Second chance at conversions: How to bring them back

Your pay-per-click campaign or your improved natural search visibility has done its job and delivered a new visitor to your site, but for any number of reasons the visitor did not result in a sale the first time around.  What can you do to avoid that visit being a complete waste?  Let’s discuss some of your options.

Have secondary conversion goals

The function of most websites is to drive more revenue through sales of some kind.  And direct sales are typically the easiest types of conversions to place a value on. However, don’t overlook other opportunities to obtain leads and build a pipeline.  Obtaining opt-ins for receiving email newsletters, form fills tied to downloading a white-paper, requests for more information or phone calls can all lead to a quality opportunity to remarket to your potential customers.  Your visitor may not have had the time to fully research your offering and purchase this time around but a well timed and well positioned email just might be enough to close the deal down the road.

Run promotions or contests

Give your users an incentive to come back with an evolving promotion or fresh contests.  A visitor may not have found what they were looking for the first time around but incentive to revisit your site could be just enough to receive a bookmark and a return visit or a mention of your site to a friend (great for link building!).

Make your page titles bookmark or “favorites” friendly

Finding the page you noted to come back to is often made more difficult than necessary by websites that do not have descriptive titles for their pages.  Too often website owners title their pages only with uninformed ‘search engine optimization’ in mind and cram as many keywords into their titles as possible – at the expense of their user’s experience.  When writing your page’s titles, consider how newspaper articles are titled to grab attention as well as to give an idea of what the content is about and take a similar approach.

Your website certainly will not be able to convert every visitor into a customer but by taking advantage of opportunities to obtain a second chance at converting, you can improve the value of your hard earned visitors.