The age of websites as brochures has long since passed. To keep up with the competition you need to have a more interactive website. If you just give people something to look at but no way of taking meaningful action, they’ll browse and leave without forging the lasting bond you want them to make.
Asking website visitors to fill out a contact form is a recipe for disaster – 67% of visitors don’t complete them. You’re adding a layer of friction between their intention and them getting what they want. Nowadays, people want instant gratification – not to fill out a tedious contact form and wait patiently for a response.
Informational websites are great, but what you really want is a transactional one that drives your bottom line.
You wouldn’t open a shop where customers would need to wait days before they could actually buy a product. And you shouldn’t run a website in the same way either. Your business website isn’t there to look pretty. It should be a core part of your monetization strategy, and there are tools available to help you do this with minimal effort.
Here are three ways to enhance a business website to turn it from informational to transactional.
Sell Consulting Sessions Directly
There is no need to waste time trading emails if you want to sell your time online. The dance of a potential client needing to fill out your form and waiting for you to reveal your availability should be a relic of the past. Can you blame them if they look at your competitors and book with them instead because their process is more streamlined?
We all want convenience at a click of a button. Special attention should also be taken when creating such forms. For instance, asking for someone’s phone number is a particular red line. Approximately 14% of people say they’d never give this piece of information, even to a store from which they’re making a purchase. If you currently require a phone number to make a sale, you’re sabotaging yourself.
Imagine if a potential client could book a session on your website and pay in advance. There would be fewer hurdles for them to jump through, and they’d have a great first impression because of how simple the process was. This puts them in a positive frame of mind before even talking to you. And you don’t need to worry about people not paying for the services you provide.
There are already ways to do this. One way is through vcita’s WordPress plugin. It handles this exact workflow and you get the calendar invite, Zoom link, and pre-appointment reminders all set up. Their information is automatically added to your CRM for you to reach out to them in the future too.
Customers will see a user interface they are familiar with. They can select slots on a calendar that are automatically updated with staff availability. The plugin takes the pain out of the payment process by being 100% secure. To add to that, the vcita platform
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This article was written by Gabriella Galea and originally published on WP Mayor.