Optimizing Your Website Sales Funnel (And Yes, You Have One)

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. SUMMARY KEYWORDS website copy, calls to action, website analytics, pain points, conversion, social proof, testimonials, website copywriting, website content, site navigation, website sales, website sales funnel SPEAKERS Erin Ollila Erin Ollila 00:04 Hey friends, welcome to the Top coffee Timmy podcast. Here we empower small business owners to step into the spotlight with their marketing and messaging. I’m your host, Erin Ollila. Let’s get started and talk coffee. Hello, friend. Last week we were here with Brian and Drake to talk all things website. legalities, right, we covered the privacy policy, we talked about the terms of use, we cover disclaimers, and why they can be important for your business. And this week, we’re going to stay on the topic of websites for a second, if this isn’t your first episode of the podcast, you have likely heard me say many times before how your website is your digital storefront. I often describe it as saying, Imagine you’re walking down Main Road in your town or maybe the like central location of the city that you live in. What do you see around you? Stores? Right? And what do you see on the stores, some stores will have an awning that has the store name, others may have painting in the windows, some might have windows that have like store displays of merchandise in order to attract people into the store. That’s what your website is doing. It’s acting as that store. So on main road again, what happens when you open the door, a salesperson greets you, they’re able to explain what some of the products are, they can help you find a solution to whatever it is that you’re looking for. And then they can cash you out and send you on their way. Basically, what’s happening within that store is they’re providing you the customer a wonderful experience in shopping. Your website does the very same thing. If your business exist in the digital world. Your homepage invites people in and explains to them what they can expect from your business. Then things like site navigation and site structure calls to action, how we actually address conversion within our copy. All of those things act like the salesperson who helps people, the customer service rep that solves problems, the cashier who checks people out, right, so if we’re looking at our website as being the central storefront for our business, I’m here to talk to you today about why I want you to consider your website as a sales tool. Now, if not something you usually hear me say, I don’t often talk about sales and websites in the same conversation. But I was having a conversation with appear recently about how they needed to put more effort into their sales page, because they thought that their website was not the place for them to really kind of drive home the products that they had for their business. I will say this is a service based business. So they do toe the line between services and offerings that they share with clients as well as some products that they may sell. And it’s a little tricky of a space. They’re not quite an e commerce Store. So they don’t really abide by the same rules of like product descriptions and open cards and things like that. But they do have to use selling in order to speak to the end user to speak to that audience member that is viewing their website. And it got me thinking that if they really truly didn’t see their website as a sales tool, many other people might not think of their website as a sales tool either. So since we just talked about how important it was to have things like a privacy policy, a terms of use, and a disclaimer, I really wanted to stay on the subject of websites to give you a bit of an overview of how you can use your website as a tool to make sales in your business. Because our websites aren’t just there as like a signal that we have a business. They’re really meant to be that foundation, the place that people come to, to learn about you to learn about what you offer, and to make a decision on whether or not they want to work with you. Whether you provide services or whether you sell products, it doesn’t make a difference. Your website is playing the role of a salesperson. So if you aren’t treating it like a salesperson, there’s a lot of room for error and missed sales. So let’s just jump right in. The importance of websites is that they help move your audience from awareness through to action. So depending on the level of awareness that someone has about your product or service, you may need to prove Add some more education. Or you can just jump right into selling mode. But we do that through things like well designed sites strategically placed buttons, strong solid copy that leads to conversions. Because copy is really written to make a conversion, you are presenting your audience with the information that they need to make a decision. No more information, no less information, Erin Ollila 05:31 you’re really just giving them the clear information that they need. And this is where so many people go wrong. I will be honest with you hear people over write their websites, or they underwrite their websites. And if you’re feeling frustrated right now, and like Aaron, how do I know if I’m over writing or underwriting? I don’t have a precise answer for you. But I can explain to you how copy influences people’s move from awareness through action. So that you can make a better decision on how much copy your site actually needs. Your copy in order to convert needs things like storytelling hooks, social proof cues that give the idea of legitimacy, like mentions of education or experience, in order for people to start to build that trust in you, you or your business, I should say. And when they start building that trust, they’re then able to spend more time learning moving through that awareness. And now I don’t want you to think that your site has to be an education hub. Some businesses have clients that are already primed to buy when they first land on their website, I was actually just recording an episode with Laura low pitch who will be on the show in a couple of weeks. And I was mentioning how I’m looking to get new carpets on the second floor of my house. And when I go to the website of the company, I’m considering using for purchasing and installing those carpets, I’m already aware of the product that they have, for the most part, where I need education is the idea that I want to look at the different styles of carpet that they have, because it’s not something that I am an expert at, right. Like I don’t know what different types of carpets there are, I don’t know, what styles I might like to choose. So that’s the awareness I’m getting from their site. But they don’t have to, like feed me information and educate me to adjust the readiness that I have to purchase. I’m ready, I just and I’m aware of their product and how it could better my life, I just need a slight bit more information before I’m able to step ahead and make that purchase. Right. Other businesses have a longer lead time from when someone finds them until someone hires them. And those business maybe are doing some education based content like blog posts, case studies or podcasts even right, because the time that it takes someone to get to know the business or the person behind the brand, and get to know their process, their expertise may be longer before they’re ready to jump in and make a purchase. So part of the idea of copy that converts is understanding where you fall on that spectrum, where your business falls and where your ideal clients kind of come to you at. So that way you can adjust the copy that you present to them based on how aware they are and based on how ready they are. But I mentioned other things like storytelling hooks, social proof legitimacy cues. And I kind of want to just go over them very quickly. A lot of the questions I get asked is like, how do I bring more personality into my business? And this is a question I actually get asked from people who don’t want to share too much of their personal life for their business. But they they want to seem personable. They want to seem approachable, right? So they want to weave in some type of personality. And they can do that through storytelling, right. And storytelling doesn’t have to be memoir, right? It doesn’t have to be a personal essay, all of the personal facts of your life. Storytelling is just the techniques that you learn in the writing world in order to present information in a way that is people can kind of like get their attention, keep their attention, keep them interested. So one example of this is kind of how I bring in hooks, right? Hooks is what helps get people’s attention, right? So is there any way that you can change the headings and maybe your hero section on your homepage, or if any of the sections on any of the website pages to kind of like attract the attention of the end user design plays a large role into this and this is why we have different size fonts, different weights fonts, and sometimes different fonts all together, in order to attract the audience members eye to the place that we want them to pay attention, like a hook. Right? So all you’re doing with when you’re writing really good hooks in your copy is thinking to yourself, how can I capture their attention at this moment in time, it could be making a bold statement, it could be asking a question that really stops them in their tracks. But whatever it is, hooks can play a large role in that storytelling element of conversion, copywriting, other storytelling techniques are bringing in the the second person you so talking directly to the person who’s reading, this is a key on any sales is not making the copy about you or your business. It’s making the copy about your leads and clients. I know my my tone of voice, I can hear myself getting my mom voice of being very luxury here, not trying to lecture you friends, because we’re all you know, we’re all here because we want to be good marketers. But when we’re when we’re talking in our copy, and we’re really trying very hard to convert people into becoming paying clients, we want to talk directly to them. So if you’re struggling with the copy that you have right now, may be a good idea, a good prompt for you to kind of make adjustments is go back in and see how you can change the sentences so that you’re actually using the word you within the copy. Now, here’s an example of how I approach this. Let’s pretend it’s a bank’s website. And the hero section on the homepage says something like banking for busy people. It’s not horrible, right? Like it has the niche in there who they’re trying to serve. But if we want to make it a little bit more approachable, what we could do, just taking that as a silly example is reframe it to say something like You’re like we get it, you’re busy. And maybe instead of what I’m rewriting, what I’m doing is actually creating the copy section that follows that heading. We get it you’re busy. And we want to meet your needs, whether you’re banking at 2am, or in rush hour traffic, whatever I’m I literally don’t have a bank as a client right now. But if you can see how what I did right there, it’s really inviting the reader into the conversation. So if you’re doing any auditing of your own website, or you’re just not pleased with your copy, really I encourage you to go back in and think of all the sections How can we invite the reader in other storytelling techniques is building the friction or the anticipation of the end reader. It’s something that we talk about like as a narrative arc, but there’s some way you can do it on your website. And that’s as simple as using things like pain points, like the pa s. Copywriting framework is basically pain agitate solution. So what’s the problem that they’re having, then agitate that problem and then provide yourself as a solution. We all know that I’m not so much the biggest pain point driven copywriter. But as I’ve said before, like there, people do have problems or they might have desires, so we can ignore those, we should address them within our copy just in a way that we’re not manipulating people, when we’re talking about the pains that they have talking about the problems, or even agitating them, agitation is fine, so long as we’re not doing it in a manipulative way. And I’m going to hop back over there, the the pain and the problem. And one second because I want to talk about social proof before I finished talking about pain points and desires. Social proof and legitimacy are huge drivers of conversion when it comes to websites. We all know that I love testimonials. And I love showcasing them on sites to build that trust for the business because there’s nothing that does better when it comes to social proof. Then real people sharing why they liked working with that service provider or business. And this goes for podcasts as well. If you’re listening to this, you have a podcast page, get those reviews out there because reviews convince new potential listeners to actually listen to your show. And legitimacy is huge, too. A lot of the times I think people hold back on this because they don’t want to be they don’t want to sound like a show off or they’re uncomfortable making themselves really step into that role of expert. But when we’re doing things like writing our about page, while I always say we have to acknowledge what the audience’s problems are and paint ourselves as the solution to the problem. The way we do that is by explaining like you are are who you are. And you can do what you do by how you show up. And that’s by sharing your education sharing your experience. Case studies are Marvel’s right here, because they’re like testimonials on speed. So if we can show our legitimacy by showing how we worked with a client, more than just why they liked working with us, but like the entire process, we’re able to kind of give that end user, the audience member, Erin Ollila 15:30 the key to what it would be like working with us if they were in the shoes of the person we’re writing the case study about. So when we think of conversion, it’s really not just the frameworks, it’s really not just the process. It’s it’s a lot based on the story that we tell. And I think things like narrative arcs, pulling in the audience with the quote you Why oh, you as a character within that story. The hooks, the social proof, and legit legitimacy are huge drivers of conversion that so often get forgotten about. Because all I hear people talk about are things like pain points. So that’s why I wanted to save that for last, you know, when we think about moving our audience from awareness into action on our website, copywriting frameworks, work in some ways, because we do want to address where people’s problems are. And we want to sell to those problems, we don’t want to act as if they don’t exist. You know, it’s kind of like when people try to sell the features of a product instead of the benefits of the product. So nobody cares how fast like let’s say, a hosting site for a website, the average end user is not going to be wowed by like the tech speed or the random tech things that that host offers, because they don’t understand the tech that goes into it, they are going to be wowed by things like the idea that their future users are going to be able to view their website, it’s super speed, because all of the backend tech that goes in there, that their website is going to be set up well for things like SEO, because it’s not going to be weighed down by whatever goes on websites. So the point of the matter is like if we can talk about that, that problem, or the desire as what we’re selling, and not just those features, that’s how we can move people to convert using copywriting techniques. And I really want to talk about desires for a quick second before we move on. Because a lot of the times what we talk about is the pain points is the problems. But there are businesses that don’t rely on pain or problems in order to sell to their clients. I think I’ve used this example here before but take the wedding industry, there’s hopefully not a lot of pain that happens in a wedding, obviously, besides paying for a wedding because they can be incredibly expensive. But the people who are looking to hire their vendors, they’re excited, it’s a great moment in their life, they get to plan a party to celebrate the love that they have. So when they approach vendors, it’s not that they we have to sell a problem to them. They have a desire, their desire using wedding photographer, for example, their desire is to capture images of their big day that they can have for the rest of their life. Their desire, when they they contact a DJ or a band is to have like exciting music. So their guest feel like they’re having a wonderful time. And they have like a soundtrack to their big day. Their desire when they contact venues is to choose the most beautiful place within their budget. There is not pain there. So I don’t want you to only think that you have to sell and convert with pain. It is not the case. But it is knowing your audience to know which direction you need to go, right. It’s knowing if there are desires, and if so, can you build on those desires? Can you get people excited? Can you make them feel aspirational? And that goes for even pain points. Like we don’t have to harbor on the pain point if we can aspire make them inspired to take action or aspire to changing. So I hope that kind of helped you understand that not everything has to be a pain point. But that knowing the problems your end users, your audience your future clients are experiencing and knowing their desires or what’s driving them to make a purchase. That’s not necessarily a problem or an issue is how we learn how to talk to them and If I’m gonna bring this full circle, which we all know, I sometimes have trouble doing. The reason we’re doing this is because we can then take this information and determine whether or not we’re actually overriding and over explaining and giving too much information, or the opposite whether we need to give them more because we haven’t written and explain this clearly enough. But let’s hop into the real sales. Things that are not related to copy. One of them is how do we get people to our site? And you all know, I’m gonna say SEO here. Yes, SEO is the beauty of what brings people from, you know, the top of Main Street, right into opening door. I mean, if if you’re not with me here, I’m going back to that idea of like, a website being like a main street storefront, so you don’t think I’m crazy. But SEO is kind of like what takes someone’s hand, draws them to your storefront opens the door and pushes them inside. And why it’s important to point this out is you might be putting effort into SEO. And you might be thinking, all right, this effort is going to bring me this type of client. But I want to remind you, that any effort you put into SEO, actually, any effort, even if you don’t put in the effort to SEO, but any copy or content you create is actually bringing people to your site, meaning that people will find themselves on your website without you doing any work to get them there. So when they show up, we want to offer them the best experience that they can have, right? It’s like we wouldn’t walk into a store and be excited to be there. If it was like in complete shambles, and a hot mess and all of the employees look like they were like frazzled, you’d probably leave because it would be too overwhelming for you. So if we’re looking at our website as being a sales tool, we want it to be in the best shape that it can be. So that way when SEO brings someone to our door, purposefully or accidentally, we’re presenting our best selves. And if we’re looking at our website as being a sales tool, I don’t want you to forget about the idea that actual paid advertisement is one way to bring people to your website to encourage the conversion. This is especially key if you have things like programs that may be like time sensitive, or products that you sell directly on your website, advertising can get the right people to your door and make that sale so much easier for you. If it’s done well. The other thing that people don’t factor in that plays a vital role on whether a website is successful or not, is the audience navigation, which most people will call user experience. How are we asking our end users to move through our site. And if you’re not asking them to take a direction, that’s key, you need to go stop the recording. I mean, while it’s not recording, stop listening, go fix this right now, because we need to move people through our site in a strategic way. This is why buttons go in certain places on the page, button, send people to different areas of the website. This is why we don’t ask our audience to take seven different types of action on one web page. And we try for the most part to get them to only take one action, or in the case of some web pages like a homepage, you might send them to your services page. And you’re about page in a different area. And let’s say a lead magnet to join your email list somewhere else. So there obviously is some pages where you’ll have them take multiple actions. But for the most part, we want each page to be its own contained direction and its own contain action. Which brings me to number three calls to action. What do you want people to do on your website? Erin Ollila 24:04 This is something that like, a lot of my leads will come to me or my clients and we have the discussion is, you know, what’s the result? Why do you even have a website? What’s the point? And sometimes they look at me kind of like a deer in headlights because they’re like, I thought the point was, we had to have one. And while you know, I’m going to say everyone should have a website, it’s important for you to understand what role it plays in your business. So you know, a lot of the coaches that I work with booking a call to speak with them is one of their main calls to action. They want to get people on the phone to find out if they’re even a good fit to work together. And then talk to them about how they can you know, provide them the transformation that they’re offering. For other people a call to action is to buy a product right from the website. You know, there are different calls to action and different ways that we can encourage people to you know, make decisions is on our website. And that really depends on where they the audience is, when it comes to like the funnel and their level of readiness and awareness. Some calls to action are simply just to keep people in our world. And that case might be grabbing a lead magnet. So we get them on our email list, or encouraging them to read more blogs or to listen to a podcast episode. But other calls to action could be outright sales pitches, where we’re like, hey, you need this thing I have buy it now. So we have to make sure that each page kind of has its own approach to calls to action. And we also have to make like sure that we are navigating them from one choice to the next. So let’s say a complete stranger lands on your homepage. I mentioned this briefly, but like, what, what decision do you want them to make if you didn’t have any buttons or hyperlinks on your homepage, except for the main menu at the top, you’re putting the onus on the audience member to make the choice to click on one of those like, you’re saying, Hey, here’s the information, you want to click, click, you don’t want to click, don’t click. But people have so many choices these days that you don’t want to leave it all up to them. You want to have these calls to actions written throughout the copy to make it easier to make it flow. So it doesn’t feel as if they need to make these big heavy choices, just to work around your website and learn more about you and your business. And finally, really is just making sure that your audience member has a great experience. Whether you call it a lead experience or an audience experience, you want to make these click throughs, the navigation seamless, you don’t want them to end up on 404 pages. Like I mentioned, you don’t want to overwrite and overwhelmed people so that they feel as if they they’d rather click off of the page, then learn more about what it is that you’re offering. You want them to be able to be presented with the information, you know, don’t hide your pricing, don’t hide your services, don’t make them kind of put in more effort to like funnel themselves into your world, make it as easy as possible for them. And doing that provides a great experience for your end user. The final thing I have to say I’m really trying to keep this episode short. But the reason why websites really should be considered a sales tool is when we look at sales, we understand that sales come with a lot of data that helps us make decisions. Friends, your website does to your website has specifically if you’ve turned on the analytics, your website has a ton of data that will help you understand how your audience is viewing your site, how they’re perceiving the information that you’re putting out there, where they’re getting lost on the page, how long they’re spending, consuming content, what types of conversion related behaviors and actions that they’re taking. And those things are great opportunities for us to be able to shift gears if something’s not working in app marketing, or to be able to go harder on certain marketing techniques that are working really well for us. The real point of this whole episode is just to get you thinking about the idea that your website can help sell for you, your website can do all of that heavy lifting for you. Because I don’t really want to have another conversation will not that I won’t have it friends, I’ll have this conversation with you. But I don’t want to have to hear my friends, my colleagues, my leads, tell me how much they struggle with Discovery calls. Because what happens is, if your website isn’t clear, it isn’t easy to navigate, it doesn’t have the right information, you’re gonna end up getting on a lot of discovery calls with unfit leads, there are people that you might might not be ready to work with you. There are people who you wouldn’t want to work with. There are people who that you have to sell to in the sense that you have to explain your processes your services your offers to on a discovery call, because your discovery calls really should be like a fit call to find out if the two of you would work well together. Not necessarily to obviously I’m just thinking person to person here. But if you’re using a discovery call, you want to make sure you’re a great match. And that’s the key of what needs to happen on Discovery call. not starting from scratch with a sales pitch. You want your website to act like that employee on the store on Main Street for you. You want it to be welcoming. You want them to point people in the right direction of what they’d like to purchase or what they need. So that way when it is time to like ring them up at the register or get on that discovery call If you can do it in a way that they’re excited to work with you because they feel prepared to make the purchase, they feel prepared to pay for your services or to buy your products. lesson here, friends, take a second to go review your websites. If you need help with this, I have an entire website audit service that I offer that is like highly rated. I mean, we’re talking about social proof here, I should probably share some of that in the show notes so that you can see what some of my clients wins have been once they’ve worked with me on a website audit, but I’m happy to help you with that. And if you want to just do it yourself again, go back in there and check are you talking to your audience? Is the information you’re sharing clear? Are you navigating people through your site? are you presenting them with calls to action? Have you approached SEO or any other type of way to get people to your site, and that will be your starting place for any changes you need to make. So friends hopefully you have the best discovery calls possible after you make some of the changes and you feel a lot more confident with your website. Until next time when we talk copy. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Top copy to me. If you enjoyed spending your time with me today. I would be so honored if you could subscribe to the show and leave a review. Want to continue the conversation. Head on over to Instagram and follow me Erin Ollila. Until next time friends