 easy monthly payment option is presented.[/caption]
Marketers like Russell Brunson over at Click Funnels have said that somewhere between 15-20% of people who reject an initial offer for a $97 product, will take a follow-up offer that breaks the payment into 2 parts (i.e. "2 easy payments of $47").
This is a useful example of how making it easier to for people buy or start using your product increases your purchase rate.
I recently implemented this strategy in our own sales funnel for our course in the form of an exit pop-up. you can see an example of how it looks below.
The jury is still out on whether this works, but I plan the share the numbers at some point in a future newsletter if you're curious.
Tip #4 - "Copy" What is Already Working for Others and Make it your Own
Picasso once said, good artists copy. Great artists steal.
I find that most people misunderstand what Picasso was trying to say here. I personally didn't really "get it" until about a year ago.
What he meant was you need to take ideas from the works of others who've come before, but craft something original. Don't simply copy, rather, fold those ideas into your own original style.
In the spirit of this quote, I've integrated and tested many strategies and tactics that I've seen working for others online. Not all have worked, but I learned from each test.
Brennan Buchard, a motivational speaker and performance coach, is the most recent example. Frankly, I thought the guy was "full of it" for a while. But about 3 weeks ago I completely rewrote the sales page for the Build Sales Engine course based on a video I saw where he listed the top 6 questions everyone needs to see answered before they will buy.
Our current conversion rate wasn't the greatest, and I knew we definitely weren't answering one of two of those questions he recommend. So I gave it a try and it worked! If you learn what all the questions were you can check it out at the top of my sales page here.
Another sales funnel who I studied closely was that of my fellow mastermind member Brennan Dunn. Brennan had a great email auto responded sequence so I went back, read it, wrote down what I learned, and then used what I learned in re-writing our Double Your Leads free course.
I also spent some time incorporating some tactics from Amazon.com's checkout process.
As a result of all these tweaks, our purchase conversion rate has already doubled.
Tip #5 - Use "step-based analysis" to spot weak points in the process
Let's do a simple exercise to illustrate what "step-based analysis" is.
If the above image represented your sales funnel. Where would you say your focus should be put?
Correct, the top step, the Sales Page. But why?
Well imagine that your funnel is a physical thing, like what you might use in cooking. Now imagine that the numbers represent the amount of "water" that arrive at each step, almost like you have multiple funnels put together. The problem is, one of these mini-funnels (or steps) is leaking more water than the others.
- The sales page has 1,200 visits
- The next page, checkout page, has 60
- Then only 40 actually go through with the purchase.
Between which two numbers is there a larger gap? 60 and 40, or 1,200 and 60?
Obviously the issue must be with the sales page, and that's where our focus should go. So what might the issue be? What are some ideas we can quickly brainstorm that might fix the issue?
- Price, usually the major determinant in just about every market and with every offer.
- Understanding. Do they actually "get it"? Do potential buyer know what the benefits are?
- Offer match. Often times, it can just be that the offer does not match with what the market or your audience actually wants. Sometimes you have to consider selling something completely different.
From these ideas you then think of different changes you can make, like changing the offer, adding or rewriting the sales copy, or testing a different pricing model.
Tip #6 - Micro A/B Testing: Have conversations with customers
In about 2 weeks from now I'll be hosting my first webinar here at AutoGrow (you can click here to RSVP to the event here).
I'm already having conversations with the people in my audience who've opted-in to the webinar. My goal in these discussions is to find out what is currently holding them back in their businesses as far as marketing and their sales funnels (or lack thereof).
At the same time, I'm talking constantly with current clients and students, who've already purchased the Build Sales Engine course. I'm probing for information on why they bought as well as what they're finding the most valuable about it.
This is what I call micro A/B testing because you're able to constantly get real-time qualitative feedback that will help you better educate, give value to, and ultimately make offers to your audience they they're likely to buy and benefit from.
If you want to learn more about how to do this, check out this guide I wrote on the topic.
Tip #7 - Withhold Pricing, give it it's own landing page. Charge the cost an email address to get access
A wise copywriter once said (I think is was Dan Kennedy) that making a sale is about walking through a series of agreements with a person.
For instance, here's an effective, win-win system I used in the past when speaking with potential clients:
- What are your goals and needs? Are they fit with our capabilities?
- How is the decision on your part going to be made?
- When will you be making a decision? By when would you like to kick-off this project?
- What is your budget? Does that fit with how we would price our services for this project?
At each step in the process you're looking for a mutual agreement and commitment to taking the next step.
This is the strategy behind the tactic of limiting access to your pricing. Almost everyone wants to look at pricing first, since, as I said above, that's often the main determinant of how likely they are to buy.
However, it makes more sense from your standpoint to hold back the pricing information and instead educate them on the benefits of your offer and how you deliver value. This way, they understand the price point and why it's higher (or lower) than they might expect.
Leading with benefits and education is likely to increase your conversation rate because instead of a snap judgement based solely on the price point, the decision is also made with understanding of the value.
To understand what this might look like in practice, see the example below that we designed for one our client's websites:
Conclusion
- If you don't have a funnel right now, you don't need much to get it started. In fact, you can use completely free tools to start selling almost instantly. Lack of a budget is not an excuse for not getting started.
- The purchase rate on cold traffic coming into to your landing page or website is bound to be lower. However, it will convert much better depending on the source, especially if you've already taken the time to educate them via an automated email drip sequence.
- Generally (but not in all cases) the easier you make it to buy your product, the more likely people are to convert.
- Copy what is already working for other experts and industry players in your field (but make it your own)
- Employ "step-based analysis" to find out where your online sales and lead generation process is getting stuck. Then focus on developing and tweaking the stage where the blockage is.
- Micro A/B testing and simple conversations with customers are bound to give you lots of ideas on how to improve the presentation of your offer.
- Add value, educate, but seriously consider delaying (or "charging" at least the cost of an email address) in order for prospects to see your prices.
What are some other advanced tips for boosting sales with tweaks to your website's design or sales copy?
