EP371: The Top 3 Things You Need on Your Website for Better Sales Conversion

3:43AM Oct 15, 2022

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

people

website

page

jewelry

images

design

custom design

homepage

piece

questions

tracy matthews

shopify

site

thrive

shop

sales

masterclass

collection

conversion

sales conversions

build a brand and you want to appear like you're a six or seven figure brand uplevel your branding so that you look like that. So people take you seriously so that when you do get the traffic on your site, they are going to convert a lot better. Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching growing and scaling your business. So you could spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this.

Welcome to the thrive by design podcast episode 371. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews. Fresh off a trip from New York a couple weeks ago as I'm recording this. I've been back just a few days. And it was so great to be back in my city. I love that place for a lot of reasons and to feel the vibe and energy and I had a great time. moderating the jewelry independence Summit. I got to chat with some people that I have been fangirling on for so long. And I'm hoping to get them on the podcast here I interviewed Judy Geib meow morose from the one I love NYC who I've purchased jewelry from before I got to interview 10,000 things it was so awesome. I've been following David and Ron's career for my entire career in the jewelry industry. I got to interview my girl, Lorraine West. And it was so exciting for me to get to interview Judy guy, because she's so cool was like super fun. Anyway, I had a blast. And it felt awesome to be back in my element. But I'm also, as I like got to go and pick up the energy of the city, it was really interesting to see how much I've changed over the past three years. And that I've really enjoyed kind of slowing down in the slower pace of Arizona lifestyle. So that was an interesting, full circle moment, which was great, you know, and very exciting to say the least. So I am excited because today I'm going to be talking about the top three things you need on your website for better sales conversions. And this is going to be super simple. So this is really relatable to people at all levels. So whether you're just starting out, you kind of have some traction and you're building a six figure brand, or you're already at six or seven figures and you really want to optimize your website better, you might find just a slight little or small tweak that you can make in your website to increase your conversions and to always be testing which is the key to success selling online, getting the traffic there and success selling online. Speaking of traffic, and getting more website traffic this holiday season, I'm hosting a masterclass next week called in to your strong with marketing that matters. I love this masterclass for a very specific reason. It's all about strategies that you can use to really put in that little extra nudge, to grow your business, capture more sales, and launch into 2023 with a bang, and really feeling grounded and excited about this new year. Now, I am very clear that a lot of people are freaking out right now and feeling very uncertain about what's to go on. And one of the best ways to really take your power back and take control of your situation is to lean in instead of operating out of fear. So if you're struggling or fearful that people aren't gonna buy this holiday season, one of the main themes at the summit that I was speaking at was that people who have money are still going to be shopping. And there is no reason why you should be worried about making sales. So we want to help you really get the confidence to put yourself out there and to be going full force and be unattached to the results. Right. This is really about you putting your best foot forward and taking action on what matters most. So if you'd like to join me for that class, just head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash marketing that matters, make sure that you show up live because I'm going to be giving away an amazing, free bonus, especially for those of you who are overwhelmed with everything on your to do list. I'm going to help you focus on the things that matter, instead of the things that don't and you're gonna love it. It's going to be a framework that you can use over and over and over again. All right, so let's dive in to the conversation today. I want to talk about the top three things that you need on your website for a better sales conversion. And this really comes down to you Lauren helped me map out this episode, Lauren is our Shopify, our resident Shopify extra expert, I should say she helps run our momentum and Laying The Foundation programs and she's also one of our coaches for our accelerators that we're launching a new one in the New Year content all about traffic, which I will be sharing on that masterclass. And the exciting thing about this is that as Lauren who used to be a student of ours at flourish and thrive, has evolved she's been I'm moving into this new space to help people get more online sales because she did build a very successful online only jewelry company where all of her sales came from her online efforts. And so if you're someone like that you're tighter doing shows and all the things that you have to do, she's a great person to learn from. And all of this is kind of derived from her brilliance, and US collaborating back and forth to make this super simple for all of you who want to increase your conversions this holiday season. So let's dive in. Number one, the first thing that you can do to increase your sales conversions on your website, is to make sure that everywhere on your website has very clear calls to action. Now, the most important place, for those clear calls to action are your homepage, your about page or any highly trafficked pages on your website, I'm going to go through a few. This is really important, because if people don't know what to do, and they're confused, they'll bounce and they're not going to go anywhere. So an example of being confused and causing confusion is this. Number one.

You land on someone's website, they have a slider, there is no call to action on that slider. And we don't know like what that's for. There's nothing that says shop the collection, then you start scrolling down, it's like read the blog, read more about the artist, you know, go shop, some pieces here, oh, but then sign up for my email list. And it's like all these different things like all of them over and over again, all when you're scrolling down that page. And there's a difference between email signups on your page, which is great, you should have those, but also a pop up and the location of those things. So location of these clear calls to action is important, but also how the website is designed, and especially your homepage. So if you're trying to create a better conversion on your homepage, you'd want to primarily focus on getting people to shop number one, and then as a secondary call to action, you'd want them to sign up for your email list. Now you have a navigation bar, either at the top header or in a drop down menu or somewhere on your website. And that is a place where you can talk about your blog and your about page and publicity and all the things. Keep them focused on shopping, you can use press images and stuff on the homepage of your site. But instead of showing them the press feature, maybe what you do is send them to the piece in your collections where they can shop the look, or find that piece that was worn by a celebrity or whatever it is. So what I'd really encourage you to do is in the prime real estate, usually on Shopify sites and many of the current website themes from Wix and Squarespace, whatever you're using, there's usually a hero image at the top. And in that hero image, you want to make sure that if it's a slider, that each of the slider images has a strong call to action to shop, that specific collection that is linked, or the hero image clicks to wherever it's supposed to go. My primary thing is that there is somewhere on each of those images that tells them what the image is, and how to shop from that. And it's about when they click that image, it takes them to the next place. So a big mistake that I see often because sometimes in certain Shopify themes or other themes, that call to action button is already embedded in the slider theme. So people put an image in there that doesn't really work with the location of that call to action button. So you need to play around with this so that it number one looks good. So the images are formatted properly, and that people are clear on what they should be doing next. Now the next thing that you want to make sure. So there is also a caveat for people also doing custom work. So if you have a ready to wear collection where people can buy in your eCommerce store, but you also do custom work. Because custom is a probably a portion of your business, what you might want to do is have somewhere on that homepage that sends them to that custom jewelry page. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. So just be clear, like what are your objectives and really think through what do I want people to do. And pretty much it's always to shop. Now when you also want to try to collect email addresses. So you can have something at the footer of your website, or at the bottom of that page. And then you can also have a pop up my recommendation. And what I like to do is to have a exit intent pop up where it pops up as someone's leaving your site or pops up as a sticky sidebar, not just immediately in their face. A lot of times what ends up happening with pop ups is the way that they're designed these days, is that you can't figure out how to back up if you back out of it if you don't want to opt into an email list. And what ends up happening is that people just close the browser tab altogether and you don't want to do that. So make it easy for people to close that browser tab and opt in only if they want to and make that offer juicy. So the homepage clear calls to action. Now typically for most people the second most highly trafficked page on a website is the about page and this is very important real estate to be calling out your avatar, whoever your dream client is, and also sending them to what is next. Now I see this all the time designers have a picture of themselves, the words on their about page are super tiny, they haven't really utilized the full, kind of like having header text, versus like paragraph text, using bullets and images and all those things to break up that about page. So make your about page number one visually interesting. And then throughout the bio, or whatever you're writing there, make sure that there is a call to action button at the bottom of it, here's what to do. Next, go shop the collection. And you can have a secondary call to action on this page, maybe with a form, sign up for my VIP insiders list or whatever your offer is there. And you can also have LinkedIn, the text to shop the collection on your website. But this is really important. Everything that we're trying to do is to point them to shop and get a conversion in a conversion would either be collecting an email address or making a sale for this, we're really focused on the sales aspect of it. Now, next page I want to talk about would be the contact page. Now on your contact page, a lot of us have different things that we're trying to get we might be getting contacted for. Maybe it's questions about the work, maybe it's wholesale inquiries, maybe it's publicity hits, think through all the reasons why someone would want to contact you. And then this will lead into my next question, because if people want to contact you, and they're asking you the same questions over and over again, this is gives you an opportunity to answer all those questions, which is our topic number three, which I will get to in a minute. So make sure that you're directly telling people if they land on that contact page, if they have a question about a product or service, fill out the form. If they have another inquiry like publicity or wholesale, tell them what to do next, and guide them in that direction. Also, if someone wants a custom piece of jewelry, then send them in that direction for the custom piece of jewelry. The focus here is to really encourage people to fill out that form and get to the next step and then answer them quickly. And then I mentioned this earlier, but also if you are someone who does custom design, and you are actively trying to get more custom clients, make sure that you have a custom design landing page with clear information on how someone can book a custom design consultation with you explain the steps of your custom jewelry process. You can put timelines in there and everything so that they know the next steps in in the form of the contact form that they fill out. Make sure that you have all the questions that need to be answered, including budget, any questions that you need to ask that need to be answered so that you can do your best job either landing that client or understanding if this is a right fit for you or if it's not. So that piece is very, very important. So what you're going for here is here's how it works. And here are the next steps and fill out this form. And let's have a conversation. And there's a lot more that you can do to optimize that process. But we're just talking about just the wording and stuff that you can do to get better sales conversions on your website. Now, number two is to answer all questions on your site. So I kind of alluded to it before. But people are asking you questions all the time, whether you know it or not. And you want to make sure that all their questions are answered so that they can make an informed decision in that moment, and they're not guessing. So you want to make sure that you have a clearly defined and easy to find FAQ page. So this would answer any process questions in your custom design page would also explain the process. As I mentioned earlier, this would cover your return policy, shipping timelines, basically, how to request samples, anything that people ask you questions about, you'd want it on these FAQ page and then linked to other pages on your site that guide them in the direction to take that next step. Also, when you're thinking about answering questions, there might be questions like who is this brand for, so you want to make sure that you're clearly calling out your dream client avatar in all over the website and talking about who that person is. You want to make sure and that's not making a big paragraph about it. It's about coming up with a one liner about who you are, what you design and who it's designed for, etc.

Then I want you to think through all your product descriptions and everything they're like, is all the information that's needed there? Do I have visuals of what the piece will look like worn on as well as a still life. So I can see on a white background or a plain background where people can clearly see what the piece of jewelry is. I see people do this all the time. They're like, Well, my jewelry has this vibe. And so they put it on all these props and stuff. And while there are exceptions to the rule, and sometimes that works, especially if it's not busy in the background or makes sense. But the problem is, is a lot of people aren't professional photographers, and they make those images so, so busy and it's hard to see what the jewelry is. In fact, I was just working with someone who's really talented. She has a beautiful collection and her collection like I can barely even tell what any of the pieces are in a website. because their photos are so distracting. So you want to make the images as clear as possible so that someone if they're landing there, they know what it is. And they can decide if they want to buy it or not. So I'd recommend several angles of the photo, clear, clean background, ideally white for most people. And then also something where the piece is worn on a model or you even so that people can see the size and scale of that piece and no, then I would have everything listed out product dimensions, materials, shipping timelines, are these pieces made to order? Are they shipping immediately? You know, any question that someone might have about purchasing a piece? Have those questions answered right there. So good thing to do is that as you're getting questions, and people are asking you things, whether it's on Instagram, or in your contact form on your website, or your customer service, document those things, create an FAQ process, and then make sure that you update your website to answer those questions in the appropriate place, if that makes sense. And this leads me to the next step of the process, which is number three, professional looking design. This goes back to one of the comments I previously made about someone trying to DIY her photos, and having them be so busy, because she's not a professional photographer or an artist, you have a big budget. And so it doesn't look great. So the website needs to be professionally designed. There are many, so many amazing templates on Shopify, and a lot of these other website platforms. I'm very partial to Shopify, not everyone loves it. But I think it's amazing because of the functionality of the sight. And you need to be working with the platform that allows you to create a professional look, if you can't hire a professional designer. That means you need professional looking images, you need a template that looks professional and up leveled, you need cohesive graphics, fonts and color schemes. If you're not a graphic designer, a lot of times what we see happen is people are using like a random weird color purple, and then mixing it with a weird color green, and no offense to people using purple and green on that. But it's like, sometimes it's really hard to read. And you don't realize that if your website's hard to read, and there's tons of text and all these things, and you have a million fonts and the images are like not great quality, because you're not a photographer that actually says a lot about your level of professionalism, and trustworthiness as a business owner. So if you aren't good at those things, and you can't afford to invest in something like that, if you're in this more startup stages, then I would encourage you to look into having a friend help you who is good with design has an eye for design or photographs, or going to some of these services like 99 designs, or Fiverr, where you can get freelancers who don't charge a big rate where they can create nice logos for you come up with a branding guideline. And those things that you can use to really lay out the site. This is super, super important. I can't, if your website looks janky, like an unprofessional person did it, people are not going to take you as seriously. So I would really recommend that you get this figured out. And for people who aren't on website platforms that are templatized, meaning they're trying to like do their own WordPress and are not professional graphic designers. This can be really challenging because those website platforms aren't really easy to use unless you're a tech professional. And they actually really require a professional graphic designer to make them look good. So I just want to encourage you maybe if you're on something like WordPress, and you're not a WordPress designer, or programmer, it's either get some help or move to another platform that's more user friendly, that has a natively beautiful design built in. So these are really easy things I believe, that you can do to create a website that converts higher during the holidays, especially topics one and two. So let me walk through these again. Number one, have clear call to actions on every single page of your website. What do you want people to do next? Number two, answer all questions that people have as they're encountering your site, you have an FAQ page make sure that the questions are answered on the page as succinctly as possible to reduce the number of inquiries that you get and an increase the number of sales number three professional looking design, this is going to uplevel you and people will take you much more seriously as a brand. If you look the part I used to say to my yoga students all the time and I say this to jewelry designers as well fake it till you make it so if you're you know trying to build a brand and you want to appear like you're a six or seven figure brand uplevel your branding so that you look like that so people take you seriously so that when you do get the traffic on your site, they are going to convert a lot better. Now with all this being said, I hope this was a helpful episode for you today. And I want to invite you one more time to our brand new free masterclass and the your strong with marketing that matters. And I'm very excited about it because it is going to be a class that is really going to help you get the kind of traffic that you need on your website so that you're growing all year long and rolling into 22 23 with a strong foundation regardless of what's happening in the world. Wealthy people who have money to buy jewelry are not affected by changes in the economy like a lot of other people are.

So keep that in mind. Keep moving forward, put yourself out there, make the sales and recession proof your business. And come join me next week. I'd love to help you. Alright, this is Tracy Matthews, signing off until next time, if you have any questions or you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to take a screenshot and tag me on instagram head on over to add Tracy Matthews and why and or at flourish underscore thrive. I'm also on tick tock with those same handles, tag me share a screenshot I would love to see and get to know you a little bit better. Also, if you have any questions or you just want to share your experience listening to the podcast or any experience with our programs and courses, then I would love to hear you just shoot me a DM. Let's chat. All right, Ciao for now.