As a fundamental part of your conversion rate, context is something of which you must be aware at all times as you develop your website and other marketing materials.
What is context?
The context of a potential customer’s visit to your website (where they come from, what they’re looking for, the stage of the purchasing process) influences their whole experience.
Presenting them with the information that is best suited to their exact circumstances is incredibly important to get right.
Here are a few examples:
- When your customers land on your website, will the information they see relate to the reason for their visit? If they followed a link to buy a specific product, will they land on that product page? If they came via a newsletter link, will they still get a pop-up asking to sign up for your mailing list?
- Does your website allow easy navigation? If visitors want to learn more about your company, do you provide an easy path to your About Us page, or do they have to go via the home page? Is the checkout easy to reach at any moment? You want your website to be easy to use.
- What information do you present to your customers? Is it relevant, or could it distract them from the original goal? All content you present needs to work towards getting your customers to the ultimate goal: the purchase.
View your site from a different perspective
When developing a website, it can become difficult to view it from the point of view of the customer, especially those visiting for the very first time. It is these first-timers for whom you have to get the context exactly right or they won’t convert into leads or sales.
Everyone is guilty of bad content or designs. It happens. However, the worst mistake you can make with your website is building it to suit you. You must make sure it suits your customers.
Don’t think about what you want to say; think about what the customers want to hear. While you may want to brag about your accomplishments, customers may not want to see that, especially not right away.
As Forbes explains, different people will experience things differently based on age. What’s more, those viewing on mobile tend to have much shorter attention spans.
This is why it’s crucial not to create distractions.
As a salesperson, you have to ensure that buying is easy for a customer. Sometimes, too many features or too much information will derail the sale.
Develop a good flow
It’s hard to look at something with fresh eyes when you’ve been working on it for a long time, so enlist someone who’s not familiar with the content to take a trip through your website.
Another simple trick to ensure your website has a good flow is to step away from the technology, go back in time a little, and pretend you’re selling your products to someone in person.
Consider the basic sales concepts:
- Why does the customer need the product?
- How will the product benefit the buyer?
- What is the most important piece of information you want to share about the product?
- Why is this product a better choice than something else?
Doing this will give you a great starting point for the flow of your website. You can map out how you will lead the user from landing on the site to making a purchase.
Next, take this information and compare it to your website as it is currently.
Is there too much unnecessary information coming at them? Are you missing important content? Make sure your website sells in a logical manner.
Less is often more
A huge mistake most people make with conversion rate optimisation is information overload.
For example, you cannot include every single testimonial you receive. Five excellent testimonials are much better than a page-full.
Too often, we focus on what we can add to our websites to get them to buy. However, the opposite often works better. Ask yourself what you can remove from your website to make a better user experience.
ZDNet explains that you need to give the customer what they want. Here are a few key points to keep in mind:
- Purpose. You must address the purpose of their visit right away and give them a clear path to fulfilling that purpose.
- Personal. There should be ways for the user to personalise the experience on your website. Whether this is signing into an account where they get targeted information based on past purchases or a targeted message based on how they got to your site, make it speak to the customer’s current experience.
- Value. Make it worth it for the visitor. People are used to instant gratification, so don’t make them search for what they really want.
Taking this mindful approach ensures you have a website focused on the needs of the users and not your own.
Always keep learning
You are never finished with learning about selling, reaching customers, optimising experiences, and developing content.
Using resources from within the industry can help you expand your knowledge and incorporate new ideas into your methods. Here’s a look at a few top choices.
This addresses the stages of the user journey. It can help you to learn how to best connect to your customers and to give them an overall exceptional experience.
This is about context-awareness. It can help you to overcome initial rejections and learn how to build trust and authority.
This covers the idea of having and developing a subtraction mindset. It will help you with creating that intentional website we learned about earlier.
If you can develop a website that provides the right experience for your customers, you will find it is a million times easier to convert visits to sales. You will also be able to develop better relationships with your customers that keep them coming back.
