Your website conversion rate is the number of leads that reach out directly through your website channels such as website pop up, lead form, email, etc. divided by the total number of website visitors. The equation looks like this:
# of Inbound Leads ÷ Total # of Website Visitors
The main goal of optimizing your website to give visitors the easiest means to contact you is paramount in converting more leads and growing your sales pipeline. In general, website conversion rates for many B2B companies are low (around 2%), meaning a large majority of visitors will browse and leave a site without raising their hand, which we refer to as the “invisible pipeline.”
Here are just a few of the ways you can create a better experience for your visitors and turn them into qualified leads.
Dynamic content
In a B2B context, this means personalizing or changing your website in real-time based on visitor data. This can include various firmographic attributes – industry, revenue, employee count, and more – with the end goal of engaging the viewer. Leveraging dynamic content on your website is one of the most effective ways to deliver 1:1 marketing at scale and drive higher website conversion rates.
IP address intelligence technologies can determine what company the visitor is coming from and provide firmographic information (industry, revenue, location, and more). This data is then used by platforms like Google Optimize and Adobe Target to personalize your website’s navigation, content, and other fields to show relevant content to the visitor based on their firmographic profile. The visitor is then given an experience tailored specifically to them in real-time. All of this happens behind the scenes in the fraction of a second it takes for the webpage to load.
Website forms
Leveraging forms throughout your website is one of the most effective ways to convert your website traffic into valuable leads. Optimizing your website forms goes far beyond one simple form on a Contact Us page, but instead implements good forms strategically placed on certain pages to maximize form fills.
Here are some tips for creating effective forms that will actually convert:
- Keep it short and sweet – Shorter forms tend to lead to more conversions (i.e. more people starting and actually following through with their form submissions). In fact, some research shows that reducing the number of form fields down to 4 or less can increase conversion rates by up to 160%. Granted, certain kinds of forms will be longer by design. An online survey will likely have more fields than a whitepaper download form, but this is not an excuse to get greedy. Focusing on only the information you actually need from users is crucial to keeping the form submission process as streamlined and painless as possible.
- Form enrichment – Services like Marketo and Eloqua offer autofill features that use the website visitor’s IP address to automatically fill in fields like company name, industry, revenue, employee count, and more – making it easier for the visitors to complete the form. This also allows you to ask fewer questions while still gathering the important account-level information you need. Now instead of overwhelming visitors with a barrage of questions to get their data, your forms can become a quick and painless process that provides value to both parties.
- Leverage partial form fills – Even the best forms get abandoned, it’s sad but it’s true. However, using IP lookup technology, firmographic data can automatically be saved even if the user abandons the form – ensuring you still get the information you need either way. While partial form fills may not be as “valuable” as fully submitted forms, the mere fact that the user began the form in the first place can be an intent signal that they are in the market to buy and can be factored into an account or lead score.
- Make long forms feel shorter – It’s easy for me to just tell you to make your forms shorter and call it a day, but that’s not realistic for everyone. If the information you really need out of a form would still make it longer than Rapunzel’s hair, all is not lost. Here are a couple of tips to help make long forms seem shorter to your website visitors:
- Multi-step forms: Breaking the form up into smaller sections or steps can make it feel less overwhelming and decrease the psychological friction associated with seeing a page of empty fields.
- Horizontal layout: Using a horizontal layout (i.e. placing more than one field on each line of the form) will trick the eye into perceiving it as shorter.
- Test, improve, convert – The key to creating effective forms (and probably applicable to life, in general) is to never become complacent. Once you’ve created a website form, conducting ongoing A/B testing across multiple variables like length, CTAs, and layout will give you data about exactly which forms have higher conversion rates. This kind of testing can also show you where in the process people are abandoning the form and give you an idea of what you might need to improve.
The key to effective sales and marketing is being able to see things from your visitor’s perspective, and form conversion optimization is no different. All the hard work and money you spent to get them onto your website should extend to your forms as well. Creating a more user-centric design to your forms ensure you make the form fill process as seamless as possible for your users.
Conversational marketing (chat) platforms
Chat platforms can serve many functions on your website. They can be used to answer questions, qualify potential leads, provide customer support, and more. Furthermore, they provide potential leads the opportunity to dig deeper into your solutions without the pressure of engaging with a salesperson.
The goal of conversational marketing is to create unique interactions and experiences for every potential customer in real-time to provide the most relevant information and move them more quickly through the sales funnel. The term “conversational marketing” is just that, it’s a conversation with your potential buyer – where they tell you why they’re there and what they need, and in turn, you listen and provide that information.
[Originally published on kickfire.com]
