/do you have a conversion funnel?_

Several years ago I hired a marketing agency to audit my website and run Google ads for my company. When they performed the site audit they said that it was optimized well for search but it was not optimized for conversion. They asked me if I knew what that meant and I did not. I had to ask. And so if you’re wondering what exactly I mean about conversion funnel, it’s ok. I will tell you.

Conversions happen when your site visitor takes the action you want them to take. Usually this means filling out a form to capture their lead. It simple. It’s straightforward and it works alright.

When I went through that site audit, I knew by the end that I had a lot to learn about designing a website and that I needed to act quickly to make sure that all of the great (and expensive) traffic I was getting wouldn’t mean squat. And that’s what they told me. They said we can run the ads, but no one coming to your site knows what you do or what to do. They’ll bounce off of your site and it will be a waste of money.

That hit me hard because I needed to grow the company. My family needed me to grow the company. My employees depended on me for work and here I was going directly into the slow season with no idea of how to get people who come to my website to stay long enough to call me for a quote!

Something had to change. I had to listen to my new found advisor.

Over the next 7 years I poured into conversion research and testing. I took online courses. Read books. Got certified in Storybrand. And I iterated on my company website regularly to ensure the design stayed up to date. I never wanted it to look antiquated.

The over arching principle behind conversion is that you want to make it easy for people to take action when they are ready to. That’s it.

Can the site visitor do what they came there to do?

But I don’t see a lot of websites that actually understand that.

I see a lot of websites using a lot of words that nobody understands nor do they read. I see a lot of stock images that have nothing to do with their company.

People don’t come to your site for any of that. They come to your site to take action that will solve their problems.

Taking action is the expectation. When you go to Amazon you are their to buy the thing that you need. You’re not there to be convinced as to why you should shop at Amazon.

When you go to Airbnb you are there to find a place to stay and book the stay. If Airbnb had a listing of a pad and then a form to reach out to the owner so that you can start emailing back and forth about availability it wouldn’t work! Airbnb would suck. You have to be able to book the room. End of story.

That’s what conversion funnels do. They empower your site visitor to take fast action.

Do a self-assessment. Does your site make the action that people need to take the central focus of your website? When they land on the first page can they do what they came there to do with the functionality that is above the fold? If they have to start scrolling you’ve lost.

Make it actionable.

Help them check that task off their list.

Torlando Hakes is an author and a professional speaker. He serves as the Director of Business Development at Periodic. He is the host of the PaintEd Podcast and a regular writer on Medium. Follow at torlando.medium.com.

Periodic is the app that books. Design dynamic webforms, manage the booking for sales teams and service providers, and automate messaging.

To learn how you can design a conversion funnel that books more appointments feel free to hop on Torlando’s calendar at torlando.periodic.site. He would love to give feedback on your current conversion funnel and have a short strategy session for how to ramp up bookings on your sites.