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The One Thing Every Website Should Have

The truth is that most visitors that come to your website are not ready to buy from you. So if the only “conversion” goal you have is to get them to request a quote, contact you, or actually make a purchase, then you can expect your conversion rate to be less than 5% (probably closer to 2%). What about the visitors who didn’t convert? Most websites just let them go on their merry way and hope that they come back later when they’re ready to buy. This is what we call the “Hopium” approach and it rarely delivers great results.

If you want to actually influence those visitors’ purchasing decision, you need to get a way of contacting them on an ongoing basis. The visitors’ email address is the most common contact detail available but you could aim for a Facebook Like or a Twitter Follower or a LinkedIn Connection. Whatever gives you a way of contacting the visitor and building your relationship with them.

A well-researched sales stat is that it takes on average 7-12 contacts with a prospect before they will make a purchase from you. Why is this? It’s because they want to know who they’re dealing with before they make the commitment to make a purchase and they’re not going to know until they have enough interactions to make them comfortable enough to proceed. Now, some of those contacts with you may be in places like social media, news articles, or conversions with existing clients or partners. When they first come to your website, it may very well be that they’ve already had 5 or 6 contacts with your business. In that case, they are much more likely to “convert”. However, in most cases, it is one of their earlier contacts with you and unlikely to result in a conversion.

This means obtaining a way to continue talking to them is critical if you want to get the most out of your website traffic. Let’s be honest, people aren’t just going to give you their email addresses so that you can send them promotional materials. They get enough spam as it is. They’ll only give you that email address if you give them something of value in return. What you give them can vary but it is what we call a “lead magnet”. It is something that the visitor is willing to exchange their email address to get their hands on it.

For a lot of businesses, it could be a very small piece of the product or solution, such as a free sample or trial. For others, it could just be time-saving information that will help them solve their problem such as a comprehensive review or buying guide or a how-to eBook or report.  Whatever the lead magnet is, it needs to fulfil a need of the visitor in order for them to give you their email address. This is the one thing that we see missing from most websites we visit.  Sure, a lot of websites ask you to sign up to their newsletter or email updates but that doesn’t usually generate a lot of subscribers unless you give them something right now, such as a discount on their purchase or have some sort of prize.

The best lead magnets are ones that you can create once and send to the visitors without additional costs.  This gives you leverage and allows you to scale without blowing out budgets.  Such lead magnets can be how-to guides, market studies, online tools, videos, or infographics.

With the right lead magnet, you have a way of converting those not-quite-ready-to-buy visitors into leads and obtaining their email address so that you can then make those additional contacts to build your relationship to the extent the lead comes to know and trust you enough to take the next step of becoming a customer.

The conclusion, if you’re not using lead magnets on your website to capture contact details of visitors, you’re missing out on the biggest opportunity to capture more customers for your business.

Need help setting up lead magnets? Give us a call at (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

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Michael Lam

Co-founder of Cornerstone and web junkie, Michael knows just how to diagnose your online problems and remedy the issue. An online enthusiast who believes in technology as an enabler of growth, Michael worries about all the details so you don't have to.