On average, 96% of visitors leave a website without taking the next step
So why the heck are so many people abandoning your site without buying, filling out a form, or requesting more information about your products and/or services?
Well, according to a report by Nielsen Norman Group, most website visitors stick around for 59 seconds or less. That means that if you don’t capture a visitor’s attention in less than a minute, you’ve probably lost him or her forever :(
Another important factor could be hurting your conversions is that most people coming to your site are not ready to buy yet, and you may be asking them for too much of a commitment at such an early stage in the buying cycle.
If this is what’s happening in your case, then chances are, your site’s message is talking only to the small percentage of people who are ready to “buy now” from your business, and because of this, you’re missing out on the majority (96%) of the people who are still not ready to buy, or commit on the level you want them to.
It’s also possible that you’re showing visitors a one-size-fits-all marketing message. In other words, you’re not engaging people with targeted messaging that is relevant to where they are in the conversion process.
Let’s face it, when people come to your website they are usually at different stages of the decision-making process. The 3 main stages people move through are:
Awareness stage
Consideration stage
Decision stage.
So, if your website is not engaging visitors with a relevant message or call-to-action based on the buying stage they’re currently in, chances are, they’ll disengage and leave your site. And chances are quite high - they’ll never return.
Another big reason people abandon websites is because they don’t find what they’re looking for. It’s possible that they’re on the right site, but they can’t find the information they need, or the site’s look and feel fails to establish that it’s a credible site they can trust.
Another possibility is that your website visitors simply don’t know what to do next.
So how can you solve this costly problem?
Well first and foremost, you need to meet your website visitors where they are, and guide them to take the next step.
Unfortunately, too many websites drop the ball here!
Let’s face it, every person coming to your website is different. So why would your website stay the same for every visitor, and not show how him or her how to take the next step?
Websites should not remain static.
If you really want to convert more visitors into leads and more leads into customers, your website will need to communicate with each visitor in a personalized way, and show targeted calls-to-action, so people will be moved to take the next step in your buying process.
Now let me ask you this:
What if people visiting your site saw different offers based on the pages they have already visited?
And what if you could show offers to people based who they are, what they’re interested in, the content they’re consuming, and the data you’ve gathered on them?
Sounds like a marketer’s dream, right?
Well now it’s possible, and in the next few minutes, we’re going to show you a quick & easy way you can start doing this on your website.
Introducing on-site retargeting
On-site Retargeting, also known as “behavioral targeting” is the process of tracking visitor activity and engaging these visitors with targeted offers, calls-to-action, and marketing messages based on their behavior and data collected on them.
I know this may sound a little complex, but you don’t need to understand all the inner workings of a system to reap the benefits it provides you.
On-site Retargeting can automatically perform 3 important marketing jobs for you and your business:
1. It can capture more leads
2. It can convert more of leads into customers
3. It can grow the value of each customer
On-site Retargeting can do all this and more by people coming to your website with the right calls-to-action through each lifecycle stage in your online funnel.
As you read this guide, start thinking about ways you can engage visitors at each stage of your marketing funnel. Here are a few possibilities:
• Retarget new website visitors to convert them into email subscribers
• Retarget subscribers to convert them into leads
• Retarget leads to convert them into paying customers
• Retarget existing customers to up-sell / cross-sell / educate them in a way that increases the LTV of each customer
Here’s a simple example of how marketers are already using On-site Retargeting to convert a website visitor into a customer.
Here’s how it works
On-site Retargeting works just like ad retargeting, except that it happens on your website, landing page or blog.
Step 1. Copy and paste a simple script on your site that starts tracking visitors while developing an audience you can retarget on your site in multiple ways.
Step 2. Person visits or returns to your site and tracking starts
Step 3. Person visits specific pages. In this example, we’re showing when someone visits our features page, pricing page, and tries to leave our site
Step 4. A call-to-action engages them with an offer to take action now
Once you start proactively engaging visitors based on their behavior on your website, you’ll be able to show the right message, to the right person, at the right time. This happens as people are browsing your site, or if they bounce. As long as the message is well-timed and relevant, most people will be happy you engaged them.
Using different tools, you’ll want to track these 5 visitor behaviors.
• Track visitor behavior
• Track Time on page
• Track Exit-intent
• Track Scroll percentage
• Engage on Button-click
Once you’re tracking these, you can start targeting visitors based on their behavior, while engaging them with relevant messaging.
The wrong way to do on-site retargeting
More often than not, on-site retargeting is done with one goal in mind: get the email opt-in at all costs.
This approach often results in pushy popup ads that are light on retargeting intelligence, and heavy on aggressive (and sometimes downright rude) marketing copy. Yuck!
In most cases, the only targeting data popups like these have is the time the visitor has been on the page, and whether the visitor is trying to leave the site, or not. (as is the case with “exit-intent” popups).
So why are these popups so common?
Here’s why. A marketer wants to increase his opt-in rates, so he throws up an exit pop up, and the result is often higher email opt-in rates. Yippee, more subscribers!
Many tools say they do “on-site retargeting”, but they promote these outdated tactics, and even create templates using pushy, and borderline offensive language.
Hey, it gets me more leads! So, what’s the problem?
Well the problem is, people often feel “slimed”, and it’s going to be hard to make website visitors feel positively about your brand when offers are pushed upon them in this way. This is especially true when there is little targeting influencing the relevancy of the offer. Whether they take your offer or not, your brand image can get tarnished.
In the following quote, Ian Blyth, Digital Marketer at Victory Media does a nice job of summing up why a lot of people hate this kind of pushy ads:
“It was built to make me feel inferior for not accepting the offer above, which, in turn, would bully me into taking the call-to-action…It’s hard to read the words “No, I like it when visitors bounce,” and not hear it in the voice of a smart-ass, condescending teenager.”
I think we can all agree that insulting website visitors and interrupting their browsing experience (instead of adding value to it), is rarely a positive step towards converting that first-time visitor into a loyal, long-term customer.
I’ll go as far as to say that it’s a critical misstep to talk to your website visitors like this if your goal is to eventually turn them into happy customers.
Now there’s a better way!
On-site Retargeting is much more than exit-intent popups, time-on-page/site targeting, and driving email opt-ins. with on-site retargeting, you can automatically trigger a variety of calls-to-action (not just popups), and start targeting visitors based on a wide range of data points.
The ultimate goal of On-site Retargeting should be to continually communicate the right message, to the right website visitors, at the right time.
On-site Retargeting should gently guide people through a well-defined customer acquisition funnel, providing them along the way with value and the relevant information they need to make an educated buying decision.
Makes sense, right?
Keep reading if you want to see how to do it the right way.
The rest of this guide will show you specific use cases and the action steps you need to follow to start turning more website visitors into leads, and more leads into customers using the power On-site Retargeting.
Click below to go to Chapter 2.
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