Tuesday, December 23, 2008

How to Keep Visitors on Your Site - Part 3

As I've already mentioned previously, it's becoming more and more important to focus not just on driving traffic to your website, but also maintaining your new visitors on your site for longer.

As we're coming to the end of another year, it's a very good idea to review things on your site statistics to find out more about which pages were most visited, which had the highest bounce rate, etc. and how to try and fix that.

Forms can be a real *stop* on web pages. Filling in forms - no matter how small they seem - can often be off-putting and it's important to lead a completed form to a page with a real deadline as to when a client's request will be replied to and delat with.

Another great way to get around this is for the client to call you directly. And what better way to encourage this than adding a free phone number.
Barcelona SEO - Telephone
0800 numbers (1-800 numbers in US) or even local number (0845 in UK, for example) are a real winner. This not only creates immediate trust within a website, but shows that your company is a serious competitor, hungy for business and proud of the product on offer. 0800 numbers are fairly easy to set up, and assuming you don't want to pay for an easy-to-remember number (why? if you can plce the number clearly visible on the site and then people can type the number directly into their telephones), then you can find many companies offering this service. Calls can be re-directed to a land line or even a mobile phone - although the latter is obviously considerably more expensive.

Think about your target audience geographically, and go for a number in that country. If your website is in English but you receive more visitors from the USA, then get a 1-800 Toll free number and maybe a local call number for the UK. It is very important when selecting a free phone number to select a tariff which is PPS or pay per second, and NOT for minutes. This may sound rediculous, but it will drastically reduce the cost of your calls. Also, some companies offer an "interface" where you can forward calls to the number you decide. This is especially good for small businesses, as you ca have the free phone number directed to your land line as default, but then re-direct the call with the click of a button to your mobile if you need to leave the office for a few hours for example. This way you never lose a call.

At Barcelona SEO we can help you with many suggestions and strategies to keep your customers online and improve your sales techniques. Contact us for more details.

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