Increase Website Conversion: Learn What Prospects Want Without Asking
The ultimate goal of your website and subsequently your internet marketing effort is to steer visitors towards some form of action that will bring them closer to a sale. This call to action could be online, such as to request a quote, or offline, as a request to contact you over the phone. Because you can’t interact with all potential customers at the exact time they visit you online, your website must be optimized to do so. The question for most marketers is how do I do that?
While the answer to this question has multiple parts, a key component to a successful internet marketing effort intended to drive website leads is learning what prospects want by “listening” to their requests. Visitors who use your website’s internal search box are in essence “asking” for assistance. By monitoring common requests, you have the opportunity to turn this insight into future interactions, and potentially ongoing sales.
Viewing what people type into your website’s search box is analog to listening to prospects in person, or observing their behaviors for revealing and important nuances to help fine-tune your sales approach. Data collected from internal site search can help you to understand visitor behaviors and in turn, increase your conversion rates.
Listen with Your Site’s Internal Search Box
Your website’s search box collects what visitors type in, whether they be full questions, “do you sell XYZ products?” or single words, XYZ’s “product name”. What visitors type in your search box expresses the collective needs and interests of potential customers in their own words – which is extremely valuable to use verbatim where appropriate throughout the site. This additional insight, coupled with what you already know about your market, could help you increase your website conversion and even sales – whether visitors are able to buy something on your site or not.
Google’s free analytics package provides an easy way to track internal site search and could be set up in a few simple steps (Feel free to contact us should you need assistance). Once implemented, you could identify patterns, trends, and other clues about potential customers by simply reviewing what’s been searched on your website over time.
Applying Internal Search Box Results
Results from your search box could help you identify areas of improvement. Your findings may point you in one of many directions – but here are three of the more common starting points.
1. Navigation Structure
A common error of internet marketing is labeling website navigations with terms used by their owners, which are often inconsistent with the user’s terminology. If your XYZ product is known by more than one name, be sure to use the most common, layman’s, term. If you find people typing in what you already have labeled but with different terminology, change your website’s navigation titles to match theirs. If what people are typing in is already on your site, simplify your navigation to make it easier to find. Your visitors are using your internal search box because what they want to find is being overlooked, or just not prominent enough to be seen when your website pages are scanned. By noticing what page a search box is used most often can help determine which pages need the most help.
2. New Opportunities
New sales opportunities surface by identifying the gap between what visitors are looking for on your site, and what you offer. To capture leads more effectively with your site visitors, you could begin selling the same products or services that are missing from your site’s navigation. You could also develop something new and describe it with phrases your visitors typed in your search box looking for it.
3. Content Creation
The fact is, data mined from your website’s search box is a direct line to capture leads. Now that Google is limiting data you could use for online optimization, each alternative source of data becomes extremely valuable, and a competitive advantage over the competition. Take the time to review your search data to learn what your prospects want and increase your website’s conversion potential. Your sales depend on it.