09 Feb 8 Tips for Increasing Customer Inquiries Through Your Site
8 Tips for Increasing Customer Inquiries Through Your Site
For business owners running a website or web store, the primary concern is always how to improve sales and customer inquiries.
The more people inquiring about your products or services, the more sales the business can win.
While marketing is never an exact science and evolves as trends shift, there are always proven tactics you can apply to improve outcomes.
Here are several actionable tips you can use to increase customer inquiries through your website.
1 – Remove Redundant Fields
When customers want to subscribe to an email list or open an account, it’s best to keep the required fields to a minimum, and the same goes for your contact forms.
When you keep the required fields to a minimum, it allows potential leads or clients to contact you without hassle.
Sure, some details, such as name and email address, should be mandatory.
However, you don’t need the potential customer’s home address, telephone number, or other more personal information in most cases.
Keep in mind that most of your website visitors are meeting the brand for the first time, and it’s your job to build trust.
Asking for too much information from the get-go can prevent people from moving forward.
Many of your visitors are only prospects before becoming leads or customers, so you shouldn’t do things that are discouraging.
Much online shopping is done on mobile devices these days. That’s why your website must function on mobile and desktop systems.
- The main concerns website owners must address on mobile sites are as follows.
- Small or unclickable buttons
- Unnoticeable and unfriendly navigation menus
- Complicated layout structure
- Pages are incompatible, lacking mobile functionality
- Web pages take too long to load
If people can’t intuitively navigate the website on mobile, most will abandon it and look elsewhere.
You can consult with a competent branding agency to help with the design and optimisation of your site for cross-platform compatibility.
Further, while it’s okay and recommended to have a site-wide navigation menu, you should hide it on individual pages.
That’s because the menu can become a distraction that prevents the user from converting.
For example, product or service pages are better off with minimal or no navigation menus.
This provides users with a distraction-free environment, allowing your offerings to remain the main focus.
Similarly, checkout pages tend to convert better with minimal navigation.
As the final step in a sales process, the primary focus must be purchasing rather than navigating around (or away from) the website.
3 – Use a Chatbot to Increase Interactivity
A dedicated customer service personnel is preferable over a simple AI (artificial intelligence) that provides answers – but there are notable benefits to integrating a chatbot on your website.
For one, AI never goes offline and can interact with visitors at a moment’s notice.
Modern chatbots are designed to compile leads more effectively and have a vast range of options, including responses to choose from – allowing these bots to double as assistants.
A chatbot is also not limited to answering one question because it can address multiple visitors’ concerns.
You can have 100 people on your site, ask different questions, and have peace of mind knowing that the AI will address all simultaneously.
Modern chatbots are customisable, with many featuring clean, drag-and-drop interfaces, and these bots can take the visitor’s prior interactions into account.
For instance, a chatbot can suggest products or content to consumers based on past behaviours.
Additionally, one chatbot is cheaper than staffing a website customer support team, even though the initial investment might appear steep.
4 – Use AI to Deliver Personalised Content
Chatbots are only one way AI is helping businesses increase customer inquiries and sales.
An AI-driven customer experience personalisation software, such as Dialogue, can show website visitors the right messages at the right time.
These intelligent bots collect and organise vast amounts of user data, then customise the content each user sees.
You can customise popup messages based on behavioural and transactional data.
And even send customised forms and marketing campaigns catering to each visitor or customer’s specific interactions and preferences.
It’s no longer enough to have quality content if you want to increase customer inquiries and sales through your site.
It would be best if you had interactivity and personalisation, though the overall business situation will matter.
For instance, a web designer doesn’t necessarily need website personalisation software, but an eCommerce retailer most likely does.
5 – Make the Contact Form Accessible
If visitors don’t know how to contact you, then your website is failing the business.
For best results, the contact form should be noticeable and accessible from all web pages.
The top right area of the site is often a good spot for a contact button.
Plus, placing the contact form on your sidebar or side menu can work well since it essentially follows the user when browsing the site.
A straightforward contact form is one of the best ways to increase customer inquiries.
That’s because, in general, once someone finds something interesting, the person expects a clear second step towards initiating the service or product transaction.
Further, accessibility goes beyond the contact form as today, consumers can sue brands with inaccessible websites.
It’s more critical than many organisations realise – around 15 per cent (or 1 billion) of the world’s population have some disability, and these people have an estimated spending power of $6 trillion.
The bottom line is that’s much money on the table.
The good news is if you want to make your website more accessible to increase inquiries, it’s much easier than ever.
Modern web accessibility tools like AccessiBe, make it easy to improve website accessibility within minutes.
6 – Optimise Your Call-to-Action (CTA)
The best way to measure engagement is to look at conversion rates and interface interactions; CTA buttons facilitate interactions and conversions.
Well-placed CTAs provide users with the next steps to take, moving visitors along each stage of the customer experience, leading up to your goal.
While a generic “Call Now” or “Buy Here” button will inevitably get some clicks, adjusting your CTAs to match the prospect’s intent – can make them more attractive and specific.
For instance, “Buy Now and Get It In 3 Days” or “I Want My Copy” are CTAs that match the prospect’s intent.
You can take things a step further with dynamic buttons. For example, Shopify has a feature that allows customers to use dynamic checkout buttons.
The button automatically changes to reflect the shopper’s preferred payment method.
Direct relevant and personalised CTAs can improve engagement with your website.
7 – Declutter the Pages
Putting too many irrelevant texts on a web page or product listing might turn off some visitors.
The same is true if you have too much advertising or unnecessary widgets on your site.
Here are some ways you can declutter your website and keep visitors engaged.
- Your pages should have enough negative space (aka ‘white space’) and visuals to keep the target audience focused on the main message. Negative space can improve readability, show sophistication, and balance the content of a page.
- Use images as a focal point for important information, such as having a relevant photo right before the section or content title.
- Remove unnecessary elements, navigation, and sidebar items.
- Consider getting rid of your sidebar altogether if it isn’t necessary for the business.
- Move any navigation item that isn’t vital to the footer of your website.
8 – Keep Your Copy Clean
If your website copy isn’t attractive or readable, visitors are unlikely to stick around, which is why top brands work with the best copywriters.
Avoid using too much industry jargon because that can turn off most visitors.
People who are experts won’t need a rich vocabulary to understand your content anyway.
Furthermore, it’s better to use a larger font size to improve the readability of your copy.
Most people prefer not to squint trying to read texts. Also, keep your content free of grammatical errors.
Start Improving Visitor Engagement Now
Most of the marketing tips available are often time-consuming to implement.
However, the recommendations shared here can be implemented relatively quickly and improve prospect engagement, leading to more customer inquiries.
An extensive overhaul might be necessary for websites that lack an aesthetically pleasing look and feel (or great design).
But the main thing is to start small and start now, making the adjustments that matter to increase customer inquiries.
Author Bio: Gabriel Nwatarali is the founder of Tech Help Canada, a digital services company. He is an online marketing specialist with a passion for search engine optimisation (SEO) and has worked with several companies to improve their online presence. He also writes marketing copy for organisations and is the host of the GrowRich Podcast. When he’s not working, he tinkers with his computers and enjoys reading good books.
