Most businesses need much more power and flexibility than your typical website builder, but that doesn’t mean that the answer to “Should I use a website builder?” is always a resounding “No.”

Website builders are do-it-yourself interfaces for quickly assembling professional-looking websites without the need to know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or any other coding language. Some of the most popular today are Wix, SiteBuilder, Weebly, and Fiverr. Website builder reviews are mixed because of their wildly varying applications, and finding the best website builder is often a process of trial and error.

An example of a website under construction from the Wix homepage

For ventures that are just getting on their feet, website builders are invaluable introductory tools. But for businesses that are ready to grow and generate revenue, there is no substitute for the power of today’s advanced content management systems (CMS). One of the most widely used CMSs today is WordPress, a favorite in the marketing industry and only a step below scratch web design.

It’s truly a question of individual needs. Start answering the question by asking yourself the following.

Are you (or is your company):

What If I Don’t Have the Resources to Run a Content Management System?

It’s possible that your company has particular staffing needs that stretch your budget or is simply in a stage of growth that doesn’t allow for the flexibility of full-on marketing. When the resources aren’t available to take on a content management system, many companies add marketing responsibility to the job description of a staff member and open up a website builder.

While it’s not a mistake to do so, you’ll only be holding your growth back if you do. When the time comes to switch to a full-on CMS, you’ll have to shift resources to a marketing team or transition an employee or two to rebuild your website so that it’s up to today’s SEO and user experience standards.

A more forward-thinking option is to train your management to understand and operate a content management system so they can share ideas and collaborate. It doesn’t take long to learn the ins-and-outs of a CMS, and the small time investment will save you massive amounts of time and effort later.

Alternatively, you can hire a digital marketing team to take on the work for you. A quality agency will work with you and your budget to establish a plan of action and will openly communicate to ensure that your business goals and visions are met. Digital marketing professionals are deeply well versed in content management, and most of them know a good deal of HTML and CSS to help you customize the look and feel of your website content.

As a bonus, a digital marketing team often costs less than hiring just one full-time marketing employee. You don’t have to train content specialists and they are experienced in various fields and industries.

Be Careful with Website Builders

Again, it’s not that builders are negative, necessarily. Just keep in mind that if you plan to grow, you will eventually have to move away from the user-friendliness of building tools and start customizing your online presence to match your product or service. The transition can be precipitous, so plan ahead!

Our digital marketing experts at Leverage Marketing use advanced CMSs to deliver customized, branded content, web design, and user-friendly layouts. Let us manage your website for you!

To say that everyone and their dog has shopped online isn’t too much of an exaggeration. According to a Pew Research report, 80% of Americans say they’ve shopped online, and 15% shop online every single week.

But just because most Americans are visiting online stores doesn’t mean they’re making purchases. A notable 70% of all online shopping carts are abandoned, representing an estimated $4 trillion that ecommerce companies are missing out on.

We already know that poor website design can create barriers that stop consumers from buying. So, after eliminating those barriers, what more can ecommerce businesses do to get shoppers to complete their purchases? In the infographic below, we look at some of the biggest factors that influence online shopping behavior.

Weighing the Cost

You probably won’t be too surprised to hear that price is one of the biggest factors that affects online buyer behavior. Almost 9 out of 10 shoppers compare prices between sellers, and 65% decide whether to buy online or at a brick-and-mortar store based on who has the lowest price.

Shipping costs can be a major deterrent in the online shopping journey. A little more than half (56%) of consumers have abandoned a shopping cart because they were presented with unexpected costs at checkout. Ecommerce companies can avoid this issue and give shoppers extra incentive to purchase by offering free shipping.

Feeling Informed

While competitive pricing is important, it’s not the only thing online shoppers look at. Since they aren’t able to view ecommerce products in person, online shoppers want to gather as much relevant information as they can before making a purchase. 88% of consumers say that detailed product information is extremely important to their purchase decision, and 66% want to see at least three images of an item they’re thinking about buying. Almost all shoppers (94%) say they’ll abandon a site if they can’t easily find the information they need.

The message to online retailers should be clear: don’t skimp on the product images or descriptions. Businesses that have a large product catalog should use a site search, filters, and intuitive categories so that shoppers can quickly find what they’re looking for in their digital customer journey.

Reading the Reviews

Shoppers like to know what other people think of products, especially when they’re thinking about getting an item they’ve never purchased before. More than 4 out of 5 consumers check online ratings and reviews before buying something new. Online shoppers value the information they get from reviews much more than any ads you could show them. 84% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Ecommerce retailers should display product reviews prominently so that shoppers can feel confident about making purchases. Businesses should respond to negative reviews but shouldn’t necessarily hide those reviews from consumers. Shoppers are less likely to trust a business that displays nothing but five-star reviews.

Enjoying the Convenience

Many shoppers appreciate the convenience of being able to buy without trekking to a brick-and-mortar store…as long as they don’t have to wait too long for their new purchase to arrive. 69% of consumers say that one-day shipping is a strong enough incentive to get them to buy online, and 31% actually expect businesses to offer an expedited shipping option.

Consumers also want to face as little friction as possible when returning an item that didn’t work out. 2 out of 3 people say that free returns and exchanges could incentivize them to shop online rather than at a traditional retail location.

Getting Personalized Recommendations

When faced with a huge selection of products in an online store, shoppers can fall victim to the paradox of choice. 4 out of 10 consumers say they have left a business’s website and made a purchase somewhere else after feeling overwhelmed by an abundance of options.

The solution to this problem isn’t necessarily cutting down on product offerings: it’s catering to individual shoppers. Providing personalized recommendations based on preferences or past purchases can significantly increase the chances that a shopper will continue down the ecommerce purchase funnel.

85% of online shoppers say they’ve been influenced by personalized promotions on an ecommerce retailer’s home page, and 92% say they’ve been influenced by personalized shopping cart recommendations. On top of that, 65% of shoppers say they’re more likely to buy from a retailer who emails them relevant and personalized promotions. Everyone loves a deal that’s tailor-made for them.

Sources:

Accenture

Baymard Institute

Bright Local

Kibo Commerce

Pew Research Center

Salsify

Shopify

Statista

UPS

Walker Sands Communications

Wondering how you can get more of your site visitors to buy? Contact Leverage Marketing to learn about our web design services for ecommerce businesses. We’ll review your website and make recommendations to increase sales and streamline your ecommerce purchase funnel.

For a lead generation business, a lot of pressure rests on the humble online contact form. It’s responsible for collecting the information the sales team needs to follow up with qualified leads, and if it can’t convince site visitors to submit their information, the flow of leads can quickly dry up.

Fortunately, an underperforming lead gen form isn’t a lost cause. The beauty of online forms is that you can regularly tweak them and track their performance to see what contact form version gets the highest conversion rate.

So where do you start when you want to improve your contact form conversion rate? If you’re relatively new to form creation and inbound marketing, we recommend checking out our blog post on lead form best practices. If you’re already using simple forms on your website but want to get more out of them, check out our tips below (think of this as Lead Form Best Practices 201).

Make Sure You’re Tracking Lead Form Conversions Accurately

Before you start tinkering with your lead gen form, make sure you’re tracking your lead form conversion in Google Analytics. The easiest way to track your conversions is to set up a Custom Goal that registers as completed after a visitor fills out your form and lands on a Thank You page. To do this:

1. Create a Thank You page for people who complete your form. (Make sure it’s a unique thank you page, not one you’ve used for other forms or purchases.)
2. Go to Admin in Google Analytics.
3. Go to Goals and click +New Goal
4. Give your Goal a name and select Destination as the type.
5. Set the destination as equal to the URL of your confirmation page.

With your new Goal set, you’ll be able to view the contact form conversion rate by going to Conversions–>Goals–>Goal URLs in your Google Analytics Reports.

When setting up your Goal, you can also turn on Funnels. You’ll be prompted to enter the URLs for the funnel steps, i.e. the path through your site you expect users to take to get to your lead gen form. You can then start using the Funnel Visualization report, which makes it easy to see if users are dropping off at certain points of the funnel.

Example of Funnel Visualization report in Google Analytics

Try a New Location for Your Form

If your lead form has a lower conversion rate than expected, it could be because it’s not getting a lot of visibility in its current location (you can use Google Analytics to check traffic to the page with the contact form). Test out your contact form in a new location to see if traffic and form fills increase. You could also try creating a pop-up form using a tool like OptinMonster. You can set up the pop-up form so that it’s triggered by a specific user action (such as scrolling 50% of the way down the page or staying on a page for a certain amount of time). That way, you’re presenting your form to users after they’ve had some time to engage with your site and familiarize themselves with your products or services.

Pop-up lead gen form on OptinMonster’s site

Earn Trust with Social Proof

Site visitors may be wary about sharing their information unless they know they’re getting something of value in exchange, and one way to prove the value of your offer is to use social evidence. If you’re trying to get visitors to fill out a contact form to receive a downloadable asset, tell them how many people have already downloaded it. Consider having your web developer add a counter above the form so that visitors can see the number of downloads updating in real time.

When asking site visitors to fill out a form to receive any offer or service, you can build trust by displaying short testimonials from happy customers. If your customers give you permission, consider displaying small photos with each testimonial so that site visitors can see that the testimonials are coming from real people.

mHelpDesk uses customer videos as social proof.

Incorporate Autocomplete for Location Fields

According to Google, adding autofill attributes to forms allows users to complete those forms up to 30% faster. When forms take less time to fill out, users experience less friction and contact form conversion rates go up.

Autocomplete is most useful for location fields (such as Country or Street), where users might otherwise have to choose an option from an extensive drop-down menu or type out their full address. When you add autocomplete, the user should only have to type in a few letters before seeing a drop-down with the most likely options. You can add autocomplete for locations with the code for the Google Places API, which you’ll find here. If your site is built on WordPress, you can simply install a plugin that doesn’t require any coding.

Keep Your Design Minimal

If a lot of site visitors are making it to the page your contact form lives on but failing to get any further, you may need to take a look at your page and form design. If there are too many buttons and graphic elements on the page, visitors could be getting distracted and drawn away from the lead gen form. You can remedy this problem by redesigning the page so that there’s more white space. This will cause visitors’ eyes to go to the contact form immediately and will make it easier for them to scan the form fields.

Zendesk uses a simple, professional design to keep eyes on their lead gen form.

You’ll probably still want to include some visuals—such as branded graphics or product photos—on your contact form page. Just make sure any visuals you include fit seamlessly with the rest of the page and draw the viewers’ eyes toward the form, not away from it.

Want to know more about website improvements that can increase your conversion rates? Set up a call with the Leverage Marketing team—we’d love to talk to you about how our digital marketing services can help you meet your lead gen goals.

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