Our Nashville web design company makes it a habit to regularly look at trends that are occurring in the marketplace. The idea is not to look for a hat or a quick tidbit but to better understand what people are doing so that we can provide the best services for customers. Since Covid, one trend that we have noticed that has been a continuous climb is the rise in customer research before making a purchase. How customer shop today is very different than it was a couple of years ago. Here we want to go into some of this information to help reinforce the idea that the website needs to continuously change.
One thing Covid did was to make people get more comfortable online. Our Nashville web design company builds a lot of e-commerce websites, so we knew that this would increase as people stop going to their local retailers in person or online, but it was not evident that it would change customer behavior entirely. What I mean is because customers can buy more comfortably with online shopping, they are also more comfortable researching. As it is easier to get information from a bunch of businesses, customers can find many more options quickly. This is changing the sales process and boosting the efforts needed for marketing to gain visibility and awareness. Customers are spending much more time on the front and doing the research before reaching out and becoming a lead. This means the sales process starts happening directly from the information and data you provide on the website.
Understanding what your customers are doing and what information you’re looking for on your website is becoming quite increasingly important. Knowing what your customers are doing before they become a lead allows you to optimize the right things.
One of the first things our Nashville web design company does is focus on the messaging of the website. We believe that words are what sells and when you use confusing language on the website it becomes harder for the customer to understand what problem you solve, and why they should do business with you.
Once the messaging is in place and the website is designed, the likelihood that the visitor is going to turn into a customer or a lead goes up. After that, it is important to figure out where the gaps are in the website that are causing customers not to convert. That’s why it is so important to track what the customer is doing so that we know where to optimize. Getting new customers and website traffic is one of the most expensive parts of online marketing, so improving the conversion rate and providing the right information that your potential customer is looking for is a great way to reduce costs and improve results.
One example of how this plays out is that many of the customers that we work with are seeing a big increase in website traffic, specifically on mobile. This doesn’t always turn into more sales and has alarmed many customers. It is normal to think that an increase in traffic will lead to an increase in sales, but the change in customer research and shopping behavior has actually caused the conversion rate to drop. Without knowing exactly what the customer needs in their research, it can be tricky to get the conversion rate back up. However, more traffic can lead to more leads and sales over time if the website provides the right user experience paired with the right information. This examples points out that it is critical to focus on a content marketing strategy that supplies your customers with the information they need and ensures your website is optimized to convert those visitors into customers.