6 Website Design Tips to Get You More Sales or Subscribers

Does it make you mad when you spend ages making a website with great content and fantastic features but find you don’t get many subscribers or sales enquiries? You’re getting respectable traffic but your visitors aren’t taking your desired action. Well there is hope. Here are some real changes you can make to your website to improve the chance your visitors will buy your product or service or take whatever action you want.

Calls to Action

The phrase ‘call to action’ covers a wide range techniques but essentially it’s a message placed within your content that gives the reader a nudge to make whatever action you want. If you’re running an offline company then a very basic example is placing “Call Us Now on 0800 123456” (obviously using your phone number!) text at the bottom of your pages. You will probably be surprised how effective this simple placement will be. The reason why it works is because without this ‘call us’ text you’re relying on the visitor to find your contact details once they’ve read that particular page. It is true that a certain percentage will spend the time to find your Contact Us page but it is also true that some will not.

By placing this simple piece of text, it should boost the percentage of people who call you which at the end of the day means you’ll be getting more sales enquiries.

Not bad for a couple of words, right?

Blogs and other sites can use these simple calls to action with something like “Subscribe Now to our Blog Here”. There are many other calls to action though. For example, a more advanced example is making a slideshow, with each photo showing one of your products. And on each photo you’ll display some call to action text, together with a ‘Read More’ button. Another more advanced example when you make a video showing your product or service and at the end of the video, you’ll display a large button with something like “Click Here to Learn More” which will take the visitor to another page or perhaps your sign up page.

Give Free Stuff

Everyone loves free stuff! You can use this age old truth to get your website visitors to take your desired action. And it doesn’t have to cost you anything either. If you know your subject matter and can devote some time to write about your subject then you’ll be able to write a quality e-book that your readers can download for free. Of course within the e-book you’ll place some promotional offers, including a call to action at the end.

This is perfectly fine as both sides benefit;

• The visitor reads a free e-book, hopefully learning something new on a subject dear to their hearts.
• You win as a percentage of the people reading your e-book will follow the promotional calls to action and buy your things, subscribe to your blog or whatever else you want to achieve from your website.

Effective Headlines

You literally have seconds to grab the attention of most readers before they surf somewhere else, so the first headline on each of your pages need to stand out and be interesting. I recommend you download the (free) PDF from Headline Hacks. It contains lots of template headlines used for different situations where you replaced the ‘blank’ with your particular subject, which I use a lot. But writing effective headlines is also something that takes practice. Try writing two or three headlines then read each one and show them to a friend for feedback.

Exclusive Discounts

Another great way to improve sales is to offer discounts only available via the website. Even offering a small 10% discount should be enough to tempt people. Simply create a page on your site with details of the offer and place a form at the bottom of the offer page that will email you their details. Then create a strong call to action graphical button which you’ll place on your home page, linking to the offer page.

Call Me Back Box

This tip is mostly for offline businesses. Make a box with a very simple contact form containing Name, Phone and Email fields. Title the box ‘Call Me Back!’ and include a small introduction text of something like ‘Simply type in your details below and we’ll call you back ASAP’. And place this box on the side of all of your webpages, apart from pages such as Terms and Privacy Policy.

So why does this work? Why isn’t listing your phone number and a contact form on your Contact Us enough? The answer is simple; people are different. Some people won’t pick up the phone and would rather you call them back. Also, by having this simple contact form on every page, you’re giving the visitors more easy avenues to make contact with your company.

Video Testimonials

Most people know that testimonials can help improve sales but video testimonials are much more effective. But they have traditionally been far more complex and expensive to make but not anymore. These days there really is no excuse for not making a video of your customers to show on your website. It doesn’t have to be a top end professional video either, in fact in most cases just having some of your customers talk into the camera telling their story of how they found your product or service will be very effective.

A good example of some video testimonials can be found here (near the bottom of the page) which is just two web design clients talking into a camera with some simple animations and calls to action. You can do this for minimal cost and you should find it very effective for your website sales or subscriber numbers.

Simply video each of your customers then you’ll need to edit them together into one video. This is easy now as there are plenty of free easy to use video editors such as Microsoft Movie Maker. I also recommend you place a call to action at the end of the video which can help the person viewing it to contact you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This article was written by Bob who works for Action Online a website design company in Wellington, New Zealand. They offer design services to all New Zealand businesses and organizations.