Posts Tagged ‘get more web enquiries’

Over the last few months, I have been looking to see if there was a free, easy and quick way to generate more business through my web site (I know, wouldn’t we all like that).   I posted a few questions on some web design forum sites (with links to my business web site) and I received back a whole host of ideas.  But most of the ideas pointed to the same change – a BIGGER call to action.   I made this change, and thought I would share my results with you.

Before, most of the pages on my web site had the same design – the same layout, with the same ‘contact us’ button you see here – a fairly (I thought) clear button for somebody to contact me – a clear call to action.  From the colour scheme of my web site, it stands out from the page, and there are various ways into the contact me form – from the button itself, to a Contact Us menu option on the main menu, and some hyperlinks within the text of the pages.  

This format did result in enquiries.   For the past 12 months, this resulted in an average 7 new enquiries a month (or 1.2% of all visitors using the contact form).  Of course, not all people actually pick up the phone, or fill out the form, so just for comparison, using Google Analytics, I know that in the last 12 months an average 18 people went to the enquiry form (with 11 not using the form).

Now, what I changed was to make the call to action bigger – a lot bigger – and I placed this at the top of the side bar.  Yes, the graphic may be a bit goofy (I selected 4 possible images and did a poll of a handful of people to see which worked best), but it’s big and bold and you can’t miss is.   It’s my ‘action man’.    This change has now been live for a month just to see the difference.   I know that it should run for a lot longer to get true A/B version comparison, but the results look encouraging.   For that one month, I received 11 new enquiries, (or 1.9% of all visitors using the contact form), with 27 people going to the enquiry form.   In total, the difference in total web traffic between the test month and the average for the last 12 months is almost identical, so its not a coincidence of more people hitting my site generating more enquiries – the big call to action does make a difference.

Now the next step is to work out how to turn those that hit the contact form and don’t call/complete the form into form fillers.