Source: RAYMUND FLANDEZ, online.wsj.com

These days, the tech-savvy small business is using search engine optimization to steer customers to its home page. But once those online visitors land, how do you get them to buy? Sure, you can pay a lot for site analytics that give you insights into those potential customers’ shopping habits. But small-business owners now have a variety of simple yet effective tools to tempt visitors into opening their wallets.

Here are the three best ways to convert Web traffic into sales:

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Good web design is increasingly important for businesses trying to compete at a time when the Internet is the most consumed media in Australia. However, merely having a website isn’t enough these days. A good website is one that can be found easily in search, provides the visitor with relevant information and must has effective traffic conversion strategies in place.

So how much time have you spent thinking about the wording of your navigation? Or the location of a crucial button or link? You’d be amazed at the difference in results you can achieve with subtle changes.

We have been running Traffic Visualisation Analytics, such as heat-mapping, on several sites to monitor the results from changes to layout and wording. It has been a revelation. We have been able to see where people are clicking on the tested sites and where they came from. Then after making small changes we can compare results.

Heat mapping in action

On this particular site we found that visitors weren’t clicking through as much as we’d like to one of the most important pages in the navigation, “products”. So after a week of monitoring we changed the name of that page in the navigation to “services”.

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If there is one thing that sales team generally hate, its cold-calling. Finding new business prospects from scratch can be very difficult and disheartening.

Having run sales teams for a local radio station, I’ve seen good sales reps struggle with the dreaded cold-call. They leaf through the phone book looking for prospects then go through the process of hunting down the decision makers only to be told their services aren’t required.

Imagine if sales teams could forget about the cold-calling and just meet with qualified prospects. Imagine only meeting with buyers who’ve already decided they’re interested in what you’re selling.

That’s what Inbound Marketing can achieve.

Inbound Marketing positions a business in front of potential customers when they are read to purchase. It provides the purchaser with relevant information and an option to find out more, or make an inquiry with that business. Inbound Marketing brings highly qualified and motivated customers to you.

The results can be staggering. One sales force using our Sticky Inbound Marketing system is currently achieving a conversion rate of 92% from appointments to sales. Every one of those customers contacted them. Previously the same team was converting 27% of appointments to sales using old lead generation techniques.

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