A customer takes a small leap of faith every time they decide to invest in a product or service. Chances are slim that anyone will want to take a bigger risk and pay for something they know little about. That’s why so many companies spend lots of time honing their web design and nailing their website optimization: their customers want to see the full picture before making a decision.
It’s important to consider the buying process that customers are likely going through, and cater to them with your website optimization. Individual customers will be at different stages in their buying cycle, and need to see something specific to move to the next stage. Some people will be on your website all ready to make a purchase, and others will just be scratching the surface of who you are.
A marketing sales funnel comes in many different forms, yet they are all similar in principle. Here are a couple versions:
Sometimes a person will go through each and every stage, and other times they will skip a few.
Keep reading to learn how to figure out an individual’s buying stage, the right content to show at each stage, and how to fix your website optimization to cater to your individual customer’s needs.
1. Figure Out Your Visitor’s Buying Stage in the Marketing Sales Funnel
A great way to figure out any visitor’s buying stage is to find the keywords that are driving most of the traffic to your website. Those keywords will show the intent of each visitor.
As an example, if someone searches for the keyword “flute”, and lands on a vendor like fluteworld.com, the intent was likely that they wanted to purchase a flute. In that case, the visitor could be around the middle of the sales funnel, which could be Interest, Desire, or maybe even Action.
In the case of the visitor searching for “flute” and only landing on informational pages, it’s not likely that they are trying to buy a flute.
Of course, it takes much less thinking when the keyword is super specific, like “history of the flute”, “flute mechanics”, “cheap flutes”, or “flute reviews”. Those keywords either show that a customer is strictly looking for general information, or that a customer shows strong purchasing intentions.
Searching for a very specific product, like “Azumi AZ-2 flute”, will often indicate a customer that is pretty far along in the buying process. They are now looking at specific products and may now be in the Action or Purchase stage. It’s important to strengthen your radar on what buying stage is associated with certain keywords, and apply that to your situation.
2. Website Optimization for Conversions using Keywords
When you’re working on website optimization for conversions, software is used to analyze all keywords to find what drives visitors to you. It’s no easy task, because there are thousands of possible keywords that bring customers to your web pages. Keyword research tools help with this. You could use BuzzSumo, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, and more to help analyze your top keywords and optimize your website content for those.
Here is how to put this into action:
- Get down a list of all the keywords that get the most traffic to your website.
- Shift your focus to the top 100 keywords.
- Organize that top 100 list into categories on a spreadsheet, in any way that makes sense to you. Organize based on the visitor’s intent (see step 1), bounce rates, site visit times, and any other data you want to keep track of.
By doing this, you’ll know more about your visitor’s stages in the buying cycle, and how to fix your website optimization to cater to those people and what they are searching for. Of course, it’s not always going to be a 100% accurate prediction of behavior, because finding a visitor’s intent can be subjective. It’s all about looking for patterns and trends, and following in their direction. That’s the first step to success and lead generation.
Search engines are becoming smarter and giving more personalized results, which means they are getting better at analyzing visitor intent by the keyword. There are many ways to tailor your website optimization to respond to the interests of users at each stage in the marketing sales funnel.
It’s important to keep in mind that if you try to give all the information about your brand to every single customer as a cover-all, customers will be overwhelmed and uninterested. It’s possible to get fast success in the marketing world, but you’ll want to make sure you’re not rushing your customers. They need the right, bite-sized piece of information that fits their particular stage in the marketing sales funnel. Here are more ways to maximize your lead generation online using this strategy.
3. Tailor Web Design for the Attention Stage
In the attention stage, customers are deciding whether or not they trust you in half a second. It’s all about making a good first impression at this point.
Here are some steps you can take to nail the attention stage of the marketing sales funnel and captivate your audience:
- Encourage trust on your landing page for this stage.
- Try to intrigue the audience within 5 seconds.
- Make the web design and content pop! It’s important to have eye-catching headlines.
- Fill the page with good surprises. Don’t just copy what everyone else is doing – show how you’re unique.
4. Website Optimization for the Interest Stage
In the Interest Stage, you have your visitor’s attention, but now they need to be clearly persuaded to be interested in you.
- Emphasize significant and important information, whether that’s a brand story, the special qualities of your product or service, or anything else you want to bring into the spotlight.
- Start answering the questions addressed in the keywords more in-depth. Be the solution to their problem.
- Make sure your information is relevant to their search. Tailor SEO to their keywords, but keep it natural.
- Make sure your web design is responsive, clear, and concise.
At this point, give product names, features, images, prices, more details, and reviews. Reviews are super important for the mid-funnel – testimonials will bridge the gap between the attention/interest stages and the desire/action stages.
5. Web Design for the Desire Stage
Then comes website optimization for the desire stage, where you’re convincing visitors that your product or service is going to solve their problems and outshine competitors.
- Give users a reason to stay on the website with a great communication of value, or simply, great content.
- Encourage a conversion by adding links for plans and pricing, or linking to any other pages that are relevant to making a purchase.
- Make the product or service extra desirable by adding special deals and offers. An example of that could be a discount on the first purchase.
- Show benefits or incentives to choosing you. That could be comparing your prices to competitors, or, again, communicating your value in other ways.
- Make sure there are tons of reviews and testimonials!
6. Website Optimization for the Action Stage
Website optimization for the action stage is about more than just the conversion: engagement with your content and clicking on links also count as actions. All those things lead up to a conversion. You could take a gentle and chill approach to encouraging your customers to convert, or a more pushy approach. That all depends on your context, industry, and target audience.
- Make an “action goal” for each page of your site. That could be clicking on a video or adding something to the cart. Make the design of your site emphasize each action.
- Make it easy to take action. Continue to make sure your web design is responsive, clear, attractive, and obvious.
- Make the process of making a purchase clear and step-by-step for customers.
7. Web Design for the Post-Action Stage
The post-action stage is all about the relationship between you and your customers. If your product or service is not a one-off purchase, like a fridge, for example, you’ll ideally have repeat customers. You want to keep these customers around, and even if your product or service is a one-time thing, your customers should want to refer you to their friends and family.
- Make sure it is easy for customers to get the service they need. Provide easy and quick communication on any issues they may have.
- Keep track of customer satisfaction. Ask for and listen to customer feedback.
- Give customers surveys and polls to participate in as they exit your site.
- Reach out to customers via email, social media, and more.
Boosting your web design and website optimization to the stages of the marketing sales funnel can help your lead generation soar. By making changes and documenting the customer response, you can see what areas you need to improve and where you’re doing things right. Give these strategies a try and plant those seeds for new leads today! 🐢
