Your website matters more than you think. Previously, it was possible to slap together a website with any old builder or template and call it a day. Because there was such limited competition, this would usually be enough to gain you some attention or even customers. Today, the tides have turned for good.

It takes an average of 50 milliseconds or 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion about whether or not they like your website. What does this mean for you? It means you need quality content, design, and an optimized structure if you want to earn money with your website. Whether you’re using your website for your business, to sell products, to share your thoughts, or even just to bring awareness to a cause, you need to be strategic.

In this article, we’ll be talking about some simple ways to convert your visitors into actual paying customers. These aren’t complicated tactics. You don’t need a degree in digital marketing to make strides online. However, you do need to be willing to make the right changes to see success.

Finally, realize that success won’t happen overnight. You don’t want to be an overnight viral sensation anyway. Those trends are short-lived and won’t bring long-term and sustainable revenue. Instead, we’ll talk about real-life ways to bring customers back again and again with a few simple tricks. Let’s get started.

1. Start with Quality Design

The quality design takes your website further than you think. We’ve all experienced poorly designed websites at some point when browsing the web. Despite it being the 21st century, the internet is chock full of them. They’re hard to navigate, lack any clear branding, and simply are unpleasant to use as a visitor.

The simplest way to convert your visitors into customers is to invest in quality website design. Using a WordPress blog is the easiest and fastest way to make sure your website is up to par with web design standards. More importantly, you don’t need any coding or design skills to get started.

There are free and inexpensive WordPress themes for every blog type, business type, and industry imaginable. You can find something that works for your taste that won’t risk losing any visitors. Once you have a theme installed in as little as a few clicks, it’s easy to customize any changes you might need to make the theme feel like it belongs to you. From there, you’re ready to start a serious journey as a website owner.

2. Create a Compelling About Page

One of the easiest parts of a website to overlook is the about page. It’s where you share your story, your way, and what sets you apart from other similar websites. Yet, so many new and experienced website owners think this page can be pushed aside or left short and sweet.

In simple terms, your about page matters because it’s likely one of the first pages first-time visitors will visit. They click on your website, scroll through the homepage, and then they want to learn more. To discover all of the important things about your business or website, they click immediately on your about page. When your about page lacks any real substance or information, it’s a turn-off to your customers. If you can’t be bothered to write a complete about page, why should they purchase anything from you?

Here’s the anatomy of an about page:

1. Introduce yourself and your business
2. What drive you or your business?
3. Why is your business special?
4. What is your business intended for?
5. What is the best content that you’d recommend to first-time visitors?
6. How can visitors contact you?

Though that might seem like a lot, it’s much simpler than you think to get all of that key information on the page. From there, your customers will know what to do next, how to reach you, and why they should care about your business in the first place. See below how Bright Vessel, a marketing and web design agency, uses their about page to their advantage.

3. Build an Email List

If you have a website, why do you need an email list? Isn’t email marketing slowly dying? Believe it or not, email marketing is not only alive but it’s thriving. Today, a reported 80% of marketing professionals claim email marketing is driving customer acquisition and retention. That’s a big percentage, and it just goes to show email marketing is here to stay.

So why use email marketing? In the world of followers, likes, and online engagement, email is the only thing you truly own. You don’t know your Facebook page followers or your Instagram likes. That can all disappear in an instant. However, your email signups are yours to keep. It’s a list of people interested in learning more about your product. In the marketing world, we call that a lead. Luckily, it’s easy to get started with email tools like ConvertKit and MailChimp. Running a DMARC report analyzer before starting your email campaign is also a good idea.

4. Offer Something for Free

Now that you know just how powerful an email list can be for converting website visitors, it’s time to explain how to get people to sign up for your list. As you might imagine, email newsletters and update-type posts aren’t popular. People get a lot of emails daily. So many in fact that people have started picking and choosing what they sign up for. That being said, you need a way to entice those would-be customers to sign up for more information.

The solution is simple. Everyone likes free stuff, so offer something for free. In the marketing world, this is known as a lead magnet. A lead magnet can be anything your target audience wants. If you’re a food blog, for example, you might offer a free mini-cookbook that can be downloaded.

There are a few things that will help your lead magnet make an impact:

• Short and sweet – Lead magnets are easy to consume, so this isn’t the time to share your 3000-page novel.
• Drives action – Your lead magnet should be tied to a paid product or service that your customers will want.
• Relevant – Make sure your freebie is relevant to your audience. If not, the leads aren’t very useful!
• Instant – Use your email client to make sure your lead magnet is delivered immediately after signup.

Check out the example from travel blogger Helene of Helene in Between. Her lead magnet is a series of video workshops all about Instagram engagement. See how simple she makes it to sign up to her email list?

5. Establish Social Proof

Beyond email lists, you need to prove to your customers that you know what you’re talking about. You do this by establishing trust with your audience, and one way to build that trust is with social proof. Social proof sounds complicated, but you’ve probably already seen it in action many times. Any time a celebrity endorses a product, for instance, that’s social proof. However, you don’t have to go out and find a celebrity to speak on your behalf to get the same effect.

One simple type of social proof is including reviews. Did you know nearly 70% of all online shoppers look at reviews before they decide to make a purchase? Adding a way to easily leave reviews and testimonials shows that you’ve successfully helped other customers in the past.

Another form of social proof is real-time stats. If you’ve ever been on a website and seen a notice telling you that someone else purchased from this website just a few minutes ago, that’s social proof in action. See an example below from Expedia, an online travel booking website. Expedia shows real-time customers how many people booked this hotel recently through social proof.

6. Use Videos on Your Website

Videos are quickly becoming a compelling way to convert your visitors into customers. According to a 2017 study about video marketing, when companies added a video to their websites and marketing strategy, they saw an 81% increase in sales. Videos offer more than 2D photos, and they’re a new way for customers to experience a product, get to know a business, or interact with online content.

You can integrate videos of your best products, explain your services, address customer questions, or even just as part of your content strategy. Including a short video with each blog post, for instance, is a great way to reduce your bounce rate and build a relationship with your audience. Videos seem like small things, but they make an impact online.  

7. Track Your Visitors

When you have a big company, the best way to control your employees is to keep track of the time they spent while they are at work. The same goes for your visitors. The best way to convert your visitors into customers is simply to keep accurate track of them. This isn’t as spammy as it sounds. Analytics tools like Google Analytics are designed with this in mind. Learning more about your visitors’ demographics, devices, and interests will let you know if you’re attracting the right audience.

Aside from Google Analytics which everyone should already be using to track traffic, you can monitor how users are interacting with your website thanks to new technology. Hotjar has a tool for recording user behavior so you can see just how your customers are interacting with your pages, content, and more.

See what links are being clicked on and how your users are spending their time. Are there problem pages that send users away? Do some blog posts perform better than others? Finally, get an up-close look at how your audience is interacting with your website. You might discover a problem or roadblock you didn’t notice before.

Convert More Visitors to Customers

With a few changes in perspective, you’ll be converting your visitors into customers in no time. As you can see above, you don’t need to be a web developer or full-time marketer to make a difference. Take these strategies seriously, no matter how simple. They’re proven by research, trends, and user behavior.

Like all aspects of your business strategy, you’ll need to rely on some trial and error. Things aren’t guaranteed to work perfectly the first time around. What makes someone a good business owner is their dedication to trying again and again. Your visitors are out there already. It’s up to you to find them and convince them your business is better than countless others. It’s not as hard as you think.

Since many people are now searching for real estate online, you should invest in a website. There are various website builders with great themes you could potentially use. You could also work with website developers who could help you build a website. 

Nevertheless, it would be best to prioritize search engine optimization (SEO) to make your material more discoverable online. Therefore, here are some guidelines for building a real estate website.

• Use Compelling Visuals

First impressions count when it comes to internet content. Therefore, you must ensure you do it correctly the first time. Furthermore, images can enrich the client’s experience in addition to the words in a text. Users have a variety of tastes and preferences. But, if you want to appeal to people’s imaginations, so to speak, compelling visuals are a must.

People need to see a clear preview of the properties you’ve listed on your website. Therefore, you must use compelling visuals. Use high-quality photographs so that viewers can make informed choices during their search.

Using high-quality images also distinguishes your website because it demonstrates that you care about improving the user experience. However, if you use low-quality photographs that are unclear or simply poor shots, your bounce rate will likely soar. Furthermore, if your website allows landlords to publish properties on their own, make it a condition that the images they use are also of excellent quality.

• Add Area Profiles

Every real estate agent often focuses on a particular region or location. So, if you’ve worked in a specific location, you presumably have a strong understanding of the real estate market in that area as well. 

For any location where you may have listings, it is worthwhile to create area profiles. So, for example, if you’re partners with a company like Nexus Homebuyers and they’re looking for a property in Texas, Tennesse, they can simply navigate your site through that area profile. Other users can also search for homes in a specific area if they seek properties. It makes your site easier to navigate.

• Create Fresh Content

Accept the fact that content is king. Your content must provide the user with added value if you want them to stick around.

People who visit a real estate website are most likely looking for property to buy or rent, real estate reports, developments, etc. Therefore, you must think of inventive ways to present the information to the reader. Using images is one method. Additionally, you could use resources like real estate blogs. But you must strive to publish engaging content consistently. It should be a website where visitors can find helpful real estate-related information.

• Responsiveness and Usability

Ensure your website is responsive to boost engagement and lower bounce rates. Response time is essential to users. Your website must be responsive whether customers reach it via computer or mobile. Nothing is more annoying to a user than opening a page and waiting for it to load for a very long time. Hence, you should make sure that your website is optimized for quick load time.

Additionally, you should regularly check your website to see if you could optimize any additional areas. Verify that all the links are operational and that all the buttons are functioning correctly. Ensure that your website is navigable and usable as well. 

One method to speed up load times is to clear the user interface of unnecessary items. You could also experiment with lower-resolution photos. Nonetheless, it’s crucial to conduct routine audits because that’s the only way you can identify areas that require improvement. Keep in mind that trends in website design are constantly evolving. So, to draw in and retain visitors, you must frequently update elements of your website based on some of these trends. 

• Social Media Integration

Social media already has an enormous potential audience because many people are using it today. Someone is more likely to come upon your content when scrolling through social media than on the web itself. So, it would help to use social media to broaden your audience and drive more people to your website.

Plus, it’s also great for tracking traffic and conversion rates. Indeed, you can keep track of how many visitors came to your website or blog from different links you may have shared on social media.

• Agent Profiles

Real estate agents are often responsible for developing relationships with clients. If they have property listings, a portion of their résumé should ideally be available on your real estate website. Users can check the reviews and decide whether or not to work with them after seeing these testimonials. So, include a function where estate agents can post their bio, contact details, previous sales, and relevant links. Make sure that these agent profiles are easily accessible, too.

• Include Calculators

Including calculators on your website is an excellent opportunity to increase leads on your website. They’re also great ways to increase your website’s traffic because not all sites have real estate calculators. You could incorporate various calculators, like mortgage repayment calculator, bond repayment calculator, property value calculator, and so forth.

• Add Testimonials

Customers today place a high value on reviews and recommendations. This is because testimonials provide users with information about the client experience they would have if they worked with your firm. Therefore, you want to add a section to your website that features client testimonials and sincere endorsements from people you have assisted. This is an excellent way to social-proof your website.

Conclusion

It’s crucial always to keep usability and SEO in mind while developing a real estate website. No matter how unique your website’s content is, if it is not usable and optimized for all devices, the user experience may suffer. You also want to keep the user to be as engaged as possible while navigating your site. Plus, you could hire expert website developers to assist you in creating an efficient real estate website.

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) that allows you to create websites without coding or programming. 

Many business owners have built their websites on this platform but not generating sales as expected.

Meanwhile, there are many things you are doing that could be affecting a WordPress website sales performance and things you can do to boost sales.

Therefore, these 7 tips to get more sales from your WordPress website will show you what needs to be done to get your desired result (more sales). 

7 Tips To Get More Sales From Your WordPress Website

• Improve Your Page Loading Speed

A fast website page speed is important for user experience (UX) and SEO practice. When your site loads slowly, you are likely to lose prospects who are not patient enough for your website to load. Also, poor loading speed can hurt your ranking on Google since it is among the 200 ranking factors compiled by Backlinko.

According to Backlinko, the average page loading speed for a webpage on mobile is 27.3 seconds and 10.3 seconds on desktop. Both SEO and UX are important to increase sales where speed is a common factor that affects them.

Some ways to improve your website page speed include;

• Optimize your images
• Enable compression
• Minify HTML, JavaScript, and CSS
• Use browser caching
• Reduce redirects
• Use content distribution networks and more

Pro Tip: If you run a vlog or host webinars or video conferences on your website, you may want to consider using a third-party service instead of hosting them on your site.

• Open A Blog

Having a website with just a homepage, service page, product page, what we do page and other sales pages is not enough.

You should open a blog section on your website to educate, entertain, and help your prospect solve their problems. 

This blog will boost your brand exposure and attract a new audience. It will also help you build trust with your customers.

Luckily for you, it is very easy to integrate a blog section into your website using the WordPress CMS. All you need to do is keep posting content that helps your prospects solve their problem. 

You may need to add a Call to Action in posts where necessary.

Your blog will drive traffic to your website and increase sales if done correctly. Knowing keyword research and SEO will increase your chances of driving traffic and making sales.

• Create Optimized Landing Pages

It would help if you had landing pages to increase your conversion.

Unlike blog posts created to educate, engage, and entertain your audience, Landing pages are primarily aimed at converting your readers to customers.

For a Landing page, knowledge of Copywriting is very important. You can create a landing page for specific products or services on your website. 

This page will be focused on the action you want your prospects to take, which may be to buy a specific product.

There are a lot of free and paid plugins that you can use on your WordPress CMS to create a great Landing Page.

• Great Customer Service

Your prospect wants to deal with people who truly care about them and are ready to listen to their complaints.

Meanwhile, the best way to show this is by providing a great customer experience. 

There are a lot of customer support plugins that you can use on WordPress, and some of them include; WP Live Chat Support, Zendesk, bbPress, and more.

When your customer service is personalized, you will get more sales through organic referrals.

Meanwhile, there are some customer service etiquettes you must know to offer great customer service, and some of them are listed below;

• Think before speaking
• Listen attentively
• Personalize customer experience
• Take feedbacks
• Follow up with complaints and more

• Build An Email List

A good way to get more sales from your WordPress website is by building an email list. There is a popular saying that ‘the money is on the list. Whoever made that statement was correct after all.

Building an email list requires you to collect your website visitors’ emails so that you can send them personalized emails using email personalization techniques to engage, educate, entertain, and then sell to them. An email list helps you retain and resell to your customers. 

Meanwhile, it would be best to have a magnet (offer a gift) to collect visitors’ emails when they land on your website. You will find a lot of email subscription tools online that you can integrate with your WordPress website to get your desired result.

• Design A Great Call To Action

A Call-to-Action (CTA) button informs your prospects about the next action to take, but if this button is not appealing enough, it might not convert.

The call to action must be obvious enough to push your prospects to the next line of action. 

Some common CTA texts include; ‘download a free guide, buy this product, subscribe here, etc.’).

Meanwhile, there are some WordPress plugins to design CTA, and they include; Bloom, Monarch, Unlimited Block, MailOptin, and others.

• Reduce Pop

Pop-ups are good for notifying users to take a particular action or pass a piece of important information to them, but they shouldn’t be abused. The excess pop-up can chase your website visitors away because it affects user experience. They won’t be able to navigate your site as they wish. 

So, imagine chasing your potential customers away. Sad, right?

It is advisable to use pops only when necessary. It would help if you didn’t use them excessively on payment pages or a single page.

When your user experience is bad, your website bounce rate increases and will eventually hurt your ranking on the search engine.

Conclusion

It would help if you were deliberate with making more sales on your WordPress website, and I hope these tips help you achieve your result faster. Meanwhile, an underrated skill to generate sales on your WordPress website is customer service etiquette which was discussed at number 4 on this list.

There are a lot of people online searching for these tips. So ensure that you share this article so that it gets to them.

1. Use Promo Codes

Using promo codes is one of the best and easiest ways to get free hosting. Using valid coupon codes allows you to get high-quality web hosting at the lowest possible cost[i]. Through the deal, the hosting provider might offer you shared hosting, which is going to be sufficient for you if you’re just looking to start a regular website. Through shared hosting, you will have to share resources, bandwidth, and storage space with the other users on the server. However, unless you are experiencing high levels of traffic, a shared hosting environment will be able to provide enough resources for your needs.

The bonus of using a promo code is you often get more resources than you would get with just a free hosting service. Of course, you need to pay attention to how long the promo period lasts until the cost goes back to the usual amount. As long as you keep track of the schedule, you shouldn’t have any surprises on your bill.

2. Sign up for WordPress

Do you want to start a blog? Then you should consider WordPress.com for your site. According to a web technology survey firm W3Techs[ii], WordPress now powers more than 30% of the web. WordPress is a free and open-source software, which means you can use it, and modify it as you want without having to pay any monthly fees.

The reason why WordPress is free is that no one company owns it. Because of this, thousands and thousands of people have contributed to the success of the platform. There are thousands of website themes out there that allow you to customize your website exactly how you want it. No matter what your site topic is, you can find something that works for you. You can make your WordPress site private here to have a secure site.

Don’t confuse WordPress.com with WordPress.org. WordPress.com is the free version, and you will have ads on your blog, and there are a few restrictions. For example, the name of your site will be yourname.wordpress.com. If you want to get rid of “WordPress” from your domain name and get rid of ads, you will have to pay to upgrade.

Watch this video to help you set up a WordPress site in just 24 simple steps.

3. Use your student ID

Most students out there are strapped for cash, and if they want to start a website, it might not be a luxury they can afford. However, there are some websites that provide one year of hosting. Often, all you have to do is sign up with your .edu email address to get a free website. If you do a bit of searching, you can often find other sites that will provide additional savings, like free domain privacy protection or cover the cost of domain registration fees for the life of the account. Using your student email address is perfect if you have a school or college project. Of course, before you sign up, look at design templates to make sure you can make your new site work for you.

4. Enter a competition

This one might be the hardest to achieve, but sometimes businesses or blogs will host competitions for a free year of website hosting and domain registration. Do a quick Google search to find out if there are any contests you can enter. Even if it comes with a few strings attached to it, it might be worth it if it is free!

What to consider when choosing a hosting provider

When you are just starting out, chances are pretty good that a shared hosting plan will be more than sufficient. Just make sure to pay attention to these features.

1. Speed

According to research, 47% of consumers[iii] expect a website to load within two seconds. If you don’t want to see hordes of people bouncing off your website, you might want to look at the speed that the hosting plan offers. If you end up using WordPress, you can download plugins to help with caching to speed up your site. However, cheaper hosting providers typically will be slower than more expensive plans.

2. Security

Unfortunately, the average small business website is attacked 44 times a day. Before signing a hosting contract, learn to see if the hosting provider offers free, regular backups that you can use if you need to back up your computer to a safe point. Sometimes, you can even find free hosting plans that offer free SSL Certificates which can help encrypt all sensitive information – like credit card numbers – and offer DDoS prevention.

3. Support

Even if you are a full-time website developer, you might run into a situation where you need assistance from the hosting provider. Many hosting providers will provide support via email, chat, ticket, or phone support. You should always look at the turnaround time and see how long it takes them to resolve any issues. A host should be able to respond quickly and intelligently so that you won’t experience any unnecessary downtime. Look for a host that offers 24/7 support. You don’t want to have to wait until business hours if you are having issues with your site. Find a host that has a strong reputation for responding quickly to any problems.

Just because you have a free blog, doesn’t mean it has to look cheap. There are tons of great website-building tools and themes out there. Your website theme and design can still look amazing, even if you didn’t pay a dime! Use free resources like plugins to fully customize your website and make it as safe, beautiful, and functional as possible. You can also visit Easy Hosting Guide to get more details about free web hosting and read reviews!

Reference list

[i]https://s3.amazonaws.com/bluehost-promo-coupon/index.html

[ii]https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/05/wordpress-now-powers-30-of-websites/

[iii]https://neilpatel.com/blog/loading-time/

Choosing a good template is not so easy. Maybe that’s why no one writes tutorials on this topic in blogs about site-building or talks about it in courses about blogging.

Now it would be nice to state that only an expert can distinguish a truly high-quality template from a trashy one.

But after that, no one will entrust the choice of template to a specialist, but simply give up and go on to download viruses in the guise of another tempting free template for WordPress…

If you are faced with the question of finding a design theme for your site or blog on WordPress, be sure to read the article and do not repeat the mistakes of most.

Sources of WordPress templates

The main selection criterion is often purely appearance. Design is not the last point, there are more important requirements for a good WordPress template.

The official source of free themes is the official WordPress directory which is an individual author or team. A trusted source is an author’s or team’s website with commercial templates that are recommended as trustworthy by friends, acquaintances, or specialized blogs/forums/communities. An indicator of quality would be whether the author(s)’ free template is listed in the official WordPress directory.

For premium themes, there are many theme stores and marketplaces. ThemeForest, TemplateMonster, WPZoom, and Mojo Themes are some of the popular WordPress theme marketplaces.

Learn add-on options

Not all templates are made on the same principle. And you, as a website owner, would probably want to control different aspects of the template, like the position of text and images, menus, and widgets. You should be able to change the whole template without having to dig through the code. Many developers allow you to play around with customization in demos. If not, you may use PSD for WordPress service. Make sure you collaborate with the best WordPress development companies that will convert all design elements properly and integrate the necessary functionality following the best web development practices. Otherwise, you should have a full description of the customization options and a picture of what the backend looks like during such customization.

Important criteria for the quality of a WordPress theme

By downloading or purchasing a theme from a verified source, we automatically get rid of the problem of spam links and viruses. Also, critical bugs, vulnerabilities, and poor-quality code that can take down the site or create a high load on the hosting are mostly eliminated.

However, to give demos to the consumers, you first need to get them to book one. This task becomes so much easier if you can master the SaaS marketing funnel. The benefits of a consistent marketing funnel are second to none, and it is the same case with SaaS. With an optimized funnel, you can rest assured that most of your leads will be converted into demo bookings and those bookings will turn into customers.

In this post, you’ll understand what a sales funnel means for SaaS and why you need it to get demo bookings. You’ll learn how to design a funnel for your business and the KPIs to measure and optimize. By the end, you’ll be ready to bring in more qualified demo bookings. Let’s start with what a SaaS marketing funnel is.

What is a SaaS Marketing Funnel and How is it Different?

A decade ago, this article would have been irrelevant. The SaaS market was not even close to its saturation point at that time, and each product used to find its audience without much hassle. But with time, things have changed.

Customers now have a plethora of solutions for each of their problems. They are now more cautious, selective, and demanding. Businesses can no longer push potential customers to make a purchase. That is why it is essential to guide customers with care until they are convinced to pay for the product. The SaaS funnel helps businesses with this.

In a nutshell, the SaaS marketing funnel is nothing but a process that consists of multiple stages, starting with awareness and lasting as long as the initial purchase is made. It is fair to say that all the steps of customer experience — from learning about the brand to purchasing the product — are included in the SaaS funnel.

The work might be the same, but the SaaS marketing funnel is slightly different from a traditional funnel. Generally, in traditional funnels, the potential customer first comes to know about the brand, engages with it, explores how it can be helpful for them, and after that makes the purchase. The purchase is where the funnel ends in traditional marketing. However, in SaaS marketing, there is an all-important additional step – customer retention.

The SaaS industry is quite different from the retail industry. Here, you do not expect customers to make one-time purchases and leave. The goal of a SaaS company is to impress customers with continual updates, exceptional SaaS customer support, relationship management, etc.

In the long run, the customers you retain will be more beneficial for your business than acquiring new ones because you do not have to incur costs for them. Come up with updates and loyalty programs to retain customers for an extended period. In the next section, let’s discuss the stages of the SaaS marketing funnel.

Stages Of the SaaS Marketing Funnel

There are tons of marketing books in which the acronym AIDA is mentioned. It stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. These four stages represent the flow of user behavior based on human psychology. Companies need to have a strategic approach to move a customer seamlessly from one stage to another.

There are many variations of AIDA. However, the approach described by HubSpot seems to be the most suitable for SaaS marketing. They have defined Awareness, Engagement, Exploration, and Conversion as the four basic stages of the SaaS marketing funnel. Of course, that’s not the end of the funnel: see the image below, a focus on customer loyalty and word of mouth are just as important as acquiring new customers.

Source

Awareness

At this stage, customers are a little confused and looking for answers. Their problem is still not clear to them, so the solution they are looking for is not very specific. This is where they come to know about your brand, most likely, through organic searches. Putting all your efforts and strategies into spreading brand awareness is vital for getting new leads.

Engagement

When people revisit your WordPress website for some informational piece of content, they move to the next stage of the SaaS marketing funnel. In most cases, the entry point to this stage is through some sign-up form or newsletter. When individuals are at this stage, they are genuinely interested in your content, and it is the right time to educate them about your product.

To engage with your visitors properly, you should create content that your potential customers are looking for. For this, you can use various keyword research tools available on the market. One such popular keyword search tool by SE Ranking has a very accurate keyword research functionality that includes all essential metrics like keyword difficulty, search volume, CPC, keyword ideas to extend your reach and meet customer search intent, etc.

Exploration

After engaging with potential customers and building trust, at this stage, you have to pay attention to warming them up for making the purchase. Do not just stick to informational content. Nurture them with testimonials, comparisons, case studies, success stories, and all the things that will convince them to pay for the product. You can even offer a free trial to show the functionality of the product and its benefits to the user.

Conversion

This section stands true to its name. It is essential to sell the product and complete the conversion, but customer retention is even more important. With SaaS, the subscription has to be renewed after a certain period. If you fail to retain your client, there must be some shortcomings in your product or way of handling it. The quicker you fix this, the more revenue you will generate.

Steps for Building a SaaS Funnel to Get Demo Bookings

We have had enough theory. Let’s jump to the practical part. Let’s talk about creating a SaaS marketing funnel to get more demo bookings and convert them into customers.

Know Your Audience

Even though this step has been exaggerated and explained so many times, businesses just seem to ignore it. But the reason behind this is understandable to an extent because after a business creates a product they are proud of, they assume everyone will appreciate it. And it is not their fault, it is just how human psychology works.

However, when businesses start to think that their product will work for everybody, nobody wants to use it more often than not. Your aim should be to focus on the needs of your potential customers, the customers who care about your product. Here’s how you can start knowing them:

Create a customer avatar

Your first step towards knowing your customers should be creating a customer avatar. The avatar is an individual who represents your ideal or typical customers. When you create an avatar, you get to look at things from a customer’s point of view, which can make it easier to sell to them. When you understand your customers, you can get more demo bookings by creating material that connects with them.

When you create an avatar, you delve into the psychographics and demographics of your potential customers. For creating the avatar, ask yourself questions like– How old are they? What’s their gender? Where do they live? When you have all the basics at your disposal, dig a little deeper. You can try to know their hobbies, likes/dislikes, desires, etc. When you summarize all the information you’ve gathered, you’ll be clear about two things. First, their problems and how your business can solve them. And secondly, how can you get their attention?

Learn how they talk

Now, you would have a decent idea of what your customers look like. The next step is to learn how they talk. Selling to them becomes easier when you can make them understand how your product can solve their problem in their language. They would naturally think that your business gets them.

You can visit forums where most of your customer avatar is present, see Amazon reviews, their Twitter accounts, etc. From there, you pick the words and slang they use. You can use their language in your marketing copies and website content to attract them to you.

How your visitors behave

Learning how your customers talk is certainly great. But, most of the time, people say one day only to do another. The best way to predict if they are the right match is by understanding their behavior. You can use Google Analytics to find out where your customers are coming from. Moreover, it also tells you what percentage of visitors are booking the demo from your WordPress website. You can also get to know the phrases or terms your customers are using to reach you. All this information, when combined, helps you know your customers better.

You can feed how your customers talk and behave into the avatar you’ve created.

Capture their Attention

Your goal should be to grab as much exposure as you can. For this, you can create useful and SEO-friendly content and post it on your WordPress blog. It is not easy to gain exposure, but it is one part of the business that you cannot ignore.

Here are some tips to capture the attention of your visitor:

• Make a good first impression by implementing an appropriate design. The design should align well with your marketing strategy and target audience.
• Avoid any sort of cluttering on your website. The clearer your WordPress website is, the better your message will be delivered. Moreover, when there’s no clutter, visitors find it easy to focus on the things that matter.
• The content should be streamlined and align well with the visual content.
• You must add call-to-action buttons at places that users see at first sight. It is important because it guides them on what they have to do next.

Run Email Campaigns

Your leads will not be visiting your site regularly, but you still have to nurture them with high-quality content. For this, you can run email campaigns. Sending two emails every week should be enough if they are informative and reduce the gap between the leads and your business.

Here are a couple of tips to collect email addresses and start your emails on the right foot:

Use Exit-Intent Popups

Any successful email marketing campaign starts with a list of highly qualified leads who are interested in what you have to offer. One of the best ways to collect this list is by converting your website visitors into subscribers. However, it is a well-known fact that most visitors might leave your WordPress website without actually subscribing to the newsletter. This is where exit-intent popups come into the picture.

Exit-intent popups read the user behavior and appear at the precise moment when the user is about to leave the site. Brian Tracy, one of the top personal success, productivity, and sales training authorities in the world, increased their conversions by 150% by using exit-intent popups and a few other tweaks in your WordPress website.

Relevant Subject Lines

The first thing that a user notices when you hit the send button, is the subject line. And it has to be on point. It plays a vital role in getting people to open the mail and read it. You have to write it in a way that catches your attention, but not too much. If you do too much, it’ll look like spam.

Moreover, you do not have a lot of words to make an impression. One of the data by Campaign Monitor shows that most of the subject lines lie between the 41-50 character range. If we consider mobile devices, the characters further decrease, so it is best to put the important part at the start of the subject line.

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Use The Right CRM

One of the tasks of the sales team is to keep track of all the leads generated by the marketing team. They have to keep checking which leads have or have not contacted the sales team. With the help of the right CRM, your team can determine this easily. It is a more efficient option because they will not waste their time re-contacting the same lead for the same reason.

While selecting the CRM software, you have to be very clear about your needs. You can use it for Lead management, Marketing Automation, Sales pipeline, Customer Data, Customer Experience, Email tracking, Social media management, and Contact management. You should also consider the accessibility aspect. If you want to add flexibility, you should go with cloud-based CRM software.

Set KPIs To Track

To determine if the growth trajectory of your business is moving in the right direction, there is no better way than tracking the crucial metrics and KPIs. Apart from telling about the growth, these KPIs give you insights into what people feel about particular aspects of your product. To understand your customers, determining the relevant KPIs becomes significant. It is noteworthy that metrics and KPIs are different for different companies and products. Let’s discuss some of the vital KPIs in the next section.

SaaS Funnel KPIs to Keep An Eye On

There are several moving parts in a SaaS conversion funnel, and most of it depends on the metrics and KPIs you track. You have to have reliable data to make educated decisions about your marketing efforts. Following are some of the KPIs that you should consider tracking.

Revenue Growth

When you list the most critical business metrics, the SaaS revenue growth rate will always be a part of it. This is mainly because it tells a lot about the sustainability and profitability of a company.

(Second Month Revenue – First Month Revenue) / First Month Revenue * 100 = % Revenue Growth Rate

The growth rate of a company can change significantly over time because it depends highly on the stage the business is currently at. If you keep giving demos to qualified leads, your revenue growth will stay intact. Check out this guide to learn more about the average SaaS revenue growth rate.

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value shows how much money/revenue you will be able to generate over a while. Or, in other words, how much money a customer will spend on your business. First, you need to have the average revenue per account (ARPA) to find out the lifetime value of the customer (LTV). You can then use the formula:

LTV = (ARPA x Gross Margin) / Churn Rate

Revenue Churn

Some metrics are not at all interesting to calculate but are still important for your business. Here’s one of them. Revenue churn tells you the revenue your business has lost over a specific period.

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Customer Churn

Customer churn is another crucial metric to track. It represents the rate at which your lovely customers change their minds to become non-customers. Calculating it is simple as it can be done by monitoring the number of customers who have canceled their subscriptions.

Customer Churn rate = Number of churned users / Total number of users

The average churn rate for SaaS lies somewhere around 5-7% annually. To read in detail about the SaaS churn rate, click on the link.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost tells you about your average expenditure on converting leads into customers. It is one of the most important metrics to determine the profitability of the business. The formula for calculating CAC is:

CAC = Cost of Sales and Marketing /Number of New Customers Acquired

There are tons of other metrics. You only need to keep an eye on the metrics you think are relevant to your business.

Get Demo Bookings Quickly By Optimizing Your SaaS Funnel

While you are tracking the KPIs listed above or another, you can also optimize your funnel. An optimized funnel ensures that you get the most appropriate and relevant leads for demo bookings. These leads will come with problems that your product is capable of solving. To optimize your marketing funnel, you will have to find the ‘holes’ in it from where your leads are leaking.

Let’s say you are successful in generating many leads, but most of them leave without actually making a purchase. It means you could not convince them about your offer at all the stages of the SaaS funnel. If your lead parted ways from you after the demo or trial, you need to improve your onboarding process.

Furthermore, when a customer churns soon after the subscription, it means that you are not paying enough attention to the customer retention process. Some things that you can do to optimize your SaaS marketing funnel are:

Understand The Difference Between Leads & Qualified Leads

Before you begin any marketing or sales activity, it is crucial to understand this difference. So a lead can be anyone who has interacted with your company. It is not necessary that they have to be your customers. A qualified lead, however, is someone whom you have tested on various parameters to assess their quality, their behavior, and their desire to purchase your product.

Your primary focus should be on qualified leads, which can be further categorized into Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). The better qualified your leads are, the more chances there are for conversion.

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Make your offers crystal clear and irresistible

Your goal is not to confuse people, but to convince them that your product is worth a shot. So, your offers should be crystal clear, there’s no doubt about that. Moreover, with irresistible offers, you increase the monetary value of your product. But how do you create irresistible offers? Here’s how:

• Understand your market, analyze your competitors, and then find out a way to stand out with your offers. By being clear with your offer and providing a unique value proposition (UVP) you get an edge over your competitors.
• Don’t sell the product, sell the result your product can produce. For example, consider you are a marketing coach who has expertise in lead generation. Now, instead of saying “I can help you with lead generation”, you should prefer saying, “I help businesses to attract 100+ qualified leads from Facebook without running any paid ads.”
• Speak the language of your customers. Touch their pain points and offer solutions.

Improve the user experience (UX) of your WordPress website

A decent user-friendly interface ensures that a visitor reaches their end goal on your WordPress website seamlessly. When it comes to UX, even the most minor elements of the website matter. Some of the UX elements that can help improve your demo booking conversion are:

• Design of the call-to-action button and its placement on your WordPress website.
• The loading speed of the page should be as fast as you can make it.
• The photos and videos are two of the most engaging elements of a website, so these should be of high quality. The visibility and optimization of the content also play a major role.
• Guest login features and easy checkouts can help your visitors in the long run.

On a Concluding Note

There’s some real competition out there in the SaaS market, so a business needs to adopt a very thoughtful and delicate approach. Product demos are a savior for both SaaS companies and customers. The SaaS funnel helps get qualified leads, and you can follow the tips presented in this article to make a SaaS marketing funnel that gets you your first 1000 demo bookings.

Features of the AccessPress Twitter Feed are:

•  Supports the dedicated Email forum support.
• Provides free updates for a lifetime.
• Fetch the latest tweets from any account.
• Displays tweets in the slider.
• Option to show and hide full username and so on.

Procedure to Integrate Twitter Feeds on your WordPress website using Plugin

• First of all, log in to the Dashboard of the site.
• Click on the Plugins button and then click on the Add New button to add new Plugins to the site.

• Search for the Plugin that you want to install on your site. After getting the Plugin for the site. Click on the button Install Now.

• Then again click on the button Plugins and then on Installed Plugins. Users can see the plugin installed currently, then click on the button Activate. 

• After activating the plugin in the second last Option, get the AccessPress Twitter Feed. Click on the button.
• Fill up all the links to the Twitter account. But, if not then Create it through the link as highlighted in the below screenshot. Fill the Settings blank spacesettings like Twitter Consumer Key, Twitter Consumer Secret, Twitter Access Token, Twitter Access Token Secret, Twitter Username, Cache Period, and Total Number of Feeds as per the account name and detail as shown in the screenshot below.

• Then see the Feeds Template. Choose Feeds Template Options to display the site to the customers.

• Choose the Time Format to show news feeds to the users. It provides three options i.e. Full Date and Time, Date only Elapsed Time.

• Click on the button Display Username to Display username otherwise leave the place empty. Click on the Button Display Twitter Actions(Reply, Retweet, Favourite) to display it. Fill up the space for Fallback Unavailable Message to display the message if Twitter API is unavailable sometimes. Click on the button Display Twitter Follow Button to display the Twitter follow button at the end of the feeds. In the end, click on the button Display Cache to display the caching of the tweets and to fetch new tweets.

• Finally, click on the button Save Settings to save all the changes made to the Website. 
• Users can also see the available demo after clicking on the button Demo which is given at the end of the page.
• Then finally after doing all the procedures click on the button Update to see all the changes made to the site.

Wrapping Up

With the use of the AccessPress Twitter Feed Plugin, users can make all the necessary changes to Twitter Feed. It’s reliable even for the WP beginner. As it is a free plugin it can be used by everyone to increase the general clients more conveniently through the Twitter Feed which will make your site even more appealing.

Also, check out other WordPress Tutorials over here:

• How to exclude a category from your WordPress Homepage?
• 5+ Best WordPress Blog Manager Plugins (Premium List)
• Add Featured Images in WordPress
• Bulk Delete WordPress Posts 
• Translate a WordPress Plugin into Your Language

Most people think that a pretty website with all the bells and whistles is the best way to go, but what they don’t understand is that there’s an art to it. It’s a skill that you can learn. Here are some tips to create a powerhouse website design.

Simple Is Better

In an ever-changing world of design, typography, and imagery, one thing remains the same — simplicity. Website visitors don’t go to your website to appreciate the pretty design you have. They’re there to find the information they need. An average user decides in the first 5-8 seconds if they’re going to stay on your website. It’s a short period to make an impact, and you don’t want to waste that by bombarding them with all the design elements in the book.

Overcrowding your site visitors with unnecessary content on the home page will only make to exit easier. HubSpot’s free graphic design course has one module that’s all about the fundamentals of good design. According to them, to improve user experience, you should treat simplicity as your friend.

Focus On Readability

Your website will probably have some text on it. These texts are used to describe your services, products, and your business. Make sure to focus on readability and use fonts that are legible and easy to read. Your website’s readability can also have an impact on your search engine optimization efforts in the future. Here are other factors that you can consider in terms of readability:

• Make texts short as site visitors will only read 30% of your text.
• Use lists to explain complex processes.
• Ensure proper spacing between letters and words.
• Make use of headings.
• Break long blocks of text with appropriate images or graphics.

Account For Visual Hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is the art of arranging different website elements in order for the site user to interact with the most vital element first. As mentioned, you only have a couple of seconds to grab the attention of your audience, and you don’t want to waste any second of it. Show them what they want immediately and strategically place other elements below where they’ll be forced to scroll down or navigate your website.

The goal of having a website is to persuade visitors to complete an action. It may be to sign up for your newsletter, buy your product, or arrange a meeting with you. But, users want to complete that action most naturally.  The best way to make people do what you want them to do is by hijacking their visual biases and putting the things that matter front and center.

Take, for example, a website that wants people to sign up for their free trial period. Good website design will place the sign-up button on the topmost area of the homepage and make it look conspicuous. This way the visitor will be drawn to it and click the button.

Make It Responsive

A responsive website means that it can adapt to changing screen sizes. Smartphone use all over the world is growing by the minute. If you want to attract mobile users to your website, the best way to go about it is to make it responsive. Gone are the days of two separate sites for mobile and desktop users. If you don’t put value in making your website adapt to varying screen sizes, you’re letting your competitors win over your customers.

Here are some reasons why having a responsive website is worth it:

• Flexible – No need to edit two different sites. You can implement quick changes, and you only need to do it once.
• Makes you look professional – Your customers will judge you for your website. A website that doesn’t render properly on mobile device screens looks unprofessional.
• Cost-effective – Nothing is more expensive than having to maintain two separate websites.

Make Use Of White Space

Another power tip is the use of White space or negative space. White space can be defined as the spaces that are in between, in most cases these spaces are color, White. These spaces can be referred to as visual breaks. They free your readers from eye strain when there’s too much information to focus on like a block of text all crammed up together.

Here are some of the reasons why you need more White space on your website:

• Helps strike a balance and helps make other elements look aesthetically pleasing.
• It adds a level of sophistication.
• It helps create a simple-looking design without compromising anything.
• It helps eliminate confusion and distraction in users.

Conclusion

These power tips will help you create a website that doesn’t just look good but is also highly functional. Keep things simple and focus on how you can communicate your message better. Make sure that your site visitors know where they’re going and help them avoid being bombarded with elements by strategically using negative spaces.