Website Offers don’t engage 98% of prospects

Which is the largest group of visitors to your website?  It’s likely to be prospects — especially prospects who visit only once.  Studies continue to find that over 98% of prospects to a website never leave a trace — no registration, no comments, no completion of the “contact us” form — nothing.   Why is that?  It’s mostly because websites lack some lower commitment offers to meet the needs of a wider variety of visitors.

Think about prospects visiting your site for the first time.  What are the offers they’re presented with?

If your only offer is “Request a demo” or “contact us”, to a prospect that translates into “I’m ready to talk with a salesperson.”

Few prospects on their first visit to a website are ready for that.

The sales process — especially for more expensive purchases — typically involves a few different steps:

Step 1.  ”I need to understand the overall category of solution that you deliver”.  For example, virtual data sites are an online way for many companies to securely share large files and track access.  For the first-time visitor to a site that offers virtual data site solutions, the visitor needs to understand things like: what is a virtual data site, what are the benefits, what are the features that I might typically find, how are services typically priced.

That prospect needs lower commitment offers that make sense for this stage in the sales process, such as:

• a white paper on “The Top 10 Things to Know About Using Virtual Data Sites.”

Step 2.  ”I’ve looked around enough to know we definitely need a virtual data site — but which one?” Now the prospect needs help comparing options and deciding what features are really most important.  Logical offers at this stage might be:

• Comparison report on leading virtual data site providers
• third-party article comparing vendors
• a special report on “How to choose the right virtual data site for you”

Be sure you include a range of offers in your “offer library” to meet your prospects’ needs at the different stages of the sales process.  Give more visitors to your website some “get acquainted” options, to help you capture contact information from a larger percentage of those visitors, and get the dialog going.

Have you seen good examples of this idea?

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