Design a Conversational Website for Your Customers

This post is for people that want to increase sales and leads through their company website.

There are many reasons that we would want to engage customers in a conversation rather than just giving them information about our company, products, and/or services. I will leave these reasons for another post. For now I want to show you how to engage customers in a conversation on your website.

When is the last time you filled out a feedback form?  Most of the time, if a website does not meet your needs, you make sure to let the website owner know, right? I’m sure you must either look for a feedback form, or use their contact form or email address to get in touch? Okay, if you didn’t get the sarcasm, I’m sure that you probably don’t provide feedback when a website does not meet your needs or wants.

On the flip side, you probably find it difficult to get feedback from visitors on your website. If you haven’t thought about getting feedback on your website, you should. This would allow you to improve the website, and your service so that you can attract more visitors and convert more of them into paying customers. Please read on before putting a feedback form on your website.

In a conversation, we constantly pause to see if someone is still listening.  A feedback form on your website probably does not give the impression that there is a live human listening and waiting for a response. If you phone someone and ask a question on the other hand, or even send an email and ask a question, the person that is being asked knows that you are waiting for a response. This is a very important difference, and will determine whether you will get feedback from your customer or not.

You need give the visitor/customer the impression that someone is waiting for a response.

You should really consider applying this concept on your website.  Some companies already use a great technique to do this. As soon as the website loads, a pop up will say “We are available for a live chat, what do you want to know?”.  These are a great way to engage customers.  Before they even bother searching your website, they have the opportunity to tell you exactly why they are visiting your site. This saves them time, and allows you to engage in a conversation. You can also have a video of a real person asking the visitor if they need help and directing them to a form on the site where they can type in their question.

Once the customer is engaged, it is much easier to get their contact information, whether it is an email or phone number, so that you take the conversation in the direction that you want and be more effective in satisfying your customers’ needs.  So I encourage you to think of ways to initiate a conversation with customers on your website, in combination with a form that asks for a name, and email or phone number so you can help you customers buy from you.

In a future post, I will discuss the benefits of engaging customers in conversation versus giving them a “pitch”.  I’m sure you can already think of some benefits.

-Frank