Want To Boost Site Conversion? Increase Your Font Size

Sometimes the simplest website changes can produce the most rapid Return On Effort. One of the easiest ways to make your site convert better is to make it easier for users to read.

In fact, a whole category of website conversion heuristics is based around making your content easier for website visitors to digest.

Here are seven ways you can increase your website conversion right now:

1. Increase font size. For example, change 10 or 11px body text fonts to 13px.  Some people find these larger fonts “childlike”, but our tests have conclusively shown that larger fonts can increase conversion significantly (especially where the original font size was very small to start with).  Graphic designers often specify smaller, “cute” fonts, but you should remember that text content is primarily a means to convey your selling message, NOT a design element.
2. Avoid large line widths. The human eye just isn’t designed evolved that well for reading text on a screen.  One of the things that tends to slow people down when reading is moving they eyes from line to line.  And the longer the line width, the more difficult it is for the eye and the brain to hook up with the next line.   That’s why shorter line widths of 600px or less generally help conversion.  Test 600px vs 900px and you’ll see what I mean.
3. Increase colour contrast. Another thing graphic designers seem to love are font colour choices based on design sensibilities rather than communication and legibility.  Light grey text on a mid-grey background appears to be a designers’ favourite.  On the web, as in print, poor colour contrast = decreased legibility = decreased sales.  By increasing colour contrast (good ol’ black text on white background is my boring-but-effective favourite) you will boost sales.
4. Shorten paragraphs. Long paragaphs make it harder for the eye to navigate text.   Anything much longer than 7 lines and you’ll start to put readers off.  Where your paragraphs are longer than this, break them into two or more pieces.  The occasional one line paragraph can also work well.
5. Give “texture” to long copy. Many of these tips are centred around breaking the monotony of long, “blocky” tracts of text.  One way to do this is by adding “texture” — creating varying areas of white space around lines and paragraphs. For example, you should always leave a “ragged right” edge on paragraphs (i.e not fully justified).  The ragged edge helps the eye navigate.  Indenting the occasional paragraph with a <blockquote>, or placing content in a centred box achieves the same effect.
6. Break the monotony. White space is one way to break the monotony of dense text content — another is to use headlines, sub headlines, colour, “callouts”, bullet lists, numbered lists and text effects (bold, italics, underlines, strikethroughs etc.).  These elements help to focus the user’s attention on key selling points and create variety that keeps the brain engaged.
7. Add diagrams, graphs and images. I believe that copy is the main tool in your persuasive toolset on the web.  But other types of visual content can be a very useful way to augment your central sales argument.  Use images, graphs and diagrams appropriately when they make your point better than text.

This Is NOT A Long Copy vs Short Copy Debate

Please note that this has nothing to do with the long/short copy debate (if you could still call it a debate – the long copy folks won that a decade ago online, and a century ago in print).

This is about recognising that text content can be daunting when presented the wrong way.   By making your text content as legible and digestible as possible, you’ll get higher readership and more leads and sales.  And isn’t that what we all want?

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How To Use Prospect “Filters” To Improve Sales Lead Quality

When I started out in business and started to prospect for new clients, I needed leads. Any leads would do. Even if those leads weren’t highly qualified and ready-to-go, it feels better to be talking to prospects, writing proposals and “keeping busy” than it does doing nothing toward getting new clients.

Pretty soon, lead volume picked up substantially, thanks to the Education-Based Marketing approaches that I have written about on many occasions.

But “mindset-wise”, I was still in the “More Leads = Good” space. I started to get busier and busier, not only performing work for the clients that came in, but also processing and selling to new prospects.

This was when I realised that I needed more efficient ways to deliver hot, ready-to-buy leads to my doorstep to drive up conversion rates and spend LESS time selling to non-clients.

One of the strategies for doing this is the use of “Filters” to pick off UN-qualified leads before they enquire. Here are some examples of the kind of filters I tested:

• Price: “your investment will be in the $7,000 – $10,000 range”
• Aspiration: “if you’re just looking to maintain your current operation, this is not for you. Typical clients aim to increase their business by 50 to 100% within 12 months and have the capacity to do so.”
• Service Exclusions: “this service is designed to generate highly-qualified incoming sales leads via your website. We do not make outgoing cold calls, although your own outbound calling operations can fit into this solution seamlessly.”

An example from the finance industry

Several years later, a client in the finance industry was having a small problem with people who were financially unqualified applying for a specific range of products.

Despite clearly stating the main qualifying conditions on the sales page, a number of visitors were applying directly through the contact form. It was starting to occupy a significant portion of the salespeople’s time just to reply to these people.

The solution was to clearly state just above the contact form that the product was only available to customers who already hold equity in their own home. We even highlighted the relevant phrases with the famous yellow highlighter.

It did the trick.

Overnight, the unqualified leads stopped, leaving the client to focus on qualified enquiries.

One more important thing to keep in mind: occasionally when you employ this strategy, you overdo it and qualified leads get cut out of your funnel prematurely. Obviously you need to keep an eye on your metrics to ensure that this strategy had the desired effect.

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Lead Volume vs Opportunity Volume

For several years now I’ve been asking subscribers and clients to visualise their online sales process as a funnel with knowable metrics. You’re no doubt familiar with the analogy:

1000 visitors hit your website (“Visits”) –>
100 opt in to your Free Special Report (“Opt Ins”) –>
20 enquire (“Leads”) –>
5 become clients (“Sales”)

Whatever the exact number or specific conversion steps are in your business, you get the idea.

But I recently came across a very useful distinction on a Marketing Experiments webinar that dovetailed with a recent experience working with a client.

That is the distinction between Lead Volume and Opportunity Volume.

Lead Volume is the number of people filling out your enquiry form, but Opportunity Volume is the number of viable sales opportunities available to your sales team (or you, if you’re the only salesperson at your company).

Lead Volume is very often a measure of activity. Opportunity Volume is a measure of results and future expected revenues.

I recently dealt with a client whose only metric was Lead Volume: “Just get us more contact form submissions”.

“More contact form submissions is a brief that is relatively easy to fulfil. For starters, you can make the form easier to complete. Second, remove “strings” from the offer or add a guarantee.

When you do this, will the leads be more qualified? Will you create more viable Sales Opportunities? Not necessarily. In fact, you can very often clog up your sales pipeline with unqualified leads that do nothing more than take up your salespeople’s time and detract from closing genuine sales opportunities.

That’s why I’ve now included Opportunity Volume as one of the key lead generation metrics to track. It is a more reliable indicator of the success of your pre-sales marketing activities.

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7 Step Game Plan For Boosting Your Online Sales In A Slower Economy

Lately the media seem to be rubbing everyone’s faces in the “slower economy”.   I don’t like it – it gets people in the wrong frame of mind, thinking contractionary thoughts rather than expansionary ones.

So it seems there’s a recession on, but I’m refusing to participate.

It’s true that there are fewer discretionary dollars being spent, but all is not doom and gloom, especially in the online space.  On the macro-level, the indicators look strong:

A recent report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers Europe comments that while a contracting ecomomy normally reduces total media spend, investment in online marketing and media continues to increase rapidly:

“…overall online advertising growth is expected to slow down to about 20% according to the Advertising Association. While this is still a very strong growth rate, far stronger than other forms of offline advertising, this represents a slowdown compared with last year’s growth rate of 38%.”

So we can still expect 20% growth in online spend this year.

Another perspective: online was the third biggest media category in the UK in 2007 with a 16% share (behind Print Display and TV).  By 2009, it is expected to become the single largest advertising channel.

[While this is UK data, the general trends are equally applicable to the Australian market]

Here’s a 7-step program that I recommend for any business owner who wants to increase sales, even in a slower economy.  Outsized rewards will go to companies who implement these steps:

The 7 Step Online Marketing Game Plan

1. Know how much a client is worth to you after the initial transaction, and in the first 3, 6, 12 and 24 months of doing business (or whatever time periods make sense in your particular business) – this gives you your Allowable Cost of Acquisition.
2. Know how much a lead/sale is costing you, split by source. This means that all online goals need to be tracked (this can be done with Google Analytics for general goals and Google Adwords conversion tracking for Adwords-generated conversions).
3. Track everything, not just Adwords. Other types of online campaigns such as email newsletters can be tracked with Google’s URL Builder. This will tell you the exact volume of sales generated from a specific email blast, for example.
4. Make sure ALL ads and promotions are associated with a specific, trackable offer. You should not be running ANY promotions with a generic “call us” offer.  Many of our clients run print ads that invite prospects to download a Special Report or Info Kit by following a special, tracked, URL.  This allows them to do more of what’s working and less of what’s not working.
5. Cultivate and develop MORE THAN ONE successful lead generation approach. Many websites are highly dependent on, say, Adwords alone.  If Google changes their Terms Of Service or the way they serve ads (and they frequently do), this could literally put you out of business.  You need to test and run with at least 5 separate, independent prospecting methods that you can call on if required.Most of our clients have successful PPC accounts, SEO campaigns, referral systems and offline campaigns running simultaneously, automated via their website as the central “hub”.  If any one lead generation channel dries up, they still have a business.
6. Don’t drop new leads quickly – nurture them. You should aim to develop the following three communication sequences to make as much of incoming leads as possible: (a) – one for “soft leads” before they enquire (i.e. an info pack, or Special Report), backed up by a ongoing sequence of education-and-information emails.(b) – one between the initial enquiry and closing the sale – could be a book, a White Paper, or a Feasibility Analysis.(c) - one for un-converted leads who may convert in future.Especially where the value of a new client to your business is high, these communication sequences can deliver exceptional ROI.  You’ll also notice that almost nobody you’ve done business with in the past does this.  If you do it, you’ll be exceptional in the eyes of your prospects – always a good thing!
7. Resell to your existing client base by offering more value. Don’t forget about your current client base – how can you serve them better?  One of the most effective ways to develop a more stable cashflow and serve you clients better is to offer some kind of continuity-based service.For health supplement companies, this means shipping the product every month until the customer says “stop”.  For professional services, this might mean providing a retainer service on an ongoing basis for a set price.

Whatever you do, don’t succumb to the doom-and-gloom in the media.  Executing the 7 Step Game Plan can bulletproof your marketing engine so you can not only survive but thrive in 2009.

Summary for business owners:

• Overall media spend will decline in the short term while online spend will continue to increase rapidly.
• Within the online category, advertisers are moving away from non-accountable methods (e.g. display advertising such as banner advertising) and toward accountable methods (e.g. paid search such as Google Adwords).
• This means that more dollars will be spent online to attract fewer customers (although more customers are shifting their purchasing from offline to online as well).
• Many of the new entrants into the online space will be unsophisitcated players who don’t know what they’re doing (yet).
• Companies with tightly managed and monitored online campaigns can expect to do as well if not better than they have always done.

–

Marketing Results can of course help you ramp up the lead and sales generation capacity of your website with smart, accountable marketing so you can focus on managing and growing your business.  Contact us to enquire about availability on our Gold Client Program for SMEs.

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The Essence Of Lead Generation In One Question

In one of Perry Marshall’s recent newsletters, this gem leapt out at me:

What series of actions is your prospect going to be taken through so that by the time they’re ready to buy, they know you, like you and trust you more than anyone else they are considering?”

That is the essence of lead generation.

Most companies only start to sell when the prospect is ready to buy – by then it’s too late.  Ideally, you need to be there well before your prospect is ready to buy.

Most companies provide too little information and education between initial interest from the prospect and closing the sale. The result is that most prospects are not sufficiently educated about what you do and how you’re different to choose you.

Most companies don’t understand what other options their prospects might be considering, and have a pre-emptive strategy to “unsell” their competitors’ offerings before the prospect has even considered them.

Most companies are too impersonal in their communications.  There’s too many “we”s in their communications and not enough “you”s.

Don’t be like most companies – be like the 1 to 5% of successful companies who do what their competitors don’t and educate and inform prospects prior to, during and after the sale.

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How To Get Your Customers To Pay For Proposals and Quotes

Are you frustrated by tyre-kickers and free-advice seekers who waste your time, reduce the efficiency of your sales and marketing efforts and cut into your ability to service paying clients?

Many business owners and marketers are.  Especially if you’re in a service-based or professional service business, the time and money it takes to simply attract and convert a paying customer can significantly eat into your billable hours and therefore income.

This is probably the number one reason why many otherwise highly-skilled independent professionals and businesspeople find themselves eking out a relatively modest living (certainly well below their abilities and expectations) and wondering why they got into business in the first place.

Or maybe you’re doing pretty well, yet mindful of the fact that 10 or 20% of your productive time is being wasted on filtering out the tyre-kickers.

I was once there too.  Here’s the story of how I broke out of this particular cell of the entrepreneurial prison…

It all started back in 1928… (oops, wrong story. Reset.)

3 or 4 years ago I found that my ability to do productive work for clients (mainly developing high-ROI lead generation websites on a project basis) was being constrained by the volume of prospects who weren’t converting into paying clients.

Just 1 in 4 proposals were converting into a client engagement. Suppose that every proposal took an hour on the phone, plus 2 hours of writing to prepare – that meant that each new project was taking 12 hours of sales time to close.  Owch.

What’s more, many prospects would soak up my time for free, take our intellectual property in the form of the proposal, then either:

1. Do nothing
2. Take our ideas and (try to) implement them in-house
3. Take our ideas and give them to someone else to implement
4. Proceed with the proposed project

Only Outcome #4 was what I wanted (and only that outcome would typically produce the result the client was looking for too).

What to do?

I put a stop to all free proposals. Instead, I held a 15 minute chat on the phone to pre-qualify the client, then explained that I would prepare an Online Marketing Action Plan [note the syntax: "Proposal" is such a weak word] for them for a nominal fee of $200 + GST.   I also explained:

• an outline of the value that the Action Plan would contain
• that we would present some implementation options for them to consider
• that because they had purchased the Action Plan, they would be free to implement the plan in-house or take it to someone else to implement if they chose to do so
• that the cost of the Action Plan would be attributed to the cost of any future project

Then I asked them to go ahead.

Here’s what happened:

1. “Tyre kickers” went no further – great!
2. Serious prospects proceeded with the Action Plan, and I was happy to deliver it, putting extra effort into its preparation (although you should note that the Action Plan itself was essentially just a renamed version of the “Proposal” from before).
3. The conversion rate to full projects went from 1 in 4 (25%) to 2 in 3 (67%) – an increase of over 2 1/2 times.
4. I spent less time selling and got better sales results, while delivering more value to the prospects and clients whom I really wanted to help.

To successfully institute a fee-based proposal system, here are a few pointers:

1. Warm leads are important. The warmer the lead, the less resistance you will have to your initial fee.  One of the best ways to warm up leads is via a well-orchestrated information-and-education campaign (which can be completely automated via your website).
2. A well-defined USP that addresses the key problem your prospects are facing. You need to know the problem you’re solving for the client and the benefits you can render, and express that in a client-centric way.  (If you can’t recite you USP by heart, you probably don’t have one.)
3. You need to prepare a “mini-pitch” to sell the proposal. I purposely designed my Action Plan content and pricing, not as a revenue generator, but as a “filter” for non-clients.  Nevertheless, I did need a mini-pitch explain the value and sell the plan.
4. A delivery mechanism that is as systematised as possible. (Although the more customised you want to make the proposal, the more you can charge.  I now perform a more advanced Workshop and Action Plan that costs $3,000 + GST)
5. A seamless process to convert proposals into clients. You don’t want to wind up writing tonnes of proposals and lose site of your outcome.

“But my industry is different” / “All my competitors do free quotes so I have to as well” / “This won’t work in my business”

It’s true that certain industries may be a more “logical” fit for paid proposals or quotes, but that doesn’t mean you should dismiss paid proposals out-of-hand.

We are working with one client in a finance-related niche where EVERY OTHER COMPETITOR does everything “Free”, yet we are putting together a series of fee-based offers that are successful because they are based around additional value to the client.

Another option is to have multiple lead “streams” – a “free” stream and a “paid” stream.  Within a short time you will work out where the buyers are and how to attract and service them better.

Give paid proposals a try, or contact us and we can help you optimise your lead generation funnel by orders of magnitude.

But you should know, it’ll cost you

We work with a number of clients in finance and professional services industries.

Here’s the story of how a few years ago I increased my conversion rate of prospects to customers from 20% to 66%, and completely eliminated tyre-kickers and free-advice-seekers from my sales funnel and got PAID to do so…

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Lead Generation Survey Of 324 Australian Small Business Owners Released

Earlier this year I conducted a survey focused on Australian Online Lead Generation practices, in collaboration with Dr Marc Dussault of Platinum Programs. The results were telling but not particularly surprising – most Australian SMEs don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to generating leads over the Internet.

And that’s understandable.  I don’t know how to perform brain surgery, build a house or prepare a company tax return because that’s not my core business.  But if I want to do any of those things, I find someone who can do it and outsource it to them.

The Survey:

324 Australian Small to Medium sized businesses from a diverse range of industries were dissected, scrutinised and thoroughly examined via an online survey of 28 questions. 81% of the study participants came from organisations with less than $1 million in annual revenue.

Key Findings:

The findings expose the fundamental reasons why a deadly ‘heart attack’ is almost assured for the majority of Australian small business websites and what needs to be done to stop the bloodshed.

• SMEs understand the importance of online marketing – 77% assess their website as being moderately to critically important for generating enquiries and influencing sales at the present time. A WHOPPING 98% predict that their online channel will be moderately to critically important for generating enquiries and influencing sales within two years’ time.
• 82% suffer from marketing blindness because they don’t track any KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for their website. 65% aren’t tracking ANY conversion rates such as newsletter opt-in rates or shopping cart checkout rates.
• 83% suffer from acute traffic depression and are either moderately dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the traffic volume their website receives.
• 86% admit they have no clue about their Search Engine Optimisation results and can only estimate their Return On Investment in ballpark figures
• A staggering 83% suffer from major cellular damage, running with online promotions that are actually eating their profits. They never realise the consequences of their actions because they don’t TEST to optimise results when they introduce new website features or content.
• 58% suffer form an embarrassing memory loss that’s costing them tens of thousands of dollars in lost profits, as they hardly ever or never send email broadcasts to their suspects, prospects or clients, thus missing out on a major revenue opportunity that could boost their constitution in a matter of days.
• 96% of respondents assess their website as being only minimally to moderately effective at achieving their revenue generation goals.

Dissection of the answers obtained from this extensive survey lead to the conclusion that one of the main problems lies in the lack of systems, strategies and processes that can create and sustain a profitable online lead or sales generation pipeline.

Most Australian SMEs are not doing the basics right (testing and tracking, keep-in-touch marketing, optin-and-followup), let alone the advanced strategies required to get outstanding results.

From a therapeutic standpoint, we recommend that Australian businesses begin taking a much keener interest in the health of their Internet marketing. Prevention is better than cure and as the saying goes, “An ounce of perspiration is worth a gallon of blood”.

A diet high in well-targeted online advertising with attention-grabbing headlines and clear calls to action that leverage proven Internet marketing strategies such as opt-in email marketing, information and education, testimonials, “proof” elements and sales process automation will ensure a long, healthy and prosperous life for any small business.

The full internet marketing survey diagnoses the source of the ailments and proposes several potential cures, providing that the unsuspecting victims are warned in time and take proactive action to protect themselves.

Download the Full Lead Generation Survey Report Here (PDF)

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Video: Traffic Generation Strategies For Online Lead Generation

Here’s my second video on lead generation for “real” product and service businesses using the internet.

This time, the topic is Exponential Website Traffic Strategies.

Episode 2: Exponential Website Traffic Strategies

Press “Play” to listen.

Download a FULL TRANSCRIPT of the video in PDF format here

More profit-boosting resources:

• If you’re a Small Business Owner: Discover how to multiply your website profits with the Marketing Results Gold Internet Consulting Program.
• If you’re looking for an Enterprise-level solution for improving web profits: Read more about the Marketing Results Platinum Internet Consulting Program.

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Are You Getting Bored With Your Most Profitable Lead Generation Methods?

It’s funny how often marketers shun tried and tested, reliable strategies that bring in new customers much more effectively than other, more elaborate approaches.

It’s almost always the case that businesses will spend much more to acquire a new customer than to get an existing customer to purchase again OR to stop an existing customer from defecting to the competition. (My theory is that customer acquisition marketing tends to be a lot “sexier” than followup communications, so acquisition gets more of the attention).

In much the same way, I often see people mothballing their BEST marketing methods in favour of risky, untested lead gen tactics that produce anything from half to 5% of the results of other strategies.

Of course, this isn’t done with any masochistic intent to deliver sub-par results.  It’s just that we humans seem to have a “love of the new” and think we have to be constantly re-inventing our marketing approaches in order to gain traction.

If you take your eye off your metrics, even for a minute, this is a very easy trap to fall into.

Case in point: I recently consulted with a retail chain with a fairly substantial web channel.   We analysed where all new customers and sales had come from over the last few years and found the metrics somewhat lacking in detail.    Most of the “active” lead generation activity that had been conducted appeared to be rather expensive, requiring at least a year of loyal custom by the new customer to pay the initial marketing expense.

One method that had been tried, but didn’t have any hard metrics associated with it, was enclosing printed referral request cards with orders.  I asked the client about this and the general consensus was that the referral cards were producing a few leads but that the cost was probably not worth it — that’s why they were discontinued for a year or so.

I persuaded the client to try another batch of referral card marketing, and the results were staggering — it was about 500% more cost-effective than ANY of their other active lead generation methods currently in operation.

I had to agree — this simple referral card marketing techniques was one of the most “un-exciting” marketing strategies they were deploying (not a “2.0″ to be seen anywhere!).   But it was also the most profitable.

Having got a handle on firm metrics associated with lead generation, the client is now sending referral request cards to customers no less than 6 times per year.    We will continue to monitor the results on an ongoing basis, but the campaigns will continue until there is something better to replace them.

What about you? Have you become bored with the lead generation methods that worked well for you in the past?  Try resurrecting some old favourites — you may be pleasantly surprised by the results!

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Alternatives to “Submit” and (UGH!) “Reset” Buttons In Online Forms

Something that really raises my hackles is the use of the default buttons “Submit” and “Reset” on web forms.

For starters, the “Reset” button should be banned altogether. Why on earth would you want a perfectly good prospect or client to reset an entire form? Although this seems self-evident, I’m amazed the the number of companies (even big, reputable companies) that still feature “reset” buttons on their forms. (In one case, tweaking form design including removing the dreaded “Reset” button doubled conversion for that page.)

Then there’s the trusty “Submit” button. Remembering that EVERY element of a form can potentially influence response and that the button is the last thing the user sees before taking the desired action, wording is critical.

Some good alternatives to “Submit” are…

• “Free Instant Access” (very good for opt-ins and digital information)
• “Yes! Count Me In!” (good for event and seminar registrations
• “Yes! Reserve My Place”
• “Yes, Fast-track My Application”
• “Contact a Website Conversion Expert Now”

You get the idea.

You won’t always significantly boost response with a custom button name, but it is one of the many conversion levers you have at your disposal, so why not use it?

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