A wide range of questions were asked at the webinar on ‘5 Strategies to Get the Best Website Conversion’ conducted by Nilesh Patel, CEO of LeadSquared. Those of you who missed the webinar, here’s a summary of some of the questions asked during that session. You could also listen to the webinar recording on ‘5 Strategies to Get the Best Website Conversion’ here.
Webinar FAQs:
Question 1
What are your views on the quality score of a page and how does it affect conversions?
As far as the quality score is concerned, I think having high quality score certainly reduces the cost of conversion. What is also equally important is – if a certain type of page is not giving us the best quality score, what we should look at is whether it is giving us the best conversion. Further, if you go down, you may say that this page actually gives you more conversion but does not necessarily close business deals. Eventually, the conversion of the customer is important. For instance, if the quality score is 1, 2, and 3, then I’m worried. But if the quality score is 6, 7, and 8, I would worry less about the page and worry more about how I can improve conversions.
Question 2
I am interested in making a short 30 sec video clip introducing my business. I am planning to show this in the first fold of my website. The video will show the services offered by my company. Is this a good idea?
A video is always a great idea. It is a great value proposition. However, keep it short. Showing your business services may not necessarily be the best way to go about it. How your service can benefit the visitor who is coming to the site should be the focus of the video. Credibility elements can also be a part of the video.
Question 3
What role/percentage do simple visual effects/graphic animations contribute towards gaining traffic on a website?
I think what is important here is the visitor. Having a graphical website or animation is fancy but should not be the main focus of the website. It of course makes a difference but is not the ultimate goal. Rather, the priority here should be the visitor, and what should you be telling them and why should they be interested in your business.
Question 4
Real estate has a trend of project based micro sites in comparison to company website. What is the best practice?
I think the whole idea of micro site is overdone in some cases. The same information can be re-laid in a simple page as well. If you perceive that a simple page can offer the same information that is probably offered by a micro site, maybe the page can convert more and visa-versa. I’m assuming when you say micro site, you are talking about a simple page having multiple tabs and giving more information. If you try both, you would have a better sense of what works for you, based on the data.
In my opinion, when it comes to conversion, the layout and site structure are definitely important and so is the message, but I think it ultimately comes down to the offer.
Question 5
Is it better to have a landing page without a scroll or is it okay to have a scroll?
It is okay to have a scroll as long as the story flows with the scroll. However, if you can tell the story without a scroll, nothing like it.
Question 6
I use Google Forms as my lead pages. How can I track conversions in Google AdWords?
Tracking conversion in AdWords is a function of you setting up an AdWords Conversion. In order to get that, you have to first set up the conversion in AdWords. There’s a conversion tracking script that you will get. After Google form submission happens, you have to redirect the visitor to another page, where the conversion tracking code lives. If that code runs, only then will Google AdWords record the conversion.
In my knowledge, Google Forms does not let you create a post-submission page, or customize it without at least a bit of coding. This is the page where the conversion script is supposed to be, so you might not be able to track conversions here, if you are unable to customize the code. Please let us know if you have been able to do this. You could also take a look at this discussion.
Question 7
What is your opinion on free gifts or discounts? Can it help to get more leads?
Absolutely. You would definitely be able to get better visitor to lead conversions using free gifts, but whether or not these people will buy later isn’t always sure. Also, when you offer free stuff, your expectation of the lead quality should also go down a little bit. Anyone coming for a free gift is not necessarily going to buy your product or service. They are basically coming for the free thing you are offering. If you think the deal value or the potential outcome of that investment from the free gift, can be extracted by virtue of converting those leads into customers in future, go for it. As far as discounts are concerned, they will attract potential buyers rather than just visitors who are interested in your free gift.
Question 8
Isn’t it better to have landing pages on our own domain over having it on websites such as LeadPages/Unbouce/LeadSquared, etc? From a customer point of view, is it better to have navigation elements?
You can have the landing page in your own domain name. If you are referring to the central name of the domain, create a sub-domain and host the pages on your own domain name. Even though they may lie in some other server, like Unbounce, LeadSquared or whatever software you are using.
From a potential customer standpoint, if you are putting a navigation element on the landing page, then you are basically saying that the customer who comes on the landing page navigates to other elements. The landing page ideally should be used when you are getting traffic which has a certain intent or you have a certain intent to tell the traffic which you are bringing in, (and there is a single value proposition on the page) and you are conveying that single value proposition on the page. Now, instead of us focusing on that, if we put other website navigation elements, we may lose the traffic, to those navigation elements and the conversion will not happen. Hence, we should avoid that.
For some reason, if you are not able to communicate your value proposition on the page itself then the visitor may want to look at everything else before they give their information. But the idea of landing page is to make sure that the value proposition is immediately communicated. I would recommend not having navigation elements until and unless you perceive that the value proposition cannot be explained in the page itself.
Question 9
Are there any catchy words that would attract visitors and increase clicks?
There are no catchy words as such. You should ideally focus on what would be interesting to the visitor. There are phrases that would certainly be more relevant and meaningful to the visitor. Try to analyze what the visitor gets out of your content. There are several online tools available for you to find those phrases/sentences for your type of business.
Question 10
Could you please tell me which landing page is more impressive – a product specific or a company specific landing page?
A visitor coming to your website is not interested in your company. Visitors are interested in what you have to offer them. For example, if you are offering a travel product, they would be interested in that product and then look at the company to find out their credibility, etc.
Question 11
How can LeadSquared help me in tracking the conversion rate and increasing the traffic on my website?
LeadSquared can definitely help in converting more visitors into leads through landing pages, forms, etc. LeadSquared has landing page conversion reports. With that, you would be able to analyze how your landing pages are performing.
Question 12
Can offers really attract the prospective buyers?
It depends on the offer. Ideally the offer should be relevant to what you are doing. For instance, if the offer of your company is to help customers understand how well their website is structured, and you tell them that if they sign up, you will tell them in thirty minutes or so, what are the flaws in their website and how it can be improved, that would definitely attract the leads. I can’t say if it will attract the buyers because that includes other functions but it will certainly convert more visitors to leads.
Question 13
Product-based website or company website, which would be better for a B2C business?
For B2C businesses, it would be product based. It also depends on how many products the business has.
Question 14
How can I judge the quality of a lead?
You should analyze whether your leads from a particular source are becoming customers or not. If they are only availing your offers, but not buying your product, they are definitely not the best quality leads.
Question 15
Sometimes client ask us to use third-party party scripts like chat, Google Ad sense banners, etc., but those also affect the page load time. How can we resolve this issue?
The page load has multiple elements and it is affected by insertion of scripts. Having blocking scripts in your head section severely affects the page load time. To avoid this, you can put them in the footer, where it probably won’t affect as much. If you try the test on WebPagetest and other such tools, you will be able to understand what you can optimize.
Question 16
Clients also ask us to use fixed buttons that show Contact Form when clicked. Is that a good way or should we keep quick query form on the top left/right area?
Clients will ask us to put a button wherever they want. I have done services and I know that you have to say yes to the customer when they want something. However, using tools like LeadSquared, you can show the customer which one is actually working better and present that data to the customer. When you go to them, it’s not about intuition, it’s about data and usually when data is presented, people take decisions based on that.
Question 17
Does repeating the content – news, company name, etc., help the website?
The keywords relevant to your business should be there on your website; they will be there of course when you are writing the description of your business. However, deliberate repetition that looks unnatural is not ideal.
Question 18
Would you suggest using a pop up, every time a user visits the site?
The answer is no. People get irritated with pop ups. These are tactics, not strategies. You can try that and see – if it irritates your visitors a lot then you can remove them. Certain advanced tools will allow you to time the pop up. You can give that a go. Otherwise, don’t frustrate the visitors. Continue it if it works; stop if it doesn’t.
Question 19
Should the Call to Action form be on the right side or left side? Which option will increase the conversions?
We have observed that, for one of our clients, conversions doubled when the Call to Action form was on the left side. However, that does not stand true for all businesses. You have to test and see which works for your business.
Question 20
We are currently showing banner ads on the left and the right side. Should we show these ads for mobile devices also?
You should do that if your landing pages/website is responsive, so that when the visitors click on the ad and reach your website, they don’t bounce off.
Question 21
Is it advisable to have videos on landing pages of campaigns?
You can try both variations, with and without video, and see which one converts faster and better. There are tools out there which will help you create more landing pages. Most of the businesses are content with just one landing page and are reluctant to put any effort on that. The effort in conversion and budget is minuscule as compared to the acquisition budget. It would be a good idea to try a few more pages and see which one has more conversions.
Question 22
Talking of live chats, most of them open up in an iframe, which are not mobile friendly. How do you tackle that?
I think it’s a drawback for the business. The important thing here is to see if one can go into Google Analytics and see what kind of traffic they are getting from the mobile as well as regular desktops and then take a call on that.
I think in certain advanced chat programmes, there could be a possibility for you to set up a flag which may say that don’t open the chat window when it is on mobile. That way you could at least avoid a frustrated visitor.
Question 23
How do you rank Piwik versus google analytics
If you use Piwik, you have to do your own hosting. If you can do your own hosting then you can have a crack at Piwik but if you don’t then you can go for Google Analytics. Personally, I have not tried Piwik so I can’t say which one is better.
Question 24
Google analytics has a lot of problems, specifically the undefined or NOT SET, which is a major turn-off. So is there a better analytics suite that can be used?
While it is true that Google Analytics has “Keywords not available” problem, you can use Google Webmasters to get an overview of the search terms that are being used.
Question 25
AdWords has become an space shuttle to skip SEO, though it is known that SEO is a better way have quality traffic. But the way Google changes it has left SEO almost orphan. What is your take on that?
SEO is still relevant; the important thing to understand is that SEO has changed in certain ways. We have conducted webinars also on the topic before. You can take a look at them here:
How to Get Started with Website SEO
The New SEO Paradigm – From Keywords to Context
Today, rather than stuffing keywords into your content, it is important to understand the context of a search, and the intent of your visitors.
