Here’s a statistic that might make marketers gulp: on average only 2.35% of people who visit a company’s website will convert.
Why? Well, sometimes customers don’t convert because you’re just not what they’re looking for. They misunderstood your product, you’re outside of their price range, or they were never seriously thinking of buying anyway.
But some of those customer visits could turn into something more, whether it’s a one-off purchase or a long-term customer relationship.
All it takes is the right push.
So, how do you start turning more of those visits into real value for your company?
What counts as a customer visit to your website?
If your website were a physical store, a ‘visit’ would be someone walking through the doorway. A website visit is when someone lands on your website and stays there long enough for one page to load.
A customer doesn’t have to stay on your site for long to be counted as a visitor. They might arrive, have a quick scan through your page, decide it’s not for them, and then leave again.
Website visits are a valuable metric because they show you more about your company. For instance, you can use your website visits to understand whether your digital ads are reaching the right audience and garnering their attention.
But, let’s face it, the real purpose of your website is to make customers perform an action — whether that’s buying a product, booking a consultation, or signing up for a newsletter. We call these actions ‘conversions’.
Your website visits become interesting when you compare the number of people visiting your website with the number of people converting.
So, a customer has come to visit. How do you get them to take the next step?
Get customers to stay — and convert — with personalization
It’s essential to make sure your website itself is primed and ready to welcome customers, so you don’t drive up your bounce rates with lackluster copy or design.
But you can still go one step further.
When it comes to getting customers to convert, few strategies are more potent than personalization. In 2020, McKinsey found that personalization at scale (i.e., personalized interactions with all or most customers) can lift sales by one to two percent for grocery companies, and even more for other retailers.
Still not convinced? How about this: one study found that 72% of consumers say they’ll only engage with marketing messages that are tailored to them.
With the right software, data, and understanding of your customers, you can create personalized support for every customer to get them over the finish line.
Among other things, that personalization can involve:
- Dynamic homepages that show customers product offerings tailored to their needs and buying history
- Personalized email campaigns direct customers alerts them of a new product launch or prompts them to click ‘purchase’ on an abandoned cart.
- Social media campaigns that retarget customers with products they’ve viewed
- Proactive messaging through your messaging app
There’s plenty of advice out there on building personalized web pages, social ads, and email campaigns — so we’re going to focus on proactive messaging.
What is proactive messaging?
While reactive messaging relies on the customer reaching out first, proactive messaging allows you to make the first move.
With the right messaging software, you can set up ‘triggers’ on your website so that when a website visitor fulfills specific criteria, your chatbox can open up and send them a templated message.
‘Triggers’ can be based on:
- Which page a customer visits
- How long they remain on a page
- Where a customer is based
- How many times your customer has visited your website
The first proactive message a customer sees is automated, so don’t worry — your customer success team doesn’t have to send messages to each customer manually. Once the customer responds, it’s your call whether you want to connect them with a human agent or continue to use a chatbot.
How does personalized proactive messaging convert customers?
The principle behind almost all conversion marketing is to predict what customers will want and make it easy to find what they’re looking for.
Now, you can do this at the aggregate level with your website design. You might choose a layout that makes it easy to find key product information or write copy that targets a customer’s needs or pain points.
But by integrating proactive messaging into your website, you can target the needs of individual customers at very specific points in time.
How?
Well, every time a customer clicks on one of your web pages, they’re giving you a clue about what they need from you — and what you need to do to nudge them towards conversion.
Maybe you need to provide more information. Or address a concern. Or give them a bit of incentive to take the next step.
Let’s say a new customer lands on your FAQs page. That’s probably a sign that they need more specific information about your products or services before they make a purchase.
Why not drop in to ask if you can answer any questions? That way, you can make sure the customer gets the answer they need fast — before you lose them.
How to write your proactive message
Comb through each page of your website and think about three questions:
- Why would a customer visit this page?
- What do you want them to do once they’ve seen this page?
- What could be stopping a customer from performing the action you want to see?
Let’s take a look at some examples of how you can tailor your proactive messages to fit your customer’s activity.
| When a customer... | Your proactive message might say... |
| Sits on your product page for more than 30 seconds | ‘Hi — do you have any questions about our products?’ |
| Visits your homepage for the third time that week. | ‘Hey — we saw you were checking out our products. You might find these case studies useful.’ |
| Signs up for your service | ‘Welcome! Here’s a couple of tips to get you started with your service.’ |
| Enters their payment details but doesn’t click ‘purchase’ | ‘Hello! Need some help with making a payment?’ |
| Clicks on your English-language page, even though they’re based in Spain. | ‘Hola, ¿preferirías ver la versión en español de nuestro sitio web?’ |
When should you not use proactive messaging?
As we’ve already seen, proactive messages are designed to smooth the path to conversions for customers.
But there are two critical rules to remember when setting up proactive messaging.
First of all, use it sparingly. You don’t want to annoy your customers by popping up with a different message every time they click on a new page. Try to restrict yourself to two or three proactive texts at crucial moments.
Second, don’t let proactive messaging distract customers who are already likely to convert. You don’t want a proactive message to appear as soon as your customer opens their shopping basket — they’re already about to make a purchase, so why redirect their attention away from the ‘purchase’ button? If it looks like they’re about to abandon their basket, then give them a nudge, but make sure you’ve given them a bit of space to convert on their own first.
Future-proof your customer service with Freshchat
The best proactive messaging doesn’t just push customers to convert — it helps you form more profound, more human relationships with them.
That’s why we designed Freshchat campaigns feature to make it easy for you to give customers what they want when they want it.
Complex workflows that let you build particular triggers. Detailed reporting that helps you track and improve your proactive messaging campaigns. And integrations — like support for GIFs, videos, and images — that let you turn all that technology into messages that engage your customers and nudge them through to conversion.
Want to find out more about Freshchat Sign up for a 21-day free trial. No credit card is required.
