HIGHER CONVERSION RATE
Increase your Profitability
Grow sales with your website
The questions that needs to be asked first: How does your business gain from your current website? How much room for profit growth does it offer? Is your website, and therefore your business, underperforming? What is your success rate – or in other words – what percentage of your page visitors either get in touch with you or buy something, aka the conversion rate?
Whatever your answers to these questions are, there is always room for growth, even if you might currently doubt it!
In our day and age, a website – which is ideally accessible 24/7 and available around the globe & across all devices (Responsive Website Design) – with a clear focus is probably the strongest marketing tool available to any business for promoting the brand, acquiring new customers and driving sales both online and offline.
Other than traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ (offline) shops which can only make money within certain business hours and a limited geographical area – a website lets any business break free from these restrictions.
It has the potential to be boundless with regards to availability, both in terms of time and location. Just think of the success of online retailer Amazon, for example…
Cutting Costs - an example
Any business that actively sells its products and services through its website operates at much higher margins, leaving the business with greater profits to reinvest for expansion, for example.
Not only are sales through a website optionally commission-free, they also have the potential to cut overhead cost due to higher volumes of sales.
A quick real-life example: A local company that builds and sells power washers employs a team of sales representatives to market and sell the different types of power washers. When a potential customer contacts the company via phone to enquire about a certain product – as there is currently no information to be found online – the company is already building up costs without generating revenue.
Why? Because the company’s sales representative, who answers the phone, will speak to the potential customer for nearly five minutes (whilst getting paid) answering the questions that could have all been answered on a website, without the certainty of a sale!
Despite the efforts to make a sale, the potential customer demands some time to think about the offer and hangs up. As you can imagine, the company has just lost money that has to be earned back somehow.
Throughout the five minutes of the phone call, the sales representative has no option to sell another power washer to any other potential customer, as he or she can only answer one phone call at a time. In business this is broadly understood as opportunity cost (the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen). Even if the customer agrees to the price and buys the power washer, the company will be left with only a small margin, as it has to pay the sales representative’s wages and sales commission, opportunity cost (which is no actual cash outflow), business overheads, the fixed cost related to the power washer itself, and so on…
If, however, the company had a strong online presence, selling its power washers accompanied with detailed product information on its website, the occurring cost would have been a fraction in comparison.
Of course, certain costs cannot be eliminated, such as the fixed production cost of the product. However, due to the increased scope of potential customers, sales are likely to increase, resulting in lower cost thanks to economies of scale (the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, with cost per unit of output decreasing with increasing scale).
A website could also manage dozens of potential product enquiries and sales at the same time, resulting in absolutely no cost if a person decides not to buy or demands more time to decide. Therefore, unsuccessful leads will not result in additional cost to the business, and opportunity cost is fully eliminated. Successful sales, on the other hand, are commission-free.
Perhaps the most significant advantage of having a website, however, would be the ability to make sales around the clock. The website continues to sell outside of business opening hours, on weekends, and especially on bank holidays.
Imagine the following: On a warm, sunny bank holiday morning, John wants to power wash his garden furniture. Unfortunately, however, he notices that his old power washer is broken beyond repair and he can no longer use it.
What do you think he does next? He will – most likely – immediately go online to research the latest models and search for a new one to replace his broken washer.
Will the company, only offering power washers on weekdays from 9am-5pm, have a chance to sell? Absolutely not! The new power washer John gets will most likely be bought online from the company’s competitor – who has a great website.
How a website benefits your business
The website’s core purpose depends heavily on the visitor’s intended reaction (which might be buying a product, subscribing to the newsletter, requesting a quotation, etc…) and the nature of the business itself.
Is the website’s sole purpose the supply of information and space for advertisement, or does it actively sell the business’s products and services?
Either way, every business website offers vast opportunities for a higher conversion rate – the percentage of all website visitors (the traffic) who act as intended, e.g. hit the ‘buy’ button – and, therefore, certain profit growth.
Factors increasing the conversion rate are numerous. For example, the wording of text, the use of pictures, the site’s functionality, the use of colours, the overall logic, structure and clarity, the distribution of buttons, and many other elements.
As you might imagine, the opportunities for growth are as individual as your business itself and therefore need to be assessed individually for the best & most lucrative result.
Who else has unused potential?
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Increase the Conversion Rate
If you are interested in maximising your site’s effectiveness, or have open questions, please contact us today.
