How to improve conversion rates – People visit websites to get information or buy a product or service

So you are getting a lot of visitors to your website every month and analyzing your stats you can see that your keywords are working and your bounce rate appears to be low – all good things, but you don’t seem to be getting many of those visitors to contact or call your firm – what is needed here is a better ‘call to action’ to improve the conversion rate of visitors into leads says Peter Bowen of First One On a leading SEO company in the UK.

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Measuring what works is vital to understanding the behavior of the consumer in your location, and yes, consumers in different regions react to different mechanisms – so what works here may not work there.

We often see “read more” on a webpage – referring to additional text about the subject matter being discussed but this doesn’t add any value – a better solution is to word it with a call to action like “click here to start your claim now”. What you are trying to do here is to get the visitor to take the next step toward your final website goal, and by doing this, you improve your overall conversion rate, which in this case is to get someone to register or call you to start a claim.

The eventual aim of the webpage then is to get more interested visitors or qualified leads who will eventually phone or contact you - but it is the visitor who is in control. Peter Bowen, Search Engine Optimisation expert says "if you don’t give your visitors a reason or method to communicate with you, then they won’t", and "they won't come back either".

Using a pro-active mechanism for instance enables you to ask for a name, email address and telephone number from your visitor so that he/she can then get useful information from you in the form of a free report or an answer to a question – by doing this you will accomplish two very important tasks; first, you qualify the visitor as someone who is interested in your services, and second, you get permission to contact him/her again. You need to build into your website a powerful reason for your visitors to give you permission to email or talk to them rather than expect someone to pick up the phone. People visit a website to get information or buy a product or service, so give them the means to get it.

Finally and most important of all is trust. You cannot sell anything if your audience doesn’t trust you. You can help them to trust you by prominently displaying your privacy policy, reference to the satisfied customers that have already bought from you, that you make it very easy to find contact information such as a name and address as well as support via email. You could educate via your website with articles and ‘how to sections’ or newsletters and instill trust over time. In short, your prospect must trust you to part with his or her money.

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Peter Bowen is a seasoned SEO Marketing specialist who has been involved with the internet since 1994 when he won the Entrepreneur of the Year award for developing an online internet shopping website. He has developed software for learning and now concentrates his efforts on helping others to understand and market their products and services through effective search marketing strategies. Search Engine Optimisation expert First One On helps clients through the maze of SEO to get top search engine rankings.

Top Ten Tips for Powerful Email Marketing Campaigns

Email Marketing with Newsletters

Building strong customer relationships with email marketing newsletters that deliver results is key in today’s business environment. Creating the communication and following these top 10 tips for successful email newsletters will help you to build and develop strong relationships with existing customers and market your services more cost effectively.

Email newsletters offer the ability to track on an individual level who opened your emails, who clicked on what link and what content they read, not only allowing you to measure the level of interest readers have in the content you are sending them, but also how readers are responding to it.

So here are the First One On top ten tips for successful email newsletter marketing:

1. Professional Looking Template – Instead of sending out a generic email, take time to customize your template to reflect the colours, fonts and other branding elements of your business and website. Using the same email template for your messages will help the recipient recognize your firm and generate feelings of trust.

2. Personalise the Email – Use the recipient’s name in your message whenever possible. Something as simple as customising the email in this way can make the recipient more likely to read through and act on your message.

3. Compelling Subject Line – The two second rule applies here – the recipient will scan the subject of the email and decide whether or not to open and read the communication. Therefore make the subject line as compelling as possible.

4. Email from a Person – Make sure that the email is from a person or firm name and not from an email address, this adds to the personalisation aspect of the communication and adds to the likelihood that the email will be opened and read.

5. Wite Engaging Content – Ensure that the content provides a value proposition or presents a current issue and asks the recipient a question where a response is expected to generate involvement.

6. Click throughs to your Website – Wherever possible the ability to drive recipients back into your website from a link for more information, or to engage the recipient is the major benefit of using an email communication.

7. Call to Action – Each email you send should spell out exactly what you want the recipient to do. Make links obvious and call attention to any special directions you are providing. And it’s okay to be repetitive when it comes to the call to action – include it toward the top of the message and mention it again at the end.

8. Sign your Email – Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it’s one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other services.

9. Regular Send and Despatch – When sending an email to your subscribers, always make sure that it’s sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 3pm. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

10. Measure Results – You must be able to track who has opened your email communication, and better still to know who has clicked through on one of the links that direct the visitor to your website for more information or to complete a call to action form. Measuring which news items generated the most interest will help you to refine future communications.

Benefits of Email Marketing

The key benefit here is that any newsletter or email communication that you send will be an effective marketing tool for your firm. It should, of course, keep clients up to date with key information, promoting your firm as knowledgeable and strong on client relationships.

EmailMarketing builds Customer loyalty

Building continued loyalty of existing clients cannot be taken for granted, particularly as your competitors become more aggressive in their marketing techniques. The newsletter is a way of retaining an existing client during times when that client is not using your service.

Please let us know if you found this article on Email Marketing of interest by contacting First One On