Turning Website Viewers To Leads and Then Sales
I tried to get health insurance recently for myself and my family. My long suffering wife is putting the pressure on. In fairness, she is right to do so, we are not getting any younger and our health service is definitely not getting any better.
So I thought to myself, let’s go online and sort it out right? Wrong! Do you have any idea how complicated health insurance products are? You thought tax returns were complex, nah, walk in the park compared to health insurance products. Whilst I was online I noticed a little box to one side, talk to a representative online now.
So I did, a lovely lady guided me through the process and the products and voila, job done. It got me thinking, never a good thing, but at least it kept the voices busy. Me and the voices came to the conclusion that this was a feature we could do with on the Celtic Hearing website.
I then happened to read a great article recently about technology changes that may help retail marketing. It was an interview type article with David Edelman. David Edelman is a respected authority in sales and marketing practice. One of the questions was about online chatting, the process where a company representative is available online to chat with a website viewer. As before, something that I have been thinking about setting up since my encounter with the lovely Laya Healthcare lady.
The question was “Do you know if consumers are open to online chatting? Are they happy with the experience so far?” His answer was insightful and it made me think about re-doubling my efforts to introduce the feature. He said;
In the financial services sector, we’re actually seeing two to three times the conversion rate with human interaction through a computer interface. This is not necessarily the case with canned chat through typing. I think consumers get annoyed by the formality of that sometimes. But we’re seeing dramatic increases in conversion when people can talk right through the computer to a person, cobrowse and get questions answered.
David Edelman
Partner and Global Co-Leader, Sales and Marketing Practice
McKinsey & Company
The qualification in his answer about the financial services sector really struck me. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Products within the financial services sector are complex and not easy to understand as an outsider or purchaser. Hence, talking to someone during the browsing experience to get answers and explanations helped the conversion rate of business.
My experience with the lovely lady really reinforces that. Can you see the analogy here? Our profession sells products and services that are hard to understand by outsiders and purchasers. People who land on our websites are looking for answers to their questions. When they get those answers they often want answers to new questions.
Sometimes they don’t understand the answers that they have got, let alone how to formulate a new question. That is typical, our world is a highly technical world, our skill is to transfer that tech speak into understandable benefits. With just a website to do it, it is a difficult task. We know that, that’s why we want people to come in for consultation.
We take great pains to ensure our website is packed with useful information, articles that we think answer every possible question. We then design the flow of the website including the visuals and other content to lead people through a journey. A journey that we hope answers their questions and leads them to a consultation.
It doesn’t always work, we know that or me and the voices would have already retired to Barbados. So I see real value in the online chatting feature, it will hopefully help to answer all the questions that need answered. It could be the missing piece that we need to increase website conversions to enquiries. Don’t get me wrong, we do well from the website, we do very well from the website.
It delivers approximately 30% of our business levels yearly with an ASP that is almost as high as Patient referral purchases. But there is a lingering question.
How many people who land on your website come in for consultation? I know that if everyone who landed on our website came for consultation my diary would be booked up for a year. It’s not, I checked. So how many are we losing for reason or reasons unknown? The answer is a lot, so are you.
The article can be seen at iBeacon and similar technolgy
Interesting thought. I’m trying to figure out how I’d staff the chat person, though. I suppose you could have the chat feature, and only have it active during times when someone is available, vs. having to staff it around the clock?
I think office hours would do.