Your podcast is taking off! You’ve got people interested in hearing what you have to say and you’re starting to get some more attention. Now it’s more important than ever to make sure your website acts as a central hub for your listeners, giving them an opportunity to connect and go deeper with you, whether that’s joining an email list, purchasing a product or service, or funding you to continue creating more content.
This is called a “conversion.” Getting people to actually take action on your site.
According to the latest numbers, the average conversion rate is a little over 2%. That means for every 100 people visiting your site, you’ll have around 2 people that decide to do something.
The single most important component of getting people to convert on your site is to establish “trust.” If you haven’t convinced your customer that you have their best interests at heart, you won’t get them to take action. Your job is to answer that most coveted question for them, “what’s in it for me?”
Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula for getting this right. It takes some trial and error to figure out what is going to resonate best with your audience. That’s why it’s important to be intentional about your messaging, who you are and how you intend to solve a problem for them.
There’s a number of different things you can try to help navigate your customer in the right direction. Here are some ideas to help you get started:
Have a Killer Headline
First impressions are everything and the same principle applies to your website. The general rule of thumb is that your headline should be around 6-12 words. Sounds easy, right? It’s tougher than you think! Your headline is your promise to your readers on the benefit you are going to deliver.
Remember most visitors aren’t readers, they’re skimmers, so you have very little time to catch their attention. (Less than 3 seconds!) Plus, now more than ever, they yearn for authenticity and most people can spot a phony marketing headline a mile away. You want to create curiosity, empathy and build a rapport between you and them in a very short amount of time. How do you do it?
- Know your audience – You can’t make everyone happy, but you can make 20-30% of your target audience happy. Speak to that group of users that will most likely benefit from your content.
- Focus on what makes you unique and the specific problem that only you can solve. (This is the main ingredient in your headline.)
- Trigger an emotional response – Appeal to their desire to want to take action now.
Write out as many headlines as you can and then look at it from the lens of your user. Does this really address a felt need and is it something that you would be inclined to engage with?
Copyblogger has some great templates and resources that can help you craft compelling headlines.
Make your CTAs clear and simple
There are a lot of different types of calls to action (CTAs) you can use on your site. This could be a button, a form, an email capture. Whatever it is, it’s important that you make it incredibly clear for the user to know exactly what you want them to do next. Use action verbs, not passive verbs. Keep your language simple and direct.
Remember to conveniently place your CTAs. Don’t make them search for it. It’s best to keep them “above the fold”, which is the term we use to describe the place on the page before a user would have to scroll.
Use a visual element like a button instead of a text link that could easily get glossed over while reading. Make sure you have a CTA on every page of your site, even if it’s the same call to action. The goal is to remove any unnecessary clutter and distractions to provide a clear direction for your visitor.
Some things to also remember when creating effective calls to action are:
- Encourage FOMO (fear of missing out) by adding scarcity and urgency.
- Minimize risk by offering a guarantee.
- Highlight exclusivity (make them the first, or part of an elite group).
- Make it personal (change the text from “you” to “me”).
Optimize for Mobile
As of March 2020, 52% of the overall web traffic comes from mobile devices.
This is especially true for podcasters since the majority of your incoming traffic will likely be coming from users listening on smartphones. You’ll want to focus some attention on ensuring that your site is accommodating to a mobile device. Google has a free tool you can use to test to see how mobile-friendly your site really is.
Responsive design is the easiest solution for ensuring the mobile-friendliness of your site. Word Press offers themes that have responsive design built into them which will save you from having to create any extra code, which is great for us non-developers!
Remember to think small and pack a mighty punch. You don’t want to have folks endlessly scrolling on their phones to read content and you’ll want to strategically place your CTA so it makes sense and intuitive to get that coveted tap.
Add Reviews and Testimonials
Sometimes good old fashioned word of mouth is exactly what you need to attract new people. Try adding some testimonials to your home page since this is primarily where you’re going to get the majority of your traffic.
You could add a testimonial to your hero image or put them next to your CTA to add a boost of confidence for your brand, or even create a dedicated testimonials page, especially if you’re trying to get donations and support from patrons. This helps to reinforce the value that you show is having for other listeners and it builds trust.
What about creating a video testimonial or pull your favorite comments from social media? If you’ve got an endorsement from a well-known business or influencer, use it!
Add Trust Badges to the Bottom of Your Site
A trust badge is a symbol(s) placed on your website that ensures visitors the information you are collecting from them through a third-party service, is safe and secure.
Studies have shown that adding trust badges to your site dramatically increases your chance for a conversion. This is especially true on a checkout or donation page as potential customers will be less likely to bail because there is an assurance that the information they’re providing is protected.
Consider adding a pop-up to your site
There’s always been a lot of debate over the use of pop-ups on a site and it’s for good reason. They can be annoying, intrusive and irrelevant when done wrong. However, when they’re done right, they can actually prove to be beneficial, especially when it comes to building an email list.
If you decide to add a pop up to your site, here are some helpful tips:
- Simplify it – Don’t flashy it up with a lot of text and graphics. Make it super easy for the user to know what you want them to do and what you’re offering.
- Choose your placement and timing wisely – Find the right place like a top banner or bottom right corner, one that makes sense for the user experience so it won’t interfere with them accessing your main content.
- Time it to appear when it’s most likely that your user will be most inclined to take action and not just dismiss it.
Test, Test, Test!
This is one of the most crucial and important parts of trying to increase your conversions. You need to test! You may think you know how your customer is going to react, but testing provides the proof and lessens your risk of having a page that just isn’t performing.
Free places like Google Optimize are a great way to get started. Test as much as you can including your button colors (green vs red), headline copy, images and placement. Play with the designs and layout and try to avoid using stock images. Opt for more authentic, real images and honest copy.
Each test will have at least a control (which is the current version), and a variant (the test). Use the free version of Google Analytics to start tracking the results and see how your audience is responding to these changes.
Testing can be a great way of discovering hidden conversion gold that you might not have found otherwise and helps you get a much better pulse of what your listeners want. It may even provide you with more content ideas for your podcast!
If there’s one takeaway you can get from all of this it’s to be intentional. Remember that you only have a few seconds to make an impression on your user and that means creating an environment that is welcoming and encouraging, and easy for them.
That’s at the heart of why we created Fusebox. We looked around at other players in the marketplace and the options were sparse, so we took it upon ourselves to create the best user-friendly podcasting player for a website on the market. And we’re just getting started!
If you haven’t tried it yet, now is the perfect opportunity to see what it can do for your podcast and your website. Get started for Free!
