5 ways to make more money from your website

You’ve probably invested lots of time and money in your website. Perhaps your website looks great. However, you may be frustrated because it’s not helping you generate more sales! Sound familiar?

If so, it’s time to identify ways to improve your website’s sales conversion rate. Some simple changes, if implemented correctly, can dramatically improve your website’s effectiveness – and help you generate more leads, more sales, and more profits!

Here are 5 ways to improve your website’s sales conversion rate:

1. Include a strong headline

The first step toward waking up your sleepy website is to develop a strong headline on your homepage – one that grabs the attention of your prospects – and literally forces them to keep on reading.

How do you do that?

By having a catchy “icebreaker” that concisely answers their first question, “What do you do?”

If you’re an HVAC contractor, why not say something like….”We help homeowners save money on their heating bills.”

Or….a painter….”I help homeowners to have beautiful homes.”  Doesn’t that grab your attention?

Most professionals, on the other hand, answer that question by saying, “I’m an ____________(insert occupation).” This approach usually doesn’t spark further conversation, though.

So….what is this “icebreaker”?

It’s a simple headline that tells prospects how your services improve their lives.

2. “If you’re failing to plan, you’re planning to fail!”

Before you communicate your project requirements to your web designer, identify the core marketing purpose of your site.

What do you want your website to achieve?

Some example goals might be:

It’s O.K. To have multiple goals. Make sure to be very specific, though. If you want to generate more sales leads, then how many? 20 or 30? In what time frame?

It’s also helpful to visualize what a successful website would look like for your business.

For instance….

3. Include a strong offer

Your website needs to have an offer that gets your prospects excited about your products and services.

Think about the following offers….

Domino’s Pizza – “”You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less — or it’s free.”

FedEx – “when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”

Doesn’t that entice you?

Similarly, you need to identify what kind of an offer would get your prospects excited about your products or services.

Do you want them to…

Even if you have a clear “action” that you want them to take, your offer must be very strong – and prominent on your homepage.

Otherwise, you may not get very many sales conversions.

Here are some offer ideas to spark your imagination…

4. Speak the “language” of your market

Your website, in reality, is a dialogue between you and your prospects. If you “talk shop” and don’t speak clearly and in their language, you may lose many sales.

Your customers are not industry experts. That’s why you must “think like a customer”….and strive to understand:

5. Don’t launch your website “blindly” into cyberspace.

Still, most business websites are launched blindly into cyberspace. Typically, a business will hire a website designer to create a website, write the content, test it a little, and then launch the website.

This approach simply is not very effective now. Why? Because it’s based on a “best guess” method of what you think will work in your marketplace….not on real, hardcore data.

Instead, I recommend that you conduct “split testing.”

What is “split testing”, you may ask?

Split testing is the process of testing different variations of your website to see which one pulls in more revenue. For instance, you may want to test 2 headlines, multiple order buttons, etc. You should consider using Google’s Website Optimizer for this split testing.

We hope that you found these tips helpful for increasing your website’s conversion rate.  Have other ideas?  Be sure to leave a comment below and let us know!