Horses, Water and Opportunities – The Positives That Can Be Gleaned From Non Converting Visits

Everyone knows the saying ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’, this being especially true when it comes to SEO and websites. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them take a drink Any website owner pondering the Bounce Rates on their pages will hear these words ringing in their ears, but that does not really help much does it? Let’s look at the Positives first. You see, regardless of how the visitor arrived on the site, and on what page, EVERY visit is an Opportunity for them, not only to buy from you, but also to become more aware of what you do. The First Visit by a Potential Customer Has Increased Your Visibility by 100% The latter is very very important, and if the visit is their first contact with your business, you have really achieved something, simply the fact that they know about you is a victory of sorts. This is the first step on the customer journey, the first one to a sale. Your ‘Water’ or the Trough Need Attention There are other positives too. For one, it shows you that your offering, for one reason or another is not ‘hitting the right spot’. It could be the navigation (it takes just too much effort to find out how to buy or contact you) or the fact that the page is poorly laid out, or too slow to load. All of these are fixable, and all will require investigation and testing. But on the positive side of things, you do have a way forward, and that means a LOT. How to Improve Matters? It’s a reality that not all horses are as thirsty as others, and some can be really picky about what they drink, so it goes without saying that you are not going to sell to all of your visitors Are You Capturing Their ‘Emotional Attention’? But you can increase their thirst and really make them want to drink by quickly capturing their attention by appealing not to logic, but their emotions. Hook them in quickly with the right Headline and you are one step closer to a sale. Landing Pages and Adwords This is especially true to the Landing Pages used with Adwords. So many campaigns drop the visitor onto the home page. This is bad new as in most cases there is little ‘connection’ between the search term they used and what they see on the home page, this most likely being a general statement of what the business does. For example, if someone searched for ‘mini steering wheel’ and they were taken to the home page of the parts department, rather than a page full of different wheels they could just decide to go elsewhere. Where the search term is a bit vague, like ‘used cars’, the ‘trick’ would be to ensure that the message clicked with their likely emotions. Perhaps something on the lines of ‘Worried about picking the wrong car?’ with a sub heading of ‘With AAA Motors you don’t have a thing to worry about, our 7 day no quibble money back guarantee, means you have time to get to know your car’. This just an example, but you get the point, show the visitor that you are on their wavelength that you have an answer to their problem, quickly, and you are well on the way to reducing that Bounce Rate. Of course, there are other reasons people will leave a site, almost as soon as they arrived. Some will simply be in the wrong place, you know the same way as happens when you are out shopping (remember that?), you go in take one look at the place and think, no, this is not for me and leave. Google can get it wrong too On the web this can be ‘all Google’s fault’ as they don’t always guess the users’ true intention and include the wrong sites in the listings. But in other cases, it could be the load time of the site that makes people leave, the navigation might not be clear, even the wrong images will put some people off. What matters is that you check to see if people are leaving quickly and then make changes to see if you can improve matters. Every Visit is an Opportunity to Sell Every time a visitor arrives on the page, there is the opportunity for them to ‘drink’ and what you need to do is to try to get them to actually take a sip. And that means giving them what they want, and not what you think they want. There is no doubt that ‘capturing their attention’ quickly is vital, but that is only the first step. You then have to ensure that you start building trust, even if they are just going to simply place something in a E commerce cart. One of the reasons that Amazon is so popular is that everyone knows they can trust Amazon with their money and that they will get what they order. Other sites are less trusted and thus have a harder job in making a sale. Have you ever thought about the trust level your business has? There are many ways to boost this, one is to lay out any guarantees, another is Social Proof, testimonials (video testimonials showing the actual customer are gold dust it seems, people believing them more than just words due to commitment the customer must be feeling to actually do the video). Pictures of the building and the owner / staff are other ways of providing trust. Another way is demonstrating your knowledge and how you have helped people before. Here case studies and FAQ pages can provide a real boost to your trust level. Remember Getting a Visitor To Your Site is a Real Achievement Getting a visitor on your site is a real achievement, and once the traffic starts to flow, your job is to make it stick. Simple things like an ‘Irresistible Offer’ or that ‘Emotional Grabbing Statement’ are two, while placing good Call To Action statements on your other pages, especially any of the main ‘entry pages’ into your site (do you know yours?), like FAQ pages (they can bring in tons of traffic) is a real MUST. So rather than dwelling on the negatives about those horses not drinking, instead think of the Positive fact that they called in the first place and then start working on making the ‘water’ look that bit more inviting…

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