The 2024 Guide to Turning Your Website into a Conversion Engine

The key to engaging your audience at each stage of the buying journey is creating unique evergreen content – written, video, and live webinar experiences.

Traditionally, marketers looked at website content as being static resources & blog articles with a few videos here and there. Then we would send our audience to another brand’s platform to engage with them in a webinar or virtual event.

But times have changed – buyers want more valuable content. Now we can finally take the reins by rethinking how we engage our audience directly on our websites, not only through written content but by hosting webinars directly on our website.

The content you create should answer key questions and provide new perspectives at each stage of the customer journey – not just top of funnel.

Think outside the box. Hosting webinars directly on your website is a unique way to fuel this entire content engine by taking engagement to another level and naturally immersing your audience in your brand experience.

Leverage the webinars you host, whether it’s thought leadership sessions or tactical workshops, and repurpose them into various formats including SEO blog articles, social media posts, and video clips. This will help you ensure every piece of content is high quality, unique, and always provides a fresh perspective. And with AI, this webinar repurposing workflow can make the content creation process even more efficient.

Now you are driving website traffic and conversions – all because you’re establishing your brand as the go-to place to learn while naturally putting your audience in front of your brand and high-intent CTAs on your website.

It all comes down to sharing highly relevant content at the right time – directly on your website.

The emergence of AI has opened the doors to scaling up your content creation like never before. But there's a catch – you can't sacrifice quality. That's where the CyborgMethod comes in.

This method isn't just throwing words on a page, hoping they stick. It’s combining what’s best in both parties. It's a harmonious blend of your deep expertise, sharp SEO skills, and AI's efficiency. You're in charge at every step. From decoding your audience’s needs to digging up keywords and drafting up an outline, it all zips by in a flash.

The magic starts with the grunt work – figuring out what your audience craves. Keywords and topics - they're still like the map to your audience's heart. Find out what keeps them up at night and what questions they're firing up Google for at 2 AM. When you weave your content around these insights, you don't just strike a chord; you become the go-to source - reliable and authentic.

Snagging your audience's attention is just step one. To truly captivate them, you've got to rise above the sea of content already out there. Get the scoop on what's rocking the SERPs and put your own spin on it. Make an outline that truly rocks. Give the people (and Google) what they're craving. Sketch out those outlines that will stand out and let AI do its magic.

Then, as a subject matter expert, you refine and infuse the AI draft with authentic insights and experience. That's how you turn heads, ensuring your content truly resonates with those it’s meant for.

By combining your superpowers and AI, you can scale up, producing top-notch content that brings the right traffic with the same resources and time. Scale smartly with AI, yes, but never lose sight of the SEO and user experience aspects. It's not about working harder; it's about working smarter.

You do so much work to get a buyer to your website – you can't leave what happens next up to chance.

And since we can't predict exactly when someone will land on your site, we can use chatbots to enhance the experience they have the moment they arrive, whether it's midday between calls or late night catching up on emails.

With always-on chatbot guidance, you can ensure that your buyers are immediately engaged and given all the information, answers, and suggestions they need to convert right then and there – in a format that doesn't require them to commit to speaking with a sales rep.

In the age of AI, chatbots have evolved far beyond the typical canned greeting and choose-your-own-adventure click-through prompts.

AI-powered chatbots can not only engage your prospects actively in conversational exchanges, but they can leverage powerful AI models to understand the buyer's digital body language, predict what content they need to see next, book meetings with their dedicated rep around the clock, or even hand them off for a live chat conversation if reps are online.

A huge amount of traffic driven to your website is going to leave without taking a conversion action. Not ideal, right? As marketers, we've become accustomed to this scenario, shrugging it off as a normal part of business, and attributing it to the fact that not everyone is our ideal customer.

But what if even your highly qualified traffic is bouncing from your site? Now that’s a serious problem.

Rather than forcing a harsh call to action (CTA), like “Book a demo”, you can personalize the experience for visitors who didn’t convert on the demo CTA to your self-service options, like “Sign up for a trial”.

For example, when Pendo implemented this type of web personalization, they saw a 22% increase in conversion, without spending an extra dollar on acquiring new traffic. How’s that for turning your website into an efficient growth machine?!

Think about how you can tailor each visitor’s experience based on their preferences and intent. The more personalized the experience, the better chance you have at driving higher engagement and conversion rates.

You should be showing your audience and prospects that they can trust you from day one, whether they talk directly to you or land on your website.

Having the perfect messaging and graphics can only get you so far, but what are you doing to show people that you can actually ‘walk the walk’? Buyers know you’re going to talk up your solution but social proof is what really seals the deal.

Incorporating social proof on your website is a great way to back up your value propositions with real evidence. Awards, badges, customer logos, quotes, and even video testimonials give buyers the extra validation that your solution is worth their while.

You can directly reach out to your customers to have them share their experiences but consider leveraging content from social media and review sites too. Better yet, if you can embed comments and reviews from these platforms directly on your website, you’ll create another level of credibility. That’s because the content is visibly being shared by someone outside your organization – not static copy that could have been prepared by the marketing team.

Interactive demos let website visitors get hands-on with your product and experience ‘aha’ moments from the first time they see your website.

Buyers want to do as much research as possible before they sign up for a live call or do a free trial. According to a stat from G2, more than 60% of buyers agree and strongly agree that vendor sales aren’t involved in the research phase.

Interactive demos give website visitors a self-serve option to help them better understand what your product does and how it will help solve their problems. Customers most often use interactive demos as a secondary CTA on their website or embedded on specific solutions or product pages.

Plus, interactive demos can have CTAs embedded throughout the demo. Once someone has gone through your demo and sees value, they can immediately schedule a live call or sign up for your product.

If you wait until a buyer’s ready to talk to you to try and win them over, you’re already too late. B2B buyers are 70% of the way through their research before they contact a vendor — and the first vendor they contact is usually the one they end up going with. In fact, if you haven’t won a buyer over during the first two-thirds of the buying process, your chances of winning the deal are a puny 16%.

So how do you connect with buyers when they’re conducting all that early research behind the scenes, in what we call The Dark Funnel? With intent data — digital breadcrumbs buyers leave behind as they conduct their research. Intent data makes it possible to understand customers in an anonymous buying world because it shines a light on who your potential buyers are, what they’re interested in, and where they are in their buying journey — even if they’re not coming right out and telling you.

One of the key ways to pick up intent signals — and turn your website into a conversion machine — is by de-anonymizing your web traffic. Yet research shows that only 26% of companies do this. Meaning if you do… you have a major leg up on the competition.

Capturing and tracking intent data allows sellers and marketers to align on what buyers are interested in, focus campaigns and activities on accounts based on those interests, and create relevant and personalized messages that will influence decisions down the road. Those efforts are proven to boost conversion metrics throughout the sales cycle — increasing deal value, improving win rates, and reducing days-to-close.

A qualified lead filled out your ‘book a demo’ form. Congrats!

For many B2B marketers, this is where their job ends. But that’s not good enough for you, not anymore. You want to make sure that qualified lead turns into revenue, don’t you?

One of the most critical conversion points in the B2B buying journey happens after your prospect raises their hand to ask for a demo. As a marketer, your job isn’t just to get prospects to fill out your form, you also have to qualify them, route them to the right rep, and get them to show up to that demo, all while making the process as seamless as possible by removing friction.

Today’s B2B buyers want to do as much of the sales process as possible on their own. When they come to your site and book a demo, they’ve often done hours of due diligence and are ready to take the next step. Don’t lose them to a competitor by making them wait.

On average, it takes B2B sales teams 42 hours to respond to a new lead and 38% of those leads never reply. Then it typically takes more than 4 days of back-and-forth communication before the first meeting even happens. You have more chances of getting ghosted by your new opportunities the longer you make them wait.

It's almost 2024, there’s no reason your speed-to-lead shouldn’t be instant.

Experimentation is at the center of any growth strategy. An experimentation program needs clear processes and frameworks to be successful and ensure that tests are meaningful and results compound over time.

A good program follows six steps: Identify > hypothesis > experiment > report > learn > repeat

The most important stages to focus on are learn & identify.

Learn, because if you’re not learning then what’s the point?!

Identify, because you can only learn at a fast rate if you're running a lot of tests and you need a large pipeline of experiments to test at high volume.

An experiment pipeline is built on customer insight. The better you understand how people are interacting with your website or product and what their needs are, the more effectively you will be able to design experiments. You can do this in several ways.

Analytics
‍Your analytics tools will help you identify trends. Are conversions up or down? Which pages or parts of your product convert better/worse? This data helps identify where your opportunities are.

Feedback and surveys
‍The simplest way to understand your customers' needs and what they do and don’t like about your product is to ask them. A simple feedback widget can provide insights into general feedback; why people come to your website, or why they didn’t convert today.

You can then run a customer survey to dig deeper into specific areas.

Heatmaps and screen recordings
Heatmaps will show you which elements of a page people are interacting with, where they click, and how far they scroll. Whereas screen recordings allow you to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Watch their full journey to find and fix issues.

Combined, these tools help you understand the reasons behind the trends you find in your analytics and identify changes that improve conversions.

User interviews
Interviews are a foolproof tactic to help you dig deep into the motivations, barriers, and purchase behaviors of your target audience. These insights are like gold dust as they tell you what to build or remove, to improve conversions.

Finally, to execute effectively you will need to build a cross-functional team with Marketing, Product, and Engineering all involved. Speak often and document everything so you can always refer to what you learn.

Your website should act as the #1 salesperson that works around the clock. However, is your site adapting to the user's facial expressions or something they said as a salesperson would in a demo? The answer is likely “no”.

Then the question is – how do you land the perfect pitch every time someone comes to your website?

It comes down to well-crafted messaging that resonates.

For example, the hero section of your homepage is prime real estate. Instead of coming up with a heading that YOU think is catchy and then setting it and forgetting it, you need to tap into what your buyers want and consistently adapt your message.

Here is a 4-step Messaging Framework that you can use to get started.

Clarity: Explain your solution clearly and explicitly. Does your audience understand your offering right away? If not or if you are creating a new category, you need to be as direct as possible. That might mean you need to compare your unique solution to a broader and widely accepted concept (ie. The Netflix of [insert comparable solution]).

Relevance: Who is your solution for? Spell it out so clearly that there is no wiggle room for misinterpretation. If you are talking to your target audience they should get it immediately and know that your solution was made for organizations and people like them.

Value: Make your solution the obvious choice. This is the most important part because you need to make them really want it. Look beyond features and lean into emphasizing your unique selling propositions that make your offering irresistible.

Differentiation: Why should buyers choose your solution over the category leader? When your audience asks how you are different from the category leader, you should have an easy answer that’s a clear differentiator. Being able to change a few brand colors is not going to cut it.

Once you have your website messaging started using these 4 steps, put it back in front of your audience. See what they think. What resonates and what doesn’t? 

Keep going through this process and tweaking your messaging to your audience. The more your messaging hits home with your audience, the more conversions you’ll see trickling in.

Remember – your buyers are always changing and so should you.

Digital experiences are constantly evolving, and so are your site visitors' expectations. So, how do you keep up with ever-changing digital demands? One of the best ways to stay ahead is by evaluating your site's current user experience (UX) and enhancing it across every aspect of the user journey.

Building a better UX isn't a light undertaking, but it doesn't have to be a massive one, either. Start with user testing, where real users interact with your site to uncover pain points and preferences. Their feedback will guide your improvements, ensuring alignment with user expectations.

Collaborate across different teams within your organization. Involve design, development, and marketing teams from the start. This will bring diverse perspectives and expertise to the table and ensure the final product resonates with users and aligns with your larger business goals.

For example, if your site is built with WordPress, you can tap into its vast library of plugins and themes, which can help you enhance your UX with added functionality and design—all without manually coding a thing!

Make changes to your site in a staging or development environment like Local. Once you've implemented site changes, you can continue refining with quality assurance (QA) testing. Multiple rounds of QA will help identify and fix usability issues, navigation challenges, and design flaws, ensuring a seamless experience for all visitors.

Last but not least, ensure you're using a robust hosting provider that can guarantee a seamless user experience, no matter the size of your website and its audience. While improved design and navigation can significantly impact your site's UX, they'll make little difference if your site is slow or users experience downtime.

If you're not adapting your website for different markets, you’re not fully personalizing your website. Which means you’re missing out on higher engagement and conversions.

Website localization is the foundation of personalization. Nearly 73% of customers prefer to do business in their native language. It’s a fact. Yet, most content online is in English, despite English speakers only making up just under 5% of the global population.

As going global becomes the norm, more and more websites will have to localize their website to attract new audiences and stay competitive. If you're not localized you’re not discoverable in new markets. If you’re not discoverable, you’ll struggle to build brand awareness and increase traffic to your website.

Once customers have found you, a localized experience helps them navigate your website helping you build trust and increase conversions. But localization goes beyond translation. To create a truly tailor-made experience, you’ll need to consider cultural nuances, dialects, and market preferences.

There’s a lot to think about, but website localization doesn’t need to be stressful. There are localization tools that can make the localization process seamless. The sooner your website is localized, the sooner you’ll see an increase in traffic and conversions.

Despite the challenges marketers face in gaining comprehensive audience visibility and optimizing engagement, websites remain pivotal in understanding the digital customer journey. With the depreciation of UTMs and cookies, marketers need to prioritize enhancing their website experiences to drive engagement and conversions.

Using the strategies shared by industry experts and leading brands in this guide, you’ll surely see a boost in engagement and conversions – not to mention, have better visibility into the entire customer journey.