5 Useful Web Tools: Understand Visits to Increase Sales

How well do you know your customers? Do you even know who they are or why they want your service? It’s an obvious nah! if you’re still rambling about high bounce rate or low conversions.

If you’re not a regular reader at Offerchat or it’s your first time here, then you missed quite a lot in the “conversion-boosting” department. No worries, we’re not going anywhere. Try to poke around for information you need but do that right after you read this ‘un right here.

Let’s get this on…

What’s the biggest problem of website owners or eCommerce/retail online stores?

Low conversions? Too obvious of an answer and too broad to pinpoint. So what is it? Anyone?

It’s not knowing who’s been in and out their stores or understanding why visitors leave and don’t buy. When you can’t see your visitors much less talk to them, you’ll never know what they want or be able to help them when they can’t seem to find something you claimed to have for sale.

And we all know…unsatisfied customers = no sales (nada)

So, like any brick-and-mortar store, you’d be a fool to think that all the people who come in and look around your store will ultimately buy.

So what you got to do? Simple, don’t play guessing games instead check out these 5 website conversion optimization tools highly recommended by web analysts.

Web (Google) Analytics

It would be madness to setup an ecommerce website or any money making site for that matter without Google Analytics. I just couldn’t imagine it. Can you?

Google analytics is the ultimate free web tool that can help you understand the status of your website most significantly the visitors’ side.

Learn about your visitors by checking up on their demographics, platforms they came from, particular exit pages, links they clicked on… oh and how long they stayed on specific pages.

You can also use Piwik, Clicky and other web analytic tools available online (but I place my bets on GA ‘coz it’s the best).

Spend more time on your web analytics rather than complain about why people don’t buy.

Surveys & Interviews

Your clients have all the answers, at least for the most part. Please do remember that the next time you want to change something on your website for the hope of boosting your sales. Surveys and one-to-one interviews help you get unbiased feedback on your website and gain an insight on what visitors/clients like, do not like and the difficulties they encounter during their visit.

SurveyMonkey is the best-recommended tool when you need answers to marketing questions that only your visitors can provide. It also gives you a full-on intelligent insight on survey results through its analytic tool.

Sample questions:

- How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?

- In the past six months, have you criticized or spoken highly of [Company Name] to a friend, colleague, or family member? If so, please give details.

- If you could have us create something just for you, what would it be?

- What other products or services should we offer?

- Which other options did you consider before choosing our product or service?

Live Chat Support

What else do you need to better understand your visitors? Looking at movements (upward and downward slope of site visits) on your Google analytics or taking on a handful of survey answers to interpret are not enough to cover the base of understanding your client needs.

How about the shy types who wouldn’t call or don’t want to be bothered by a full-page survey form?

Use live chat support to talk to your clients! Do proactive chats and initiate a conversation. Sometimes these types of clients need quite a bit of squeezing to make them bleed.

This probably sounds biased but Offerchat is making quite a name for itself in the live chat industry with its forever-free chat widget that takes less than one minute to install.

What most live chat support tools offer?

- Online sales person manning your site (if you can manage to have a 24-hour chat agent)

- Track real-time visits and initiate chats

- Know which pages visitors are currently browsing

- Maximize site visits through chat triggers

- And more…

Heat Maps

If you want to sorta stalk your visitors and follow what and where they click on your website, a heat map tool is what you’ll need.

With heat maps such as ClickTale (in-page web analytics) or CrazyEgg, you can easily visualize what your visitors do while on your site, what pages they visit, what links they click on, how far down they scroll, and a host of other visitor-activity tracking features.

Visualizing what visitors commonly do on your website can give you an insight on which parts of your website/page need to be improved and what information they find most useful.

It feels creepy to spy on someone’s activity but it’s a handy tool to have around.

Usability Test

See your site visitor in action through usability testing. Let’s get this out of the way first, usability test is not a tool. It’s your job, your initiative to learn more of your client in the most personal way.

In fact, it’s safe to say that it is a combination of a survey and heat map of some sort.

What’s the flow?

First, you hand them a survey sheet (online pop-up survey request) to single out qualified prospects for your usability test.

Second, you invite them to do a usability test, which most often requires screen sharing so you can view their browsing activity.

Third, you interview them however you like via phone or in person while they move around your website. It might not be chat but there is that element of one-to-one communication going on, just like live chat.

These five website conversion optimization tools are best utilized side by side in maximizing site visits to conversions. Live chat, surveys, interviews, heat maps and analytics are must-haves of any eCommerce site owner who wants to optimize sales.

Remember, what matters is your clients’ perception of the website, whether it provides them what they want, not what you assume they want.

web tools website conversion optimization tools