Fred Schebesta

I hate the idea of my website visitors closing their browser window and leaving forever with a resounding click on the red ‘X’.

Win new online customers, influence existing visitors

Do you feel disappointed when you look at your website stats and see that 5000 visitors looked at one page, then exited?

I hate the idea of my website visitors closing their browser window and leaving forever with a resounding click on the red ‘X’.

It happens to a lot of websites. And many of my clients come to me wanting help with exactly this problem. These are the five things I do to cure their pain:

1. Give your visitor a reason to click to where you want them to go.
   Give a uni student a free lunch and they will hand out pamphlets for you all day; give a website visitor a free report and they will happily hand over their email address.
   They will also take a look at your sales page if they can download the item from it. These days everyone is giving away a free report or a free whitepaper, so I would suggest a bit more love is required. Add a further arm-twist by giving them a real taste of your value.
   How about a:
1. Video recording of a recent seminar / talk or ‘how to’ guide.
2. Podcast of an interview with an expert in your field discussing the current topic of interest.
3. A free 30 day trial of an industry favored piece of software.
2. ‘You’, not ‘I’ or ‘we’
   Change every instance of ‘I’ or ‘we’ to “you”. It’s a tough task, but if you can talk to your visitor about their problems before offering a solution, it is much easier to bring about the actual context of what you are trying to sell them.
3. Respond to inquiries at electronic speed
   How about a good old fashioned telephone call after someone posts an inquiry on your website. Try it and see how pleased they are. I call some people who have made inquiries on our website immediately and they fall off their chair.
   One of our clients, Laser Sight, has an entire call centre calling people back as fast as is humanly possible. It has increased its conversion rate by 11%.
4. Focus on your search engine marketing in your main industry terms
   Here is a little tip that will raise your search marketing ad’s performance. Keep checking to see what your competitors are doing in the search engines.
   If they have a paid ad running on the same keyword, use their copy to test against. Copy their exact text and try to improve it with some A-B testing. The better the response, the better you will perform.
5. Keep on testing and changing
   A small change every month to your website, email or blog will make all the difference. Any change will do the following:
1. Register with the search engines and act as tasty search spider food for you to rank highly in the engines.
2. Show to repeat visitors that something new is happening.
3. Be the basis for the next test.
4. Continue to grow your content base and search engine themes.

Don’t forget, just do one thing from this list and your visitors will stay for longer.

Fred Schebesta’s company Online Marketing Agency is an established innovative online media agency that tackles combining proven approaches with new thinking and ideas.