Remember how it felt when you were watching TV and suddenly, the first faint melody of “Turkey in the Straw” would drift through the house – THE ICE CREAM TRUCK!!!
Suddenly that lazy summer afternoon would explode into action. Screen doors slammed in every house on the block as kids burst onto front lawns, clutching wadded dollar bills rescued from piggy banks and sock drawers. The white truck rolled slowly down the street like a dream, its rainbow-colored pictures of popsicles and Bomb Pops growing clearer with each passing second. Even the grown-ups would emerge onto the front porches to see the show, smiling at the familiar ritual while small hands tugged at their shorts, pleading for just one more dollar.
The ice cream truck had no problems converting those little mini-leads into paying customers. Their call to action was simple: a song on a hot day, pictures of ice cream and popsicles on the side of their truck, and no competition.
We are not so lucky. There are competitors everywhere big and small, with all types of budgets, yelling into the ether about how great they are, and we need to do everything we can to get those in-store design appointments.
Luckily, the holidays are approaching and people are searching for the perfect gift, and you will see a natural spike in web traffic. The question is, will they buy from you?
The next question is, do you make it easy for them to buy from you?
To increase your appointments and sales, you don’t need to spend on campaigns if you already have decent web traffic. You can already squeeze more out of what you have if you address two concepts with your site – User Journey and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Once you’ve addressed these issues, then start paying for campaigns but not before. Otherwise you’ll be flushing money down the turlet on web traffic that won’t turn into leads and customers.
So what are User Journey and CRO?
Website User Journey
Website user journey is a visitor’s process when interacting with a website. It is the sequence of steps and interactions they take from the moment they get to your site to achieving their goal or completing a desired action you’d like them to take. For most, it’s a design appointment, but if you’re an ecommerce business it’s buying a piece, but it could also be to get a quote.
A smooth user journey shows the visitor the right thing at the right time, and has the text and imagery they need to see to build trust, naturally moving them down the sales funnel.
Let’s say your focus is custom engagement rings. You have 2-3 seconds to catch your visitor’s attention (yes, less than a goldfish) before they leave your site. The first thing someone should see when they get to your site is that you do custom engagement rings, it should be in the headline of the top section of your site. Do not make them guess where they are or they will get confused and leave.
Next, have some text going deeper into custom engagement rings, and after that talk about why you are the one they should choose. After that, testimonials. After that, a call to action to book an in-store appointment.
Do you see the progression? Here is where you are, this is what you’re looking for, this is why we should be the ones to do it, and here are people backing that claim, and booking the appointment while the iron is hot.
After that, show more of what you do as further proof like a gallery of your custom work and a description of the design process.
If you do not follow a logical flow, it will confuse the visitor and their chances of leaving your site increase.
Do not start off by talking about yourself, the awards you’ve won, social buttons, how long you’ve been in business. Nobody cares. It’s like going on a Tinder date and listening to someone talk about themselves the whole time. Swipe left.
Conversion Rate Optimization
CRO is taking what you have and making it better.
If your website does well, optimizing your website will be just a matter of tweaking and refining. Maybe it’s a question of changing the color or placement of your “Buy Now” or “Book an In-store Appointment” buttons. It could be adding a few lines of text into the middle of a blog post that encourages the reader to book an appointment, with text that specifically references the topic of the post to something you sell, with a text link to your calendar instead of a button.
However, if you run campaigns and promote yourself, do SEO and drive traffic to your site in other ways, but still can’t figure out why no one is buying, it’s probably your site.
Is your call to action for people to “contact you”? Do you have a form with a whole bunch of fields asking for all of their info including the name of their first grade teacher? Does this call to action only appear at the bottom of your site, so the reader has to scroll all the way to the bottom? What does the button say? If it says “submit”, you’re in trouble.
Do you even have a call to action? I’ve seen sites where there’s just a contact us in the menu bar and that’s it. That’s bad, mmmkay?
As far as the layout and navigation of your site. It has to be easy on the eyes and simple to get to the type of piece they came for. If your website looks like a flier from a grocery store, which I’ve seen, you’re not going to sell as much. Your site has to represent your essence, and people don’t want a messy jeweler, they want someone with design skills and clean symmetric lines and an easy process to find what they’re looking for.
Do a test. Ask friends for their honest opinion of your site and tell them to tear it a new one. Take everything they tell you as a place to improve, and try not to take it personally. If they tell you your site is good, ask them to list three places it could be improved.
If they tell you your website looks like the aftermath of a bachelor party in Vegas, maybe it’s time to get a new one.
If you’re going to reach your sales targets and beat the competition, you need to drive traffic from multiple sources to your site. When your site is a well oiled appointment booking machine, you will be able to squeeze every drop of value out of the traffic coming to your site.
Next time we’ll talk about…what’s that…Turkey in the Straw! Time for ice cream, see you later.
