Are you looking for ways to increase conversion rates? Increasing and improving your communication with leads can help you convert those leads into sales. As you focus on your business communication capabilities, you’ll find your sales climb naturally and easily. Communicating with your customers boosts your customer service, makes it easier for customers to make decisions about your products, and increases the perceived trustworthiness of your brand.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through 10 key business communication tips you can use to improve customer relations and increase overall conversion rates. These tips work in multiple ways, improving your communication, boosting SEO, and improving customer service, all for the best return on your investment.
How Can Business Communication Increase Conversion Rates?
It may be strange to think that just improving your communication can increase conversion rates. However, business communication is key to nurturing leads and moving those leads along the sales funnel.
Your business communications are one of the top ways you provide customer service. Seventy-three percent of companies with above-average customer service perform better than their competitors, and 96% of customers rank customer service as an important factor in determining which brands they’re loyal to. This means that you can improve your performance and increase customer loyalty by improving your customer service.
10 Business Communication Tips To Increase Conversion Rate on Websites
Your website conversion rate depends, in part, on how well your customers understand your products and if they think those products will solve a real problem in their life. By focusing on communication, you can spotlight the things that make your products or services unique and valuable. As questions crop up, you address them directly, preventing obstacles.
Communicating with your customers also highlights what your brand finds important. It allows you to communicate with your customers and tell the world who your customers are and why people find your brand so attractive. This can provide a form of social proof to potential customers, and they may be more open to buying from your brand because they see it’s meant for people just like them.
Here are 10 communication tips you can use to increase conversion rates on your website:
1. Use Lots of Images To Illustrate Your Points
“A picture is worth a thousand words” holds true online. Images are often a deciding factor for local searches; 60% of customers are more likely to consider local search results if they contain images.
Regardless of how customers come to your site, a variety of images helps you communicate with your audience efficiently. Studies show that customers need at least three product images before they feel comfortable purchasing.
For example, if you’re selling a leather jacket, you want to offer images of the jacket by itself so customers can focus on its features. But you also want to show the jacket on a model so customers can visualize how it fits, and an image of the jacket paired with other clothes, so they know how to style it.
Images have another benefit: they break up walls of text, making your website easier to navigate for people on mobile devices.
2. Create Compelling Videos That Inform Audiences
If you think images can educate your audiences, imagine how much power video content has.
Video is a versatile medium for communicating with audiences. For example, you can include brief, 30-second promotions on your product page to show how your product is used. But you can also record longer, informative videos to answer direct questions about your products, communicate with customers about your industry, and provide content relevant to their daily lives.
In fact, 87% of marketers report that video content has a positive ROI. This is unsurprising when you consider that 9 out of 10 consumers actively want more video content produced by the brands they love. As a result, most brands find that investing time in video content creation is worth the effort.
The social media platform TikTok makes it easier than ever to create short-form video content without a lot of technical knowledge. Using TikTok can be an excellent way for brands to dip their toes into video content creation on a shoestring budget, and its algorithm-based feed allows everyone to create viral content as long as they have a little research, creativity, and luck.
3. Have a FAQ Page on Your Website
FAQ pages are important because they use keywords that bring new organic traffic to your website and help convert that traffic into sales by clarifying questions your leads have about your company, products, or services. This matters since 53% of adults say they would abandon an online purchase if they couldn’t locate a quick answer to their questions.
By knowing the top questions your audience asks, you can preempt any confusion with an informative FAQ page. This is a great, hands-off way to increase communication with your customers. FAQs encourage leads to seek answers to their questions, which can cut down on phone calls or instant messages your team receives. But they are also convenient for customers. The information they need is at their fingertips, and they don’t have to wait for your company to get back to them.
4. Include Live Chat Capabilities
A whopping 51% of customers expect businesses to be available 24/7, and 75% of customers expect assistance within five minutes of encountering a problem. Providing live chat directly on your website allows customers to receive help as soon as they run into a problem.
Customers enjoy web chats over phone calls because it offers a low-friction way to get their questions answered quickly and easily. They don’t have to worry about navigating through menu bots, stepping away from their desk for a phone call, or quieting children in the background; they can simply have a conversation with your brand and get the information they need.
Live chats also make it easier for agents to keep tabs on a customer, even if they are transferred. Seventy-two percent of customers expect that the next person they talk to will know the details of their complaint if they are transferred. This can be difficult to facilitate on phone interactions. But in online chats, it’s easy for the conversation to travel with the customer and for customer service representatives to read up on the case beforehand.
5. Use Text Messaging in Your Marketing Strategy
Text message marketing allows you to reach customers directly and near-instantaneously. Podium is an excellent example of a tool for implementing text message marketing.
There are several reasons text message marketing is taking the world by storm. Thirty-four percent of people read text messages within five minutes of receiving them, while 89% of phone users read the message within thirty minutes. The average open rate for text messages is 98%, even when those texts come from brands. This means you benefit from knowing that most of your customers see your message right away.
Customers also seem to appreciate text message marketing. More than 69% of customers say that they would be willing to interact with businesses via text message, and 91% of consumers are willing to opt-in to using text messages with brands.
6. Offer Multiple Ways To Communicate With Audiences
Different people prefer different communication platforms. As a business, you should provide as many avenues for communication as you can manage with your existing team. Forms, email, telephones, live chats, text messaging, and social media communications can all help you communicate with customers the way they find most comfortable.
If you must limit the types of communications you use, prioritize based on the preferences of your target demographics. For example, younger generations typically don’t like talking on the phone. If you can keep only one customer service line open 24/7, you’re better off picking your chat line rather than your phone line if your target audience is millennials and Gen Z. On the other hand, a 24/7 phone line might be perfect for Boomers.
7. Provide a Timeline for Replies
Did you know that nearly half of all customers expect companies to respond to them within four hours, while the average time it takes is closer to 12 hours? Letting customers know from the moment they fill out a form how long it will take your brand to respond helps you manage expectations and avoids frustrated customers.
Providing a timeline for replies also shows customers you take their inquiries seriously enough to hold yourself accountable for replying to them. Sixty-two percent of companies don’t bother to respond to customer emails. By telling customers how long they should expect to wait, you put them at ease by assuring they can expect a response while taking pressure off your team to respond within 15 minutes (as a solid 12% of customers expect).
8. Engage with Audiences on Social Media
Your social media account isn’t just for marketing your business hours and reposting blog content. It provides a valuable avenue for communication between you and your audience. Engaging with audiences — from replying to their questions to actively seeking communication — shows that you care about the larger community rather than just your brand’s dividends.
At a minimum, you should have a team dedicated to answering direct messages on social media, replying to comments on your posts, and sifting through comments in which you have been tagged. Forty percent of customers expect brands to respond within an hour of being tagged on social media, while 79% expect a reply within a day. So it’s not enough to get to social media “at some point.” Brands focused on communication will prioritize social media daily.
9. Write Content That Provides Value to Your Customers
The content you create on your website is another way your brand communicates with customers. Choosing value-laden content shows customers what your brand represents while positioning you as a thought leader in your industry.
Your content is a crucial touchpoint between you and your customers. Blog posts allow you to provide long-form answers to more complicated questions your customers may have. You can also use blogs to highlight how products work into your customers’ day-to-day lives and help them understand the broader culture around your brand.
Quality content has also been shown to help audiences build trust with a brand. And if you’re focused on conversions, keep in mind that quality images and a strong CTA boost the effectiveness of blog posts.
10. Use Email Marketing Effectively
Did you know that, on average, email marketing generates $42 for every $1 spent?
Your email content drops directly into your customers’ mailboxes. Since 99% of email users check their email at least once a day, email marketing lets you provide longer content than a text message while still meeting your customers where they’re at. With 4 billion daily email users, the platform is rife with marketing potential. In fact, 74% of Baby Boomers consider email the most important communication channel for brands.
You can up your email game by allowing customers to reply to your emails and being willing to engage directly with those replies. Using quality images or videos can make emails more engaging for your customers and easier to read on the phone. Additionally, email list segmentation can allow you to receive hundreds of times the engagement as sending out blast emails.
Master These Tips and Increase Website Conversion Rates
Managing a business is all about the continual push to do better. You will improve your website conversion rates and relationships with your customers when you improve your business communication. Over time, this will translate to better company reviews, an increase in loyal customers, and a higher-than-ever conversion rate.
Get started today by choosing just one of our 10 business communication tips. Focusing on one item at a time allows you to master a technique before moving on to the next. As time continues, you can slowly accumulate more business communication tools and eventually become a master communicator. If you’d like to learn more business and marketing tips and tricks, head over to our blog and contact Redstitch Digital today to learn more about our strategy for increasing your conversions.