If you think of your website as your shop front, and many of Browser Media’s clients do, you’ll have the mindset that every visitor is a potential customer. Maybe not on their first visit, maybe not on their second visit, but if they’re “coming into your shop” they’re showing an interest in what you do in one way or another. When you visualise it like that, it can be difficult to get your head around the fact that the vast majority of your potential customers do in fact leave without converting. If you had 200 people come to your shop, and 196 of them left without purchasing, you’d be worried you’re doing something wrong.
Well, maybe you are.
When I send out my progress reports to clients, there are a handful of metrics I obviously include. One of those is user numbers, another is session numbers, and then there’s conversions and conversion rate. While it’s important to measure traffic, it’s really more about quality over quantity. Instead of obsessing over small fluctuations in traffic, time would be far better spent focusing on the conversion rate, the most important part of the sales funnel, to uncover an opportunity to improve.
Delivering a targeted message
Going back to that shop analogy; if you think of the content on your website as the salesperson dealing with your potential customer, there are two ways you can go:
Passive: Super-conscious of being super-sales-y, the passive salesperson is non-aggressive, waiting for the right customer to come to them before gently guiding them toward the service or product they probably already knew they wanted.
Pushy: Highly driven by the sale, a pushy salesperson is motivated by results and will stop at nothing to achieve their goal. Their enthusiasm can be seen as forceful or desperate, and comes at the expense of the customer experience.
The “right” salesperson is almost a blend of the two; results-driven, but eager to build a relationship and to understand their customer so they can find out what they truly need before offering it to them. That’s how your site’s copy should read.
What do we know about potential customers, and how does that help?
Digital marketers can segment website visitors based on loads of different metrics: where they came from, whether they’ve visited before, which pages of the site they went to, how many pages they saw, and if they were on mobile or desktop. E-commerce sites also know if that visitor put anything in their basket. That information can be used to craft different messages for a more targeted or personalised experience – maybe you’re using a pop-up to engage new visitors? Well, the messaging of said pop-up could differ depending on what you know about that visitor:
Where they came from: Say this visitor came from a Facebook ad promoting a pair of boots. Try including the boots in your message.
Whether they’ve visited before: If they’ve been to your site previously, but didn’t convert, welcome them back.
Which pages of the site they went to, and how many they saw: Not all visitors are ready to convert. If they’re reading your blog posts, invite them to join your mailing list.
Whether they’re on mobile or desktop: If they’re out and about, your visitor will appreciate more succinct messaging.
These messages can be used in multiple ways, too. Not just pop-ups (people have mixed feelings about pop-ups), they could be echoed through banners that appear after a certain trigger such as visiting a certain page or scrolling to a certain point on a page. The messaging could be used in remarketing, in promotional video, even in your site’s Live Chat functionality.
How to start using targeted messaging on your website
If you’re new to this personalisation game, then I’d test the water first. Identify a popular audience segment you’d really like to engage with, and draft messaging just for them. Then you can test it in different forms, with different wording, at different times and see how it works out for you. Then you can roll it out to other visitors, and get some serious conversion rate optimisation testing going.
