Let’s pretend you own a brick-and-mortar business on a busy city street. The bell over the door chimes merrily, announcing the arrival of a customer. You’re there to greet them, help them find what they’re looking for, educate them on your products and services and (hopefully) make the sale.
For online-only small businesses, however, that same sale — or conversion, as it’s usually referred to when referring to online businesses — becomes a bit more difficult. You’re not physically there to guide the customer to the correct aisle. They can’t hold the product in their hand or get an instant service demo. They’re on their own, and you have very little control over whether they convert or hit the back button.
Enter conversion tools. These tools are designed to nudge passive “window shoppers” into becoming active, paying customers. They’ll give you information about what customers are looking for, what brought them to your site and what makes them stick around once they’re there. Using conversion tools, you’ll be easier able to identify and correct things that frustrate a visitor into leaving without converting while making sure they get a full-bodied user experience that makes them want to return again and again.
Conversion tools make the sale easier. Here are some of our favorites.
FullStory
Have you ever wished you could be a fly on the wall watching a user navigate your website? FullStory grants that wish. (The observation part, not the fly part.)
This tool offers an awesome session replay feature that will show you exactly how your visitor interacted with your site. You’ll see every click, scroll and page change. You’ll even be able to co-browse with the customer to help troubleshoot any issues they’re having.
FullStory also includes some pretty sophisticated analytics, offering up easy-to-read graphs, charts and reports that give you even more bang for your buck. Plans start at $199 per month after a 14-day free trial.
Unbounce Landing Pages
Your landing page is one of the most important parts of your website. It’s the first part of your site the visitor sees, and if it’s not fantastic, it’ll also be the last.
Unbounce has tons of tried-and-true templates for landing pages, sticky bars and popups. There’s no need to be a graphic artist — just select your template, enter your text and drag and drop the components. Do you prefer full customization? They offer that, as well. Better still, everything comes mobile-ready.
The basic plan runs $79 per month when billed annually or $99 per month if you prefer to pay month to month. A free 30-day trial is available.
Instapage
According to Instapage, the average PPC conversion rate sits at about 3%. Businesses who use their tool, however, enjoy an average conversion rate of 22%. That’s quite a difference!
Instapage offers a full suite of conversion rate optimization (CRO) components, including testing tools, landing page builders and stellar collaboration abilities. It’s also the only landing page builder on the market that’s built to work with Google, meaning you’ll be able to integrate with Google Analytics and AdWords for even more insight.
Plans start at $69 per month — and yes, there’s a free trial.
Leadpages
Are you looking for a CRO tool that can help you manage entire marketing campaigns from start to finish? Look no further than Leadpages. With mobile-friendly templates, instant ad creation, built-in payments, A/B testing and marketing tool integrations, this is less a tool and more an overflowing toolbox.
For all its benefits, it’s very budget-friendly, with the basic plan running a mere $25 per month. Upgrade to the popular pro plan for $48 per month. Try it free for two weeks.
MailChimp Landing Pages
Not everyone needs the whole shebang. Sometimes, a simple job only requires a simple tool, and MailChimp landing pages fits that bill perfectly.
The site allows you to create landing pages and other marketing campaign components absolutely free — forever. The simple DIY templates can be easily customized to showcase your products, run a giveaway, announce a pre-sale or just about anything else you can think of, and they only take a few minutes to create!
Did we mention it’s free? Like — forever, free? (MailChimp also has plenty of other CRO offerings starting at $10 per month.)
When you’re doing business online, you can’t be there to personally greet each and every customer and get to know them. Conversion tools handle that job for you. Give one or all of these tools a (free) test drive today!
Looking for more great marketing software, apps or programs? Mischa Communications knows them all! Shoot us a quick email and let us make more great recommendations!