Conversion Strategies Archives

7 Ways To Reduce Friction And Increase Website Conversions

June 12, 2018 Jennifer Bourn

The conversion process on every website, especially online stores, must be as easy as possible. Moving a prospective customer from the awareness stage, to the consideration stage, to the final decision stage should be simple, straightforward, and completely obvious.

Friction happens when something on your website slows down or stops the progression of a prospective buyer from moving through your sales funnel. Identifying points of friction in your sales process and addressing them can help increase sales from your existing traffic dramatically.

There are 7 fundamental ways to reduce friction on your website and increase conversions:

5 Ways To Simplify Design And Increase Website Conversions

May 9, 2018 Jennifer Bourn

The silent saboteur of website conversion rates is bad website design or a pretty design that’s all fluff and no strategy, smarts, or structure.

Your website is the central hub for your brand online, the primary vehicle for interaction with your audience, and destination where conversions are taking place. No matter what type of conversion you are seeking — sign up, subscribe, click, register, enroll, buy, join, hire, watch, etc. — the website design must support the sales process, make the content easy to engage with, and naturally guide visitors through the website and ultimately to take action.

There are five primary opportunities to simplify your website design and increase conversions:

5 Ways To Provoke Action And Increase Website Conversions

April 10, 2018 Jennifer Bourn

As a site owner, you put a lot of effort into driving traffic to your website. You write blog posts and invest time and effort into organic SEO and social media marketing. You publish an email newsletter, send email blasts, and leverage email automations and follow up campaigns. You’re a guest on podcasts, you guest blog on other popular websites, you host webinars, and you even invest in paid traffic like Google AdWords, Facebook ads, and Instagram ads.

After all of that work, the very worst thing that could happen when someone visits your website is that they leave without taking a single action. Once a person reaches your website, your job is to get them the information they need quickly and easily, persuade them to stay on the site longer, and then get them to take action.

There are five core ways to easily provoke action on your website and increase conversions:

6 Ways To Improve Website Content And Increase Website Conversions

March 6, 2018 Jennifer Bourn

Once a visitor reaches your website, your job is to keep them on the site as long as possible, help them progress in their buyer journey, and encourage them to take action. Content that is optimized for conversion delivers value, builds trust, and gets visitors to take action faster.

When evaluating your website content, there are six main opportunities where you can make small changes that result in big increases in conversions.

8 Ways To Mitigate Risk And Increase Website Conversions

February 7, 2018 Jennifer Bourn

The more risk a consumer believes there to be, the less like they are to make a purchase. When asking a visitor to take action, it is your job to minimize or eliminate all perceived risks so they can take action with confidence, be comfortable with their purchase, and feel like they made the right choice.

Mitigating risk is about more than just moving your site from HTTP to HTTPS. In fact, there are 8 key areas you can focus on to mitigate risk and improve website conversions:

Your Website Contact Page Deserves To Be A Priority

April 7, 2017 Jennifer Bourn

When anyone thinks of creating a new website, writing website content, or interacting on an existing website to improve user experience, the onsite customer journey, or conversions, they almost always begin with the key services, products and sales pages. They then look at the checkout pages for online purchases, the home page, testimonials or reviews, the about page, maybe an FAQ or support page. They even look at the blog. Rarely does any website owner prioritize the website contact page.

When it comes to the contact page of a website, most people barely give it any thought.

Even some of the most beautiful, well-designed websites in the world have ho-hum contact pages. A basic contact form is added to the page, the page is checked off a list of website to-dos, and focus is given to something that matters more. Or worse, the website contact page is viewed as a necessary evil and is created to be more of a barrier than an invitation.

How To Create An Ideal Client Profile And Use It To Make Your Marketing More Effective

November 7, 2016 Jennifer Bourn

Last week I shared some thoughts on the gut of surface-level blog posts about defining an ideal client and why it is helpful in business. My article on Defining Your Client Persona To Create Targeted Marketing Messages walks you through what an ideal client profile is, why you need one, and how it helps your marketing efforts. I even provided some tips on how to identify who your ideal client is.

The feedback on the article so far has been amazing, so I wanted to take it a step further and really dig in deeper to share exactly how to create an ideal client profile, in another article I wrote for GoDaddy, Narrow Your Focus: Tips For Creating An Ideal Client Profile And Putting It To Work, including:

9 Ways evaluate data to create an ideal client profile
How to get the data needed to create an ideal client profile
How to use an ideal client profile

Here is the full article:

Sales Pages, Landing Pages, and Squeeze Pages, Oh My!

May 24, 2014 Jennifer Bourn

Sales pages and Landing pages are web pages with no navigation menu, no sidebar, no footer widget area, and no links off the page — except to a shopping cart or order form. Squeeze pages also have no navigation menu, no sidebar, no footer widget area, and no links off the page.

The premise behind these pages is to eliminate all distractions from the page, and keep visitors completely focused on taking one single action — they are used solely to increase conversions.

Let’s look at these types of pages a little closer:

How to Plan Your WordPress Site For Conversion

July 12, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Ask Brian Bourn how he went from being new to WordPress, to being an awesome developer and WordPress wrangler, and he’ll tell you the WordPress community, Twitter, and WordCamps. In fact, WordCamps are probably his favorite part. He travels around the country several times a year to different WordCamps so he can talk shop with his WordPress Twitter buddies, learn some new stuff, and give back whenever he can.

Recently, Brian — Bourn Creative’s lead web developer — was invited to speak at the two-day 2013 Reno-Tahoe WordCamp on April 27-28 at the University of Nevada, Reno.

3 Steps to Turn Your WordPress Site Into a Lead Generating Machine

February 25, 2013 Jennifer Bourn

Last week Brian and I both gave lightning talks at the Sacramento WordPress Meetup. Brian’s talk shared the 5 must have plugins we recommend for every WordPress website. My talk covered how to turn your website visitors into clients and customers — more specifically I talked about website strategy and three steps you can take to turn your website into a lead generating machine.

How to Make Your Website a Lead Generating Machine:

Creating a complete small business website takes comprehensive strategic planning of the content and user flow, the user experience, the sales funnel, the design, the navigation menus, the page templates, and more. Usually my website strategy presentation is an hour long, but for the Sacramento WordPress meetup, I was limited to only 10 minutes!

These are the three website strategies I shared in my talk — the strategies I think are most important for a website owner to understand:

STRATEGY 1: Use the Know, Like, Trust, Conversion approach to naturally lead your visitors to take action
STRATEGY 2: Create multiple opportunities for visitors to find your key money content
STRATEGY 3: Eliminate all unnecessary distractions from your sales funnel and conversion pages

Now, let’s dive deeper into each of these three strategies:

Learn How Successful Entrepreneurs Are Packaged For Profit (and Freedom)

November 2, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

There are lots of ways to make money in business; there are lots of ways to make a difference that don’t make money; and there are CERTAINLY lots of ways to make money and make a difference that don’t give you, as a business owner, the FREEDOM you desire. Unfortunately many entrepreneurs have created offerings in their businesses that excite them — and it’s not that they aren’t creative people and talented providers — they just haven’t considered all of their options.

How many times have you seen this from entrepreneurs (or yourself?):

Getting online and researching the “industry standard” and going rate for their profession, and using that information to decide what they’ll offer.
Offering “freelance” services that requires asking each client what they want, a lengthy proposal process, and agonizing over what to charge time and time again.
Developing products and programs that mirror those of a coach or mentor because that is what they have said works… yet it’s not really working.
Longing to make money while they sleep, yet not understanding the ins and outs of passive and leveraged revenue, or what it takes to truly make it happen.

How would you like to go behind the scenes with 14 thriving business owners to understand their journey to being “Packaged for Profit,” and pick up some inspiration for your own business design?

Jennifer Bourn Featured on Best of Business with Pat Mussieux

July 10, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

I have to share some exciting news with you — I know some really cool people. One of those people is Pat Mussieux, founder of Wealthy Women Leaders. I originally met Pat at an event for women business owners years ago and we have stayed in touch over the years through Facebook and Twitter.

Pat is genuine, authentic, and brilliant — and she has invited me to be a guest on her CHRW Radio show, Best of Business with Pat Mussieux, which is part of CHRW’s weekly “Body, Mind, Spirit” Program.

While Bourn Creative is a web design firm based in Sacramento, California, we do business with people around the world, so I am excited to share my expertise with a whole new market! Pat and I will be discussing one of my favorite topics: Creating a Website That Works When You’re Not Working.

The Seven Deadly Sins Of Landing Page Design According to Tim Ash

April 23, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

One of my favorite Infusioncon breakout sessions was led by Tim Ash, author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization, and CEO of SiteTuners. Tim’s presentation, The Seven Deadly Sins Of Landing Page Design, was right up my alley as a web designer. Plus, because we build landing page templates into all of our custom WordPress child themes, we tend to work on a lot of landing pages and sales pages … so I knew Tim would have some great tips for us!

While Tim did spend some of his presentation bashing designers for just caring about making things look pretty, and I was a little irritated with that, he is right! Most designers do focus more on the visual look than the conversion … and Brian did remind me that we’re not your typical design company. And yes, I have to confess that I was secretly relieved that each of the seven points Tim covered align perfectly with what we teach our clients.

Not only did Tim keep us laughing, but he delivered stellar, strategic content, and real world examples of each strategy he mentioned, as well as practical tips to fix your landing page mistakes to quickly boost conversions and profits.

Closing the Gap Between Prospects, Patrons, and Profits

March 5, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

2008 was a year of near economic collapse in the United States. Americans in some sectors are still reeling from the great slump in the housing market, the widespread loss of jobs, and the ongoing outsourcing of work overseas, among other catastrophes. When it comes to our economy, unrest and uncertainty seem to be its calling cards. In such a climate, it’s easy for us entrepreneurs to focus on the negatives, mostly that consumers don’t have any money to spend on our goods and services.

But what about focusing on the positives?

Kiplinger reported at the end of last year that “Consumers are finally loosening the purse strings.”
Time magazine announced in January that 2012 is “The year of the entrepreneur.”

In fact, entrepreneurialism is at an all-time high. And that means that businesses, especially targeted, niche businesses, are continuing to push ahead, finding a steady stream of customers for their products and services. If you’ve been convinced by all the talk about the bad economy, you may be missing what’s right in front of you: money, ready to be picked up off the table, and leads and prospects who want to work with you. Eventually, if you do things right, they will give you their money.

If you shift your focus a little bit, you can close the gap between your prospects, patrons, and profits.

4 Keys to Landing Pages that Clinch Conversions Every Time

February 19, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

If you’ve been thinking of your landing page a just a holding area where your website visitors can launch browsing excursions to all the other areas around your website, I’d like to change your way of thinking. You do not want your visitors to leave your landing page to browse your website. Your landing page isn’t just a portal or a launch pad. It’s the first place you’re going to clinch a conversion and win a new customer.

If you haven’t been thinking of your landing page as a place where you land conversions, your strategy may need some revising. Here are five keys to creating a landing page that does what it’s supposed to do – win customers.

Bait the Hook: Market with Benefits, not Features

February 10, 2012 Jennifer Bourn

If you’ve ever been shopping for higher-end technology, you’ll resonate with the marketing ideas I’m going to share with you today, because part of shopping for technology involves reading about features, and today we’re going to learn why marketing with features isn’t enough to capture your customers.

To begin to understand what I’m talking about, just read (or try to read) this list of features posted on Amazon for a Nikon digital camera:

14.1-megapixel CCD sensor for superb image quality
21x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom-NIKKOR Glass Lens
5-way VR Image Stabilization System
EXPEED C2 for enhanced image quality and processing speed
3-inch Ultra-High Resolution (921,000-dot) Clear Color Display

Now, if you’re NOT a photographer versed in digital photography, the features listed above aren’t going to tell you much. But if you’re a savvy shopper, you would be asking, “Well, just what IS a 5-Way VR Image Stabilization System, and how can it help me?” In other words, reading a list of features can only take you so far. What you really want to know are the benefits. Now, sure, a few of the items above state that with the given feature, “image quality” will improve, but none of them says exactly how or why.

That’s exactly the problem with marketing with features instead of benefits.

9 Simple Tips To Increase Online Sales

December 2, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

If you’re selling a product, program, or your services online and you’re using a shopping cart to do so, you need your website to convert prospects into leads, and leads into customers. And, If you’re like other entrepreneurs, you need your small business website to increase online sales and help you create multiple streams of income.

But the big questions is, “How do you do that?”

Here are nine tips you can use to increase your online sales conversions:

Good Design Is Not Optional

September 19, 2010 Brian Bourn

A study I recently read stated that an average person only gives a website 10 seconds before deciding if a site is worth their time, which means you have less than ten seconds to: attract the viewer, declare your message, and get them to take action.

With so much noise on the web today, and the natural ADD nature of most web surfers, your worst enemy is the browser back button. After someone lands on your website from a search engine, status update, marketing promotion, Tweet, or email link, you have a very short window of opportunity to keep them on your site, so let’s cover each step.

Get Me All Hot And Bothered And Leave Me Wanting More: Three Steps to More Sales

January 18, 2010 Jennifer Bourn

If you trim out all the fat, filler, and fluff that beef up a lot of marketing websites, you’ll see very clearly that there are really only three things that you need to do to make more sales and boost your bottom line.

STEP 1: Capture My Attention

Start with a captivating, powerful, direct headline that draws me in. Don’t beat around the bush or use cute-sy catch-phrases and don’t speak in jargon I don’t understand. Keep the headlines and the sub headlines strong, clear, and helpful. The easiest way to do this is to write one short sentence that communicates the benefits the article, web page, or blog post, etc. I will get out of the content.

Another great way to grab my attention is with a great photo, graphic or image. You have only a couple seconds to entice me to stay on your web page and read your content and sometimes a killer photo can do that even faster and more effectively than a headline.

7 Ideas to Get Your Audience to Take Action and Buy

November 6, 2009 Jennifer Bourn

Whether you have a product, service, program, or combination of the three, if you’re in business, I can pretty much guarantee that you need to sell something. With budgets tightening and consumers becoming more discerning on what they spend their money on, many entrepreneurs and business owners are finding that they need to try a little harder than they had to before to make a sale.

Here are seven tips to increase online sales and get your prospects and customers to take action:

Offer money back guarantee. Your guarantee can be a 30-day, 60-day, 90-day, year-long, or lifetime guarantee. The longer the guarantee you extend your guarantee, the more successful it will be.
Give away bonuses and free stuff. When your customers purchase something or take a specific action, reward them with a free gift or some extra bonuses of value. Sweeten the deal to catch more conversions.