The Conversion Code: How to Turn Website Browsers Into Buyers [Video]

A conversion can be any action that you want a website visitor to take that gets them into your marketing funnel and that ultimately leads to them becoming a customer. The goal is to turn website browsers into buyers. The term buyers can mean any end game that you want to happen.

• Booking a call
• Reserving something
• Completing an estimate or lead form
• Purchasing a product

Don’t make your user guess what they have to do next. Your website should guide them towards your goals.

• How can you make their journey as easy as possible?
• What are the next steps?
• Provide clarity on your value proposition.
• How can you help them?
• What can you do and what problem can you solve for them?

Why should you care about conversions?

There are less new ad channels being introduced. There is more competition so you are paying more per click for visibility and impressions. The market is crowded with more people doing SEO and marketing.

You need to care about conversions because:

1. You want to drive and capture more leads.
2. You want to increase the quality of your leads so you can reduce the cost per lead by having more lead opportunities coming in.
3. You want to gain more insight into your digital marketing efforts helping inform whether or not your campaigns are targeting the right audience and goals.

“I laugh sometimes when people talk to me about, Oh, We’re trying this channel and it isn’t working for conversion or this method, things like that. And I often just try to back them out and start understanding let’s look at what you’re targeting and might that be a miss? Because you can only catch with conversion what fish are in the lake or the ocean that you’re fishing in. So, sometimes you need to check your fishing spot. You might not be targeting the right place — [and] conversion can be a canary in the coal mine to help you figure that out. So it has other uses for you besides, just leads in the form of quantity and quality.” Aaron Weiche

There are many components when it comes to conversions and you need to incorporate these elements into your strategy at a bare minimum.

1. Headlines: Headlines are your first impressions, it’s the first thing a person sees when they come to your site. They also are critical to your SEO.
2. Content: All types of content are important this includes written, graphics, photos — your content helps create trust, emotion, and intrigue which help build momentum for conversions.

“And the one thing regarding content, be thinking through all types. Your consumers, your prospects, those coming to your website, not everyone is the same type of learner. Not everyone is on the same agenda. You might need visuals to catch them. It might be someone who pours deep into the details and you need a lot of written content and linking off to further proof and case studies and things like that.” Aaron Weiche

3. Social proof: This can be reviews and ratings, first party direct testimonials or third party reviews on Yelp, Google, etc. It could be being a member of local industries and associations or things like the Better Business Bureau (BBB), or a guild. This can also be specific awards your company has received in their field. Really it’s anyway that you can communicate trust and indicate a recognized seal of approval that visitors can easily identify.
4. Calls-to-action (CTAs): We always want our CTAs to be clear and concise. The best CTAs create some type of emotion, relief, excitement, and so on. You want to create a sense of urgency for the visitor to take action and you want to find the best way to easily guide your visitor to take the next step.
5. Use data and numbers: Use language that your audience understands, they are not the esports in what you do. Anytime you can use data and numbers you create universal understanding that can be easier to comprehend, use this to your advantage to build trust.

❓ When it comes to calls-to-action is it best to a single CTA multiple times on a landing page or use multiple different CTAs on a landing page?

In general it often makes sense to have a single call-to-action on a landing page and sprinkle it throughout the page, however; there are exceptions to this practice.

“I really look at most consumers, there’s varying levels of what their interest or what they’re willing to do in that moment, right? They might be at a different stage in the funnel for what they’re looking to do, [so] I would say one call to action, but what you want to think through is you might need one specific to each of those. As I always say, if your only call to action is a buy now or become a lead now, that might be too much based on the type of product you have, its price point, how much comparison your buyers do, or education they need, or trust they need.

And I always say when you’re trying to capture someone. If you can get a yes, or a yes but, or a maybe, and still get them to identify themselves so that you can do additional work to get them further that might just look a little bit different. It’s always a good idea to explore if that’s needed for your business.” Aaron Weiche

Your header tags are critical in creating a strong first impression and as part of your SEO strategy. This is where you really want to spend time to showcase why you’re qualified to help the visitor. Aaron provided three examples of doing headlines the wrong versus right way.

Example 1: Law Firms

On the left we have a law firm telling us that they are “On Point. Relentless. Efficient. Effective.” Aaron makes the point that this headline could apply to any different number of services, it doesn’t speak to the person reading it.

As a business you need to consider the situation the user might be in and how you can help them. This is exactly what is happening in the example on the right, the business is speaking directly to the situation. This criminal defense law firm says, “hey, you’re likely looking for us because you’ve just been arrested and charged with a crime. We’re here to help you start building a defence, which you need to do within this moment.”

Example 2: Moving Companies

On the left side we have “Professional moving company.” When searching we have type in, movers, movers near me, so we already know Google is going to give us these results. So, having this as your main header doesn’t differentiate your business and it isn’t compelling.

On the right side we have copy that is playing to a person’s emotions, “Let’s make your next move refreshingly simple.” Anyone who has ever moved knows there are stressful and hectic pain points. This is being addressed in the headline. Then we also see social proof of 4,000 reviews and a 4.9 rating. They are speaking to the emotions and motivating the user to want to make the easy choice.

Example 3: Video Software

In this example we are looking at software and we have another example on the left hand side of a business stating exactly what the tool is but not the problem it solves. You’ve likely searched for the term, online video editor or a variation on this — but again, this business is just stating the obvious.

On the right side we see the exact opposite, the company is building emotional ambition and saying, we get it, you want to create pro level videos, but you don’t have pro level skills. Don’t worry about it. That’s what we do. We help you create pro level videos without pro level skills.

This tells the visitors that they can achieve their desired outcome even if they aren’t at a certain skill level. They are the solution.

These examples show you the stark contrast to what you can do with that H1 header in order to be clear, concise, speak to the context to the user and motivate them!

Testing is critical when it comes to CTAs. A lot of companies stick with one CTA and never change it. This can become their downfall because “[t]hey’ll never know if they can do better. They are maybe afraid to do worse, and that’s why they’re not ever testing or trying something different in what the language reads. When you get into acquiring this traffic, again, depending upon the amount of traffic coming to your site, sometimes tenths of a percent can really mean a lot in dollar volume closed by just getting a few more leads to come across.

Really focus on how do I create a culture every so often, I’m creating a new hypothesis, I’m testing it, I have data to look against so I can do a quick comparison and I can understand. When it comes to testing, it’s not always about winning. Sometimes you take those losses to understand and that informs your next test on what not to test or what might be better.” Aaron Weiche

You want to create and test a combination of elements in your CTAs:

• Clarity: Always be concise and direct as to what next action the visitor should take.
• Design: You want your CTA to stand out and get noticed. It’s critical to draw the visitors’ attention to your message.
• Motivate/Promise: Showing your audience the benefits they get by taking action. Explain how it can get them closer to solving their problem or achieving their goal. Incorporating a promise into your motivation. Like a service guarantee or quick response time, can make you CTA more compelling
• Urgency: You want the person to take action while they are on the site and in front of your CTA. Do you have the right combination of elements to make it easy for them to take the next step?

The different conversion levels

Updates – low level conversions

Updates are low conversion level asks, simple things like asking someone to follow you on social media, subscribe to your newsletter, or join a webinar — really common and low stakes.

• Always explain how much you’re going to deliver and what the frequency is if asking for an email.
• Tell them what they are going to get (articles, tips, resources, product info, etc — be specific!).
• Use this information as part of your CTA to eliminate guesswork and share the benefits.

Engagement – medium level conversions

The next conversion area is engagement and this is a medium level conversion. At this stage as a business, you are asking your visitor to engage more directly with you. This includes things like:

• Contact forms
• Live chat
• Phone calls
• Ability to text

At this stage, it’s not a done deal. You want to continue to offer social proof and make this engaging, welcoming, and helpful. A lot of mistakes businesses make when it comes to real time solutions like live chat or web to text is they just put an icon in their design and it’s not clear if the visitor will be speaking with a robot or a human. Spell it out for your user and motivate them,

❓ When it comes to contact forms do you recommend keeping them shorter and simple to limit friction and encourage a higher conversion rate?
“The way I think about this is, the least amount of fields will get you the most amount of conversions… so the thing I usually stress to people is collect the minimum you need to get [a conversion] started.

Depending upon the type of business… some businesses definitely say, if we do the minimum, we get more junk leads… so we want to add more things to qualify them. It gets a little bit more commitment out of the buyer.

But again, if you’re after quantity, ask the least amount of questions possible and build out a great [follow up] process.” Aaron Weiche

At this conversion level you also want to create opportunities for engagement with interactive elements if it makes sense for your business. Interactive engagement allows the experience This type of engagement allows you to make this about the customer and not all about the business.

For example it can be a calculator, a tool, or a report that gives the visitor a better understanding of how the business can help. This allows for a unique interaction that isn’t just a contact form. Interactive engagement:

• Help inform prospects on how you can help them
• Allows the visitor to provide information to you
• Helps start building a relationship and a conversation.

Lead – high level conversions

Leads are the highest level conversion; this could be a lead form, quote, schedule or book options. When it comes to creating lead forms you always want to consider how you can reduce friction. Things like only one field for a name or auto-complete for addresses can improve conversions and customer experience.

“We also see in these lead conversions, things getting a lot more visual. Again, this plays really well for a lot of people instead of filling out forms. Now, if you’re on a desktop or you’re clicking or on your phone, you’re just tapping.

So, instead of selecting from a drop down, now I have the things in front of me that I’m looking to achieve and I’m able to tap on those. When you reduce the cognitive load and visually, when it’s better than that giant wall of here’s eight fields, 10 fields, 12 fields.” Aaron Weiche

As a business you want to think about your current conversion levels (follow, engage, lead):

• What areas can you improve on so that you are not giving visitors an all or nothing proposition?
• Do you make it easy for them to follow you?
• Can they engage with you if they aren’t already?
• How can you get them to become a lead?
• Always test and track different conversion level combinations.
• Identify how you use each conversion level to support the next. Perfect your funnel.

🧭 If there’s only one thing you take away from this let it be Aaron’s golden rule of business: Are you easy to work with?

“We have endless choices. There’s endless competition. There’s endless results in any type of search that I do. And for me, nine times out of ten, I’m going to go with the business that’s easiest to work with. And this applies at so many levels:

• Is it easiest for them to understand your expertise?
• Is it easiest for them to understand the benefits?
• Is it easy for them to understand how others feel about you?

That social proof? All of those elements to go with it… so when someone comes onto your site, if the only way that you want to work with them is phone call, that’s really ruling out a lot of people.

You’re not easy to work with because you’re saying… we [only] want to work this way. And I get it, a lot of businesses, when they track what they’ve done over time, and a lot of times because they’ve done the other channels wrong. They feel like, oh, I just need to get them on the phone because then I can close them, then I can get to the next step and whatever else.

That’s great, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use the other channels as the first step and let that consumer feel like they’re in control. And then the second step is getting them on a phone call where you know your close rate is really high. Again with these and thinking through what we’re going to offer, You need to ask yourself, am I easy to work with?” Aaron Weiche

Today conversion channels involve so many different avenues:

• Phone calls
• Emails
• SMS
• Messaging
• Chat
• Comments on Social

You want to let the consumer be in charge of the process, so they decide which channel works best for them to connect with your business. The whole goal of the conversion is to get the person to identify themselves and share with you. Be conversational in your interactions with your customers.

At Leadferno they have found that by providing a floating CTA on landing pages that when a visitor clicks it they have multiple channel options to get in touch. A lot of people today don’t want to have to make a phone call and they are more weary of having to make direct connections.

How do people prefer to communicate?

In 2022 Leadferno did a study on how people prefer to communicate and text messaging was the number one leader (37.6%) by a significant portion over a phone call, and almost two to one over email. Yet as businesses we are very reliant on email as our number one communication tool.

“But let’s face it, nobody’s ever [said] man, I love my email. Our email is bloated, it has spam, it has every offer we’ve signed up for, it has client communication, [and] it has all these other things. So, when we’re talking about leads and conversions, when we get our new lead alerts via email, that [stuff’s] just getting buried in with the thousands of other messages pouring in daily.

Does that help our response time? No! Does it help us know to take action or to get someone else to jump on it? No! So, a lot to really think through there.

Now the beauty of email is we get read receipts, right? We understand what’s taking place. We have written confirmation of what’s there — that’s also available in text messaging!

You get a number of other benefits [with text messaging]. We, as a society as a whole, have greatly moved to text messaging being our number one communication channel. Businesses have really started to adopt this, especially in the last three to five years. We’ve seen a significant push to that.

But there’s still a number of businesses not offering this. Or, if they do offer it, they’re just offering it to their personal phone. Which there’s a lot of drawbacks to on that, which we can touch on security wise too, but most growing smart businesses, you want to be using a business application to empower texting, have the right tools for communication, notifications, and the secure aspect of you don’t have your sales or service people walking around with all of your customers interactions and information on their phone.” Aaron Weiche

⚠️ Text messaging is not only for a specific age group. This is outdated thinking and you will be missing out on many prospects if you assume that only a younger audience wants to text. According to a recent Zillow report 53% of people prefer to use text or a messenger app (see page 19).

SMS vs. Live Chat

For a lot of service based and small businesses, text messaging can be powerful because it creates a connection for you and it’s a two way communication. We’ve included some benefits of SMS below:

• Flexibility: Texting enables two-way communication at any time, allowing businesses to reach out proactively, unlike live chat, which is limited to real-time sessions.
• Convenience: Text messaging is more accessible, as it’s our most-used mobile app; users can engage at their convenience without needing to stay active on a chat window.
• Response Time Expectations: Live chat requires near-instant replies for satisfaction, while SMS allows for same-day responses, reducing pressure on businesses without instant response capability.
• Ease of Use: Texting is familiar and easy for staff to manage, unlike live chat, which can require more specific training and continuous availability.
• Bonus: Texting creates a connection whereas live chat is just a session.

Here’s an example of a Solar Installation company who implemented more conversion channel options which lead to more conversions:>

Businesses are constantly saying that they need more leads, but when leads increase these businesses are not treating the leads with the care and attention they deserve.

“What we’ve always seen is like faster responses to your leads boost conversion from being a lead to being a closed sale (or booked business). That’s where the speed to lead comes from. Studies have shown conversion is eight times higher when you’re able to respond in the first five minutes. When you get back to someone fast, it’s still top of mind. They’re impressed you got back to them, which makes them think the business is going to be responding to everything.

78 percent of customers go with the first response. So being first, if you’re in a competitive situation, gives you a massive leg up, no matter how your other questions get answered. The benefit for all of us is when we can take price off the table, that’s the best kind of customer.” Aaron Weiche

When looking at average replies to leads from text messaging the response time was 90 seconds whereas email leads it was 90 minutes! Leadferno recently conducted research to determine how effective small businesses are at responding to potential leads. Speed to lead is critical and most small businesses fail at replying to leads in a timely manner. Leadferno’s contact form research showed that:

• 42.6% of businesses never replied to lead
• The average first reply response time was 17 hours and 49 minutes
• Only 15.6% of businesses sent an automated email reply
• 65.5% of businesses attempted only one follow up
• 71.3% only used one channel to follow up with prospective lead

If you want to improve your conversions and expand your business you need to prioritize how you manage your leads. Here’s Aaron’s checklist for how you can improve:

• Become serious about a process
• Enable and use an auto reply for prospects
• Ensure your team is immediately notified of leads
• Analyze and improve your first response time
• Track, report, and improve
• Make multiple attempts to contact your leads

“So through all these things we talked about today, just understand It’s a team effort, right? Just like a football team, every player has to execute their position well in order for the quarterback to have enough time to hand the ball off, to throw the ball off, to spring somebody for a touchdown. If one of the 11 doesn’t do their job, it’s only going to be a 2 yard gain instead of getting a 20 yard gain or a touchdown, whatever that might be. All of these things, not one of them is a silver bullet. You need to use all of them together and be constantly improving what you’re doing.” Aaron Weiche

Tracking your conversions (Key Events)

Tracking your conversions and key events in GA4 is critical. You need to make sure that you understand how you are obtaining these leads, where they are coming from, the quantity of them coming in. Attribution is hard, but worth it (we’ve got you covered – download our guide below to make sure you’re tracking all your marketing campaigns correctly 👇). It is the only way you can then work backwards to determine how to improve your conversion formula and marketing campaigns to get the end result you want (more customers)!

How do you balance keywords in headlines with having a strong conversion message?

To balance keywords in headlines with a strong conversion message, Aaron suggests using design and page hierarchy strategically. For example, make the H1 keyword-rich to satisfy SEO, but allow the H2 or other larger, prominent text to carry the emotional appeal needed for conversion. This approach ensures search engines can recognize the page’s relevance while also connecting with users on a personal level, creating a seamless experience for both SEO and conversion.

If you have a good landing page, but conversions occur after the user goes along a five step flow to subscribe, what are some best practices for managing multi-step lead campaigns?
Aaron suggests that for lead campaigns with a multi-step conversion process:

• Set expectations early by explaining the journey upfront.
• Highlight the time commitment, value, and benefits in both ads and landing page content.
• Emphasize what users will gain from each step so they feel motivated to complete the process rather than overwhelmed.
• Make it clear that by investing a few minutes, they’ll receive valuable information, a quote, or another benefit, which keeps them engaged and reduces drop-off.

What have you done to convince B2B and E-commerce businesses to invest in text messaging?

When it comes to text messaging for B2B and e-commerce businesses Aaron recommends testing to determine its effectiveness rather than making assumptions about its suitability.

He suggests evaluating whether B2B clients are often mobile, as seen in industries like construction, where texting is convenient for prospects on the go. For e-commerce, he points out that offering both SMS and live chat provides options, catering to customer preferences and increasing comfort and confidence. Texting also allows for more flexibility than live chat, enabling users to continue conversations without needing to stay on the site continuously.

What are the most common conversion mistakes you see businesses making?

Aaron identifies two common conversion mistakes businesses make:

1. All-Or-Nothing Approach: Many businesses require visitors to become fully qualified leads without offering alternative ways to engage. This rigid approach, akin to handing a clipboard to a customer with just one question, limits opportunities for interaction. Instead, businesses should offer various ways to engage, such as live chat or quick FAQs, to build relationships and guide visitors without immediate commitment.
2. Uninspired CTAs: Generic calls to action like “click here” or “contact us” lack motivation. Effective CTAs should convey a clear benefit, incorporate social proof, and establish trust to encourage users to take the next step.

What about businesses over doing the call to action to the point where it’s unclear where to go?

Aaron advises against overloading a page with too many CTAs, which can overwhelm visitors and make it seem like the business only cares about conversions rather than building a relationship. Instead, businesses should organize CTAs thoughtfully, presenting them in a clean, easy-to-navigate way that empowers users to “choose their own adventure.” He compares this approach to a well-organized fast-food menu, where options are easy to find and understand, versus an overwhelming multi-page menu. Well-designed CTAs guide visitors smoothly and offer clear choices without clutter or confusion.

How can businesses decide which channels to focus on, especially if they don’t have other established top-of-funnel marketing channels?

Aaron recommends understanding the unique strengths of each social channel and aligning them with your business’s content and audience. Start with competitive research, looking at successful brands similar to yours—even in different markets—to see where they’re active, their follower count, and content style. This insight reveals which platforms work well in your industry. For example, if your business is highly visual, platforms like Instagram or TikTok might work better than X (Twitter). Testing what works, emulating success from other brands, and ensuring you have the resources to consistently create content will help guide your decision on which channels to prioritize.

Ready to turn those website browsers into loyal buyers? With Aaron’s insights and tips, you’re closer to growing your conversions. We encourage you to test different channels to figure out if you’re missing conversions by not engaging with your audience where and how they want you to!