When you create a beautiful, practical website that you believe holds value, it’s easy to assume that the visitors who trickle in will automatically be stunned by what they see and make a purchase. Impulse buying is definitely a thing, but if you’re going to reach the sales and conversions you want, it’s going to take a lot more than a functional website. The reality is that if you want to make money from your online business, you need to know how to market it to your audience.
Learning to leverage your website to make a profit takes trial and error. You can’t expect your online business to start booming overnight. Instead, you need a proper conversion optimization strategy that’s guaranteed to catch your audience’s attention and intrigue them enough to take action.
Here are three tips you can use to convert your website visitors into paid members.
1. Use a sturdy platform
To collect payment and personal information from your subscribers, you need to make sure you’re using a platform that’s reliable and easy to use. A solid membership plugin or site is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and leaves no questions or concerns for the customer. It’s straight forward and doesn’t come with hidden fees or charges. You can use a sturdy platform like MemberPress for all your membership and subscription needs.
It’s easy to create subscription pages, gate content, and process payments. Keep all your subscriber information in one place so it’s easy to keep track of your business and its progress.
Memberpress also has the ability to inform subscribers whenever you need to remind them of something urgent, such as a subscription or credit card expiring soon. This makes it easy to keep users informed so there’s a lesser chance of them getting frustrated when their payments don’t process or something else happens.
2. Craft a compelling welcome email
It’s already difficult as it is to get the influx of paid members and subscribers you want, and emailing your list nonsense isn’t a great way to turn them into paying customers. If you want to build a genuine, fruitful connection with your audience, you have to communicate with them that tells them their needs are understood and you can provide for them. Research conducted by Return Path found that welcome emails produce an open rate of 34 percent.
The first step is by crafting a compelling welcome email that will grab their attention, hold it, and convince them that making a purchase will bring joy and added ease to their lives. If your welcome email can offer your audience something of value for free, you’re on the road to boosting your credibility and gaining their trust.
Focus on these elements of your welcome email:
- Subject line: The average person receives tons of new emails every single day, a huge percentage which they never look at. You need to grab your subscriber’s attention by writing a subject line that’s personalized to their experience or offers them something of value right away.
- Body copy: Make sure your language and tone match that of your target audience. It’s usually best to keep it conversational and casual. Tell your audience how their subscription to your email list will benefit them down the road and don’t be afraid to boast the benefits a little bit.
- Offer: This step isn’t mandatory, but a lot of welcome emails out there hand out enticing offers to first-time subscribers because discounts and promo codes urge them to make a purchase. This could greatly increase your sales and boost excitement.
- Signature: Link back to your website or landing page to bring users directly to the webpages you need more traffic on. This is a great way to lead them to more content on your site and spark interest.
Images: Catch their attention with vivid, bright imagery that appeals to their tastes. Showcase attractive photos or graphics of your products or add a photo of yourself to humanize your brand and show that real people are working behind the scenes.
3. Showcase social proof
The first thing people do when they want to check out a new product or service they don’t know much about is to go searching for it online. Thanks to the internet, trusty reviews and ratings are able to give you inside scoop about something you know little to nothing about. They’re given by real, honest customers which makes them so effective. According to Statista, 30 percent of consumers say that reviews and ratings have a huge impact on their purchasing decisions.
It’s important to showcase any social proof on your website that you can get your hands on, including client testimonials, brand logos, the number of products you’ve sold, how many happy customers you have, and more. Social proof is anything another person or customer has to say about your products and services that tell other consumers what to expect whether negative or positive.
OptinMonster shows brand logos of many of their happy clients and customers on their homepage to show credibility and build trust with their audience:
Conclusion
It’s not enough to get visitors to come to your website. You need a proper conversion optimization strategy that’s going to convert them from just visitors to paying customers, and there are a lot of ways to go about this. Make sure you have the right tools under your belt that will serve your website and its visitors the most effectively. Craft a welcome email that’s so enticing, your subscribers won’t be able not to open it. Finally, show that your brand and business is loved by many by showcasing social proof that boasts your success. How will you turn your visitors into paid members?
